It's a while, since we've had an episode of unboxed tragedy, but here it is: let's unbox this glorious uh, constant temperature coaster that is self-regulating. Apparently it's not self-regulated. I've tested it. I've just suddenly realized.

I didn't print off that picture, oh not to worry! I can. I can do that so here it is the reason there's a big scuff mark in the middle of it is because uh i've tested this. Let me plug this into the hobby, then i shall actually go and get that picture printed off. So we can take a look at the thumb readout, but in the meantime i plug it in and it shows about 19.4 watts and the little flickery lip red indicator goes on.

I'm guessing, that's an led and resistor might be a new. I think it's an led and this starts getting hot and it gets hot and it gets hot. It went up to approximately 155 degrees celsius uh and that's when i put a thermocouple on it and the all the paint started coming off. Also, when you put your back your fingers on, you can feel it's like off it that's interesting, so i was originally expecting this power rating 19 watt or so to actually progressively drop.

I thought it was going to be a ptc heater. It's not it's just a fixed heater, so is that just resistors taped to the back of this panel or are glued, let's find out, let's take it apart, but before i do that, i'm going to go and grab that picture that i mentioned one moment. Please, okay got the picture a very distinct hot spot. There 156 degrees celsius, it's toasty hot.

It does come with warnings about heating. To be fair, is designed to keep your drink warm. So that makes sense, i suppose the hot plastic smell wasn't so comfortable. This was the original listing um.

They have put the price up since i purchased it. They put the price off of everything like that: uh, more than 10 available ones sold. Yet it was me that bought it, don't really recommend buying them uh, but at 220 volt cup mug warmer automatic, constant temperature heating coaster heater, let's open it up, i should get the hoppy out the way and we shall explore its marvelous circuitry. There is a sense of foreboding at what's going to be in here.

I should be used to this now. Oh, it's good air vents on the back. Well, smoke vents really, there's a wee hole here. I'm not sure, that's for it uh.

It has a wires visible through it. I did, of course, buy it in pink, because, while i was expecting it to be less than safe and well, it's got to be pink if it's dangerous just for extra drama, the anticipation, oh, is it clipped together? I may need to spudge, i may need to spudge it open i'll put it next to this. Rather big plastic sprue. There we go.

What do we have? Okay, let's get closer to this, shall we let's get closer, so we can see things better. I shall focus on this convenient big divot out the paint we have tin, foil, oh tin, father looks as though it may have shriveled. Oh okay. It is just heating tape that they've stuck onto tape to stick it in place and then they've put the foil over it.

Um there is a modest attempt at guiding the cable. There is a strain relief here, they've just not used uh. I can see what looks like a tiny little resistor and series with the uh the led. This will help.

This will be just across the mains. Oh all the little warning things have popped off: oh they, the murets, and what we call them water nuts. In the uk, don't really use them, they're, not they're, available here, but not standard. It does have the rewire spring.

I'm just going to try this for springing this right. Now, let's bring it no uh, not springy. So what value is that resistor in there it's an 8 smart resistor, which is only rated for oh 150, volts tops, so it's going to be seeing so pretty much means voltage peak 350, volts dc since they're. Reading that, let's pair this back and see if we can get the meter in and measure that resistor - oh, that is quite tight sleeve.

What's the value going to be, i'm going to estimate it's going to be in the region in the 200k range, so i want to get a connection onto here, let's just pair this away with a knife in fact, and we'll work out the dissipation, these leds, the Red leds, if there's no diode, they will actually they conduct in reverse as well they're, just basically avalanche. They don't light, it's not ideal for the led, but it's what they do. It's cheap. It's an led in series with a resistor slapped across the mains.

You find out a lot in some of the industrial indicators. Well, not the proper industrial indicators, the cheap chinese industrial indicators. Let me see if we get onto this copper, well copper-esque material and keep my fingers away from those terminals, so it doesn't skew the result. If i manage to connect 160k okay, so assuming the led avalanches, let's work out the dissipation that resistor, um and avalanches are low voltage, there's only about two volts.

The forward direction 240 volts as it is divided by 160 k, is a current of just 1.5 milliamps. Through the through the led times, the 240, the dissipation of that little resistor is 0.36, which is about twice its rating. It's actually not too bad compared to what they usually are, but there is a chance that, after a while that little resistor will bake in there and then go pop and then blow something. But that's what we have it's a very thin aluminium tray with uh.

This heater tape stuck onto what's the resistance of the heater tape just out of interest. This is where i just slap on these. I can slap it in the pins. It doesn't really matter the led, isn't even going to get involved in this.

Let's go for the 20k range here bring the meter where it can be seen three roughly 3k, 3000 ohms, okay, so yeah this is actually you know what let's go further. Let's take the led, led, let's take the resistive tape apart, so i shall slide this sleeve off and see. How is it terminated? Because i would expect this to be a wound um? Is it supposed to be brown and sploogey there, or is that where the adhesive has been burning, it's possibly where the adhesive has been burning, it's not really rated for that temperature. So i would guess that this is this going to be carbon fiber tape, um.

I shall try and open this up. Let's just cut it, it's a different resistance. Now, oh, i see a very, very fine. Oh that's the fiberglassy type stuff.

Let's get the wire stripper in it's mostly silicon with uh. What i'm guessing is a fiberglass core with a little wire wrap around it. Oh, it is the wire. You can't even see the wire, so it's a bunch of strands of fiberglass with a very fine wire wrap around it.

Let's see if i can actually strip this. So it actually shows the coil may not be able to do this. Does it show at all yeah there's a couple of bundles of the fiberglass? One of them has the wire wrap around it. You're not going to see this because it is like fuse grade wire, but it is wrapped around that and i guess that, ultimately, when they get to the end, they fold the wire back across the silicon and then just crimp.

It in hmm messy, not sure reliable. That would be, but the heater wires do seem to be a common thing, so that is it. I don't really recommend this. It's the usual plastic tat.

It makes me think that gets so hot that uh there is a risk of the plastic kind of melting. I really was hoping for a ptc thermistor to be stuck to the back of this something that's going to self-regulate, but it doesn't interesting. It certainly does get hot, i'm just not sure how long it would last, but there we go. It is very typical of what we've come to expect from products like this: the construction that is designed for a high speed output and if the insulation did fail - and they do seem to have taken effort to its silicon sleeve, cable, it's silicon sleeving over that the.

If it did fail, it could potentially make this plate live, and i think your cup's potentially going to remove a lot of this paint over time. But it's not a huge risk so semi-acceptable for use, but not really a good choice in general.