Reliable Inverters?

Pss Moggs you didnt start telling me of your idea on whether or not its feasable/economical or what ever to convert a standard type camper for off road use...doesnt have to be a jayco
regards
richard

thanks for that Moggs.
Yeh, the fresh coffee is a winner. Some years ago, I made an inverter to run a laptop in the 4wd. Later, when I upgraded the laptop to one I could run off 12v, I decided to use the inverter for running the coffee grinder, etc, till it died (due to other causes) last year.
Sadly, it looks like Jaycar have deleted both the 5082 and the 5064 off their web catalogue. Will drop in this arvo and find out what's the score.
I note both Jaycar and Altronics have lots of "refurbished" units in their bargain bin, I guess from all the faulty returns. Maybe there's a message there.
Gerry

The small domestic coffee grinders I can find on the net are 250w. That would mean you would need a minimum 600w inverter.

There is probably nothing wrong with the Altronics inverter. You are overloading it and burning it out. The large majority of these up to 1,000w inverters are made by the same company in Taiwan. They are different colours and labels and even some cosmetic construction changes. Generally they are very reliable if used within the designed limits.

Nah! The coffee grinder is a Braun marked at 135w. DC resistance is 120 ohms, which means that the ablolute max stall current is about 2A, or roughly 500w. Given that the inverter is supposed to take a 1200w surge, with 380w continous, then it's well within the design limits. It even is supposed to have all sorts of overload protection to stop this sort of thing.
I used to use a home-made low-tech 150w inverter for the coffee grinder, etc, which went well for years till I stuffed it on something else. It just appears that the Altronics unit is fragile. It works fine on 350w of continuous resistive load, but seems to crash out on inductive loads. My old low-tech inverter handled the inductive spikes of motors fine.
To be fair, Altronics have given me a fourth unit today, no quibbles, so we'll see how this one pans out on the next trip. I'll just pack some pre-ground coffee just in case.
Might even fix the old inverter and carry it as a spare. (As an aside, the new inverter doesn't appear to be user-repairable, as the part id's have been ground off most of the components inside)