6 ms·
RF Solid-State Cooking
- mburee 5y agoSo does this glorified smart microwave heat the good directly or a plate/stove thing on which you cook the food?
- KANahas 5y agoThat’s awesome, basically it’s the Metcal of hotplates?
- londons_explore 5y agoThis is just a microwave but built with MOSFETs rather than a vintage 1940's era valve. They avoid using the word microwave anywhere in the marketing material, which really is telling they're mostly trying to get rid of the 'low quality food' reputation that microwaves have.
- melony 5y agoThis is actually a lot more sophisticated than the comments here are making it out to be. With something like this you can basically get software defined cooking. If you combine it with computer vision and a bit of chemistry, you would get a perfect medium rare steak every time. (You don't need the computer vision part if you can get the RF feedback from the sensors directly) To be fair, there is nothing stopping you from doing this with a traditional magnetron microwave, just that you will need a lot of space for hardware and waveguides to have the same precision and control.
- op00to 5y agoThis seems like the jump from traditional pointed radar to phased array radar. I can’t wait to have my mozzarella stick breading crispy, and cheese gooey.
- sannee 5y agoIndeed, the patent(s) [1] are particularly enlightening. Still a bit astonishing that it actually works though. [1] https://patents.justia.com/patent/9040883 https://patents.justia.com/patent/9040883
- jmrm 5y agoI find pretty cool there is a company who is trying to improve a technology that haven't advanced in decades, but a whole simple microwave oven is probably a lot cheaper than the transistors driving those RF signals inside this "cooker". I don't know how much people would buy this, but I'm pretty sure a lot of restaurants would have one of this if they deliver what they promise.
- londons_explore 5y agoThis tech will soon enough get cheaper than classic magnetrons. Magnetrons require quite large magnets, a vacuum and filament which eventually burns out, and a large transformer with a lot of copper and steel. The solid state solution is just a bunch of mosfets. Less material means it'll be cheaper eventually when the patents etc. run out.
- Gibbon1 5y agoI work with low power RF stuff. My gut feeling is RF transistors will run you about a dollar to fifty cents per watt. Notable though high power RF transistors are a niche product. So you might have a good discount if you ordered a million of them. One advantage is if you can direct the RF energy you could cook TV Dinner and Airline meals without over or under cooking. Could use machine vision and bar code to select the program. Also wouldn't need a rotating plate.
- tinus_hn 5y agoI want to believe but what I see as the result is TV dinner DRM where you this only works for selected premium dinners.
- londons_explore 5y agoTo get decent quality, there is going to need to be integration between the meal-maker and the device maker. The meat needs cooking one way, the veg another, and the salad on the side needs to remain chilled. To get all that right is going to require quite detailed data from the food manufacturer.
- londons_explore 5y agoNon-RF MOSFETS can be about 2000 watts for 10 cents... [1]. RF transistors aren't substantially more difficult to make either. They're only pricy today due to low volume. [1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32993849971.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32993849971.html
- 5y ago
- anfractuosity 5y agoI'm curious how this system browns the steak (like in their photos), I didn't realise you could achieve that with microwaves alone?