Glass oven door 'exploding' - normal??

Penny-less_2

We had the same happen with our Belling oven last week. It went with such a bang. It was the outer door and the whole door needed to be replaced. Our cooker was 7 years old so we spent the repair money towards the cost of a new one. I have only used Oven Pride cleaner on it.

Piggywiggy

I remember when I was a child this happened to our oven, I think it was fairly old at the time though.

swingaloo

We assembled ovens at a company I worked for. We watched the testing over and over to see what the doors would stand.

They don't break by slamming or cleaning. You could drop a dish onto the door from 3 foot high if it hit the middle of the glass but a 10p dropped in the corner of the glass would shatter it. Its a sharp tap rather than a big bang that does the damage, its not always visible when its done and only shatters when the oven is heating.

Arthog

That happened to our cooker oven glass door very soon after it was new.
It was replaced straight away and the second one is still going strong, as the whole cooker is, 47 years later!

paddyrg

Toughened safety glass is designed to do this, whilst resisting scratches. Normal green glass is actually quite soft, it takes a scratch easily, but toughened glass is more resistant.

That said, a small scratch, invisible even, will have a narrow radius of fracture energy. It's hard to predict that it will and will not stand, but when it can't stand something, it fails by shattering to tiny pieces.

It does this by being heated and cooled quickly, so the glad has a lot of cooling stresses baked into it. It's under high tension internally. When it goes, you can see how dramatic that tension was! Same process in prince Rupert's drop (Dutch tears), extremely tough, until they aren't! https://youtu.be/xe-f4gokRBs

Lindagreenacre

My son and daughter in law had a new kitchen from B&Q, which included a Bosch double oven. The main oven door exploded into what seemed like hundreds of pieces, all over the kitchen floor. An engineer came and replaced the glass. When my daughter in law used it, the same thing happened again. Second visit from the engineer and he rebuilt the door and did a test run, after 10 mins., the oven door shattered. It now seems like B&Q are in dispute over who takes responsibility.