Forgot to take a picture before starting disassembly.
This is a Sanyo space efficient toaster/oven.
It has a very small footprint.
For a small house with a small kitchen, it's ideal.
We've had it for a long time... (don't remember how long)
The main control is a timer knob on the RH side of the front.
It stopped turning (locked up).
In order to investigate, I wanted to see what the mechanism looked like.
In order to get to the timer mechanism, the entire unit had to be pretty much disassembled...
Finally got to the timer unit/switch.
Nothing obviously wrong on the external parts of the switch.
The top/front of the switch is assembled with bent over metal "stakes". Usually, when something is assembled this way, it's not serviceable.
Since I'm this far along, I took the switch apart by bending the stakes up and taking off the metal front pieces.
In order to get the front metal pieces off, the pin on the shaft also had to be removed...
I "let the smoke out" when I disassembled it. There are several gears (for reduction I presume), a large clock-spring, mechanism to ring the bell on the back of the switch when the timer is done and the main electrical switch in a small plastic housing with two pins that are soldered into the wiring.
The main problem appears to have been the plastic housing for the electrical switch. I found several small pieces of broken plastic when I took it apart. My guess is that the broken pieces of plastic from the electrical switch housing/mechanism got into the gear mechanism and caused some damage/misalignment.
Not sure though since when I took the front cover off, all the pieces came apart at the same time.
The front cover keeps all the gears/spring in position and when it's moved/taken off, everything comes apart at the same time...
Doing some digging online, it turns out this timer switch is a pretty common design/part on appliances (looks like it's more common on microwaves). Walmart sells (actually another company that uses the Walmart website - kinda like what Amazon does) a replacement switch for about $9 total (free shipping).
I ordered one (should take 1 to 2 weeks to arrive).
It's worth the small cost to see if I can fix it.
Why all the trouble to fix an old toaster?
Sanyo appears to have stopped making this model.
Can't find an equivalent small footprint design with high quality for a reasonable price....
I don't have much experience with the Sanyo brand. My image in general was that it's a little lower quality than other Japanese brand appliances (such as Panasonic, for example). But, this toaster is very well designed and built. In disassembling it, I can see how thoughtfully it was designed for assembly, efficiency, quality and function. The small design details are extremely well thought out and executed. The quality of some of the design features on the various metal parts is very high and precise.
If the design was being graded, it would get an A; maybe an A+!
