Like most small, bushy-tailed rodents, I’m stocking up on things to prepare for the winter. Since I don’t intend to go outside frequently in liquid helium temperatures to go food gathering, I bought a Haier cube fridge at Best Buy as a provisions capacitor.
Getting it back from said Best Buy on foot was an adventure by itself, but it could have been worse. What caught my eye as I was browsing the appliance section was the fact that it was thermoelectric – it doesn’t have a compressor or coolant, but uses Peltier coolers. As usual, a mass of ideas and thoughts emanated from my head and began congealing upon it. Since this was impolite to do in public, I went ahead and bought the unit. It also happened to be the least expensive.
Thermoelectric refrigerators aren’t known to be high-performance units, nor particularly efficient (the average Peltier device is about 10% efficient thermally), and most are used as drink coolers and such. A noble use indeed, but I, in love with severely mutated and overpowered devices (think Snuffles), could have fun with it.
The first thing I did when I got back was take the back cover off. I must not be used to appliance construction techniques, but this thing is rickety beyond anything I’ve seen. The sheet metal forming the case was on the order of… mid-20s gauge?
The operating mechanics are… well, simple. An additional heatsink and fan on the inside of the cabinet act as the “coldsink” for the Peltier device.
One board to control them all. On the right is a switch-mode power supply, and on the left the control electronics, which I assume throttle the fan and limit the Peltier device current according to needs (I haven’t taken the board out yet). Output on the fans and Peltier appear to be 12 volts.
Because of the control electronics, simple overvolting isn’t an option. Besides, that wouldn’t be completely above and beyond what the boundary of genius and insanity dictates.
The board also cannot be overdriven without mods – the power transistors get extremely hot as they are, and probably wouldn’t appreciate more loading. The fans seem to be mediocre and the heatsink fin area sparse.
Therefore, the inaugural project to adorn the new Future Projects page is the as-of-yet unnamed mutant minifridge. Don’t bother looking, as there’s nothing really worth looking at.
Sounds to me like it was already overclocked, overvolted, overdriven and overloaded when manufactured to reduce cost, increase profit and reduce life so you’ll have to by a new one in a year to increase sales.