Smart people: What would cause a small appliance to melt like this?

Whoa. That shite is heavy on the tech jelly.

TECH BOARD

Child labor, most likely

Sounds like it got hot because of a faulty switch or something.

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Smart people

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Schwartz

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I thought you people were the smart people

Ideally he would need a rocket on it to better understand it.

cheaply designed, cheaply manufactured throw-away crap is my guess

i'd research on the internet if anyone else has had same problem. friend of mine's house burnt down because of a cheaply made coffee maker

What was the appliance and where was it made?

What type of fuse box? If its a federal pacific then lord help you.

I've dealt with plenty of small burnt up wires that are not rated for the loads that the inline fuse and/or the breaker box will trip at.

The wires/switch will burn up yet never trip anything. Usually due to cheap arse equipment. The wires/ switches and the fuse protections really needs to be rated the same

Paging Napoleon

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Fused, switched inlet. Had a 10A fuse in it. Noticed that the lights were off on the appliance, power switch was stuck, and burning smell.

Opened it up, the hot wire connector off of the switch was melted and scorched. Rest of the wire and other end of it were fine, and not hot to the touch.

Fuse is intact (confirmed with multimeter) and upstream breaker didn't trip.

I think it deformed so much from the heat that the contacts in the switch physically separated (cutting power, and making the switch stick).

WTF would cause this, yet NOT trip the breaker or fuse?

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I've seen this in cheap circuitry and the only explanation I can think of was the fuse was under rated. We have even tested some fuses to see this. Maybe the translation is wrong.

Everything you described screams short. Being that it is a resistance generated heating device you really can't use or rely on a GFCI outlet (the kind with the reset switch) as they will sense the intended neutral fault and trip.

I know your outlets are fused, but they would be at a higher rating than what the wires in the unit were designed for anyway.

So you are left with knowing you have a good power supply. You see the good fuse and maybe the first thing I would think would be power surge.
Is there a DC transformer on this device or is it all A/C?

I'm thinking simple all A/C. Just not familiar with Sous Vide cookers.

A large surge would cause it for sure, but be hard to detect. You would assume the fuse would pop though.

It really could have been a poor design and the metal heated up and dis-formed the contacts, maybe one was getting continuity when it should be off?

Again should trip the fuse. Which is why I find some small appliance fuses are suspect.


A quick short will pop the fuse or the point of contact, which is your switch, so if the fuse didn't fail, or trip, but you had a short and the switch is stuck then I would think the fuse didn't blow when it was intended to.