Susan Brown

[Susan Brown]

“When it is discussing about the oven are they referring to the fact that all ovens must have a broil and bake element?”

Yes, that’s it. All ovens will at a minimum have a bake element and a broil element.

The surface elements/burners are on the “cooktop” portion of a range, not the “oven”.

[Susan Brown]

Hi Darren,

Yes, that’s a new unit that we added recently. You are welcome to go through it at your leisure. there are no requirements for you to.

[Susan Brown]

Hi Archie – see this topic:

https://my.mastersamuraitech.com/appliance-repair-course-support/student-forums/topic/calculating-equivalent-resistance/

[Susan Brown]

This question reflects our encouragement to think in terms of “power” when it comes to loads doing work. They need voltage AND current, which is what power is (P = I x E). We get a lot of techs who focus only on voltage.

So, that’s the answer we’re looking for – power.

[Susan Brown]

Hi Don,

The advice we give is to establish a relationship with a parts supplier and ask them for a list of the fastest moving parts in the Zip Codes that you serve. They vary a lot by region and over time, which is one reason we don’t give a list here.

[Susan Brown]

Thank you!

[Susan Brown]

Hi Everardo,

There are two different things you are talking about.

1. Your business structure (that would be like an LLC)
2. State or local government licenses/permits to do a particular business activity

1. Forming an LLC or other business entity has to do with taxes and liability (for example, if your business gets sued but you are an LLC, your personal assets are usually protected). You can get advice on this from tax or small business advisors. You don’t have to have this set up before you start running service calls, but you do want to look into it and make a decision before too long.

2. You’ll have to check with your local/state government to see what, if anything, they require before you open an appliance repair business. Fortunately, licensing requirements for appliance repair tend to be fairly minimal compared to other trades.

[Susan Brown]

Hi Elizeu,

The Ask the Teacher forums are only for questions related to the coursework. Questions about jobs that you are doing should be posted at Appliantology.

Now that your membership is active at Appliantology, you can post this question in the Tech Forums over there.

[Susan Brown]

Hi Charlie,

Have you set up your MST Student membership at Appliantology yet? If not, you can do that by taking the free Appliantology 101 course that you have access to (go to “My Courses” page).

This is the type of question you can ask at Appliantology tech forums.

The Ask the Teacher Forums are for questions directly related to your coursework here at MST.

[Susan Brown]

Hi Aaron,

I hope that sounded like an awful lot of heat just for a loose connection!

We show a nearly identical scenario in the video at the end of Unit 3. The values of the resistances are a little different, but otherwise it’s the same. Go back through that video and recreate the calculation on your own. Do you understand what we did? If not, let me know and we can break it down more here.

[Susan Brown]

It sounds to me like you are thinking of this correctly. Here’s some more discussion of the concepts that will hopefully help to solidify your thinking.

Here’s one way to think about what happens when one parallel branch fails open. Let’s use a simple example of two parallel circuits. The total current from the power supply is the sum of the current flow in both circuits. If one fails open, that current goes to zero. The other current is not affected however. So, the total current decreases.

Thinking of it mathematically, with equivalent resistance, you can come to the same conclusion. Below is a clip I wrote to help someone else who was grappling with equivalent resistance and current flow in parallel circuits.
———–

This is all from the perspective of the power supply. Be Zen-like and become the power supply, which has constant voltage, and think about the affect that having multiple paths for current to flow (parallel circuits vs. just one series circuit) has on the number of electrons you can push out (current). You can push a lot more out when there are multiple branches, even though each branch has a load.

The best way to think this through is to draw out a couple of circuits on paper and play with the calculations.

The first one has two loads in parallel, R1 and R2. Assume a 120vac circuit, so L1 and N. Assign easy values to R1 and R2, say 10 ohms and 20 ohms. Then calculate the current flowing through each load. (I = E/R, and remember in parallel circuits each load gets the full 120 vac.) The total current draw from L1 would be the sum of those two different currents.

Now, let’s think about the “equivalent resistance” of this scenario. The equivalent resistance is taking the resistance of loads in parallel and theoretically combining them into a single load. So, do the math and come up with the equivalent resistance based on the loads above. Now use I = E/R to calculate the current draw from L1. Should be the same as what you came up with before.

Since current is inversely proportional to resistance, for the same amount of current to flow through our theoretical one load that was flowing through the two branches/loads in parallel, the single load, or equivalent load, would have to have a lower resistance.

———–

Adding on to that… if one of the two branches fails, then the only remaining branch results in a total circuit resistance that will be higher than the equivalent resistance of the two loads in parallel. So, as you correctly stated, the overall current flow will decrease.

[Susan Brown]

Hi Vince,

Thanks for the idea – I’ll pass it along to the Masters!

[Susan Brown]

Hi Wesley – great! There are lots of PDF reader apps out there that allow marking them up. Scott often uses an app called Vittle to do his presentations and markups. But he said to also check out Inkflow and Classroom PDF.

[Susan Brown]

Power is both the input and output of a load. The load transforms it from electrical energy to something else. For example, to thermal energy (heat). Does that help?

[Susan Brown]

Hi David,

No worries – we’ll discuss it here and I can hide certain portions afterwards. You answered “current”, which is not entirely wrong, but it is not the best one of the answer choices we gave you. “Power” is the best answer. Think about the Ohm’s Law equations. We use “P” (for Power) for work being done. P = E x I.

Does that make sense?

[Author]

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