The truth is, I am not really sure. I have the fairly expensive toaster that has been around 15 years or so and it stopped working for some reason. I am going to take it apart to try and figure it out.

Our first reaction was to replace the toaster. I didn’t do any of the looking but my wife said that reviews were all over the place and generally bad. That got me wondering if I could figure out the problem. To first understand what is wrong, we have to understand how it works.

I can’t speak for all toasters, but it appears this one has got some electrical and electronic components. This one appears to lock the mechanism down with an electromagnet (white circles). When the mechanism gets to a certain depth, it triggers a switch that turns on the coils for toasting (yellow circle). Additionally, it seems that there is a temperature sensor on the side. Just guessing but either the electronics run a timer to release the magnet or the temperature sensor acts as a cutoff switch and once power is removed to the magnet, the mechanism pops up.

Our particular problem was that the mechanism did not lock down and therefore there was no toasting. After taking the cover off, I found tons of crumbs on the inside. I am speculating that a cleaning would remove obstructions from the magnet holding and the switch making a connection. So, first I set to clean it out.

From what I learned with chainsaws and other things, it is best to test it without fully re-assembling, if possible. In my case, after blowing all the crumbs out with compressed air, I plugged the toaster in and everything worked like it should. So, I diagnose the problem as crumbs interfering with the magnet. It is possible that I could have soldered a broken connection but something like a faulty switch or electronic component would probably have been too much.

After I verified it was working the way I wanted it to, I reassembled and tested again. The toaster was still working as I expected. Success, I saved $10-hundreds of dollars. We weren’t going to buy a cheap replacement.

End Your Programming Routine: Before this date, I had never seen inside of a toaster before. I have my doubts that they all operate as electronically as this one. I figured, worst case scenario we going to throw it away anyway so it was worth a try. When it comes to junk, don’t be scared to try and figure it out. You might just save yourself some money and who knows, maybe disappointment too.