Quick Hack of a VS200 Food Sealer

Here’s a quick hack I did a while ago to my VS200 food sealer.

I bought this some years ago to use for sealing up meats and such after a trip to a club store. It was cheap, but it had one problem: To seal, it went through a pre-programmed routine. This was pull a vacuum until a vacuum switch trips, continue pulling vacuum for about 30 seconds, and then seal for about 9 seconds. This meant that if the bag was small and evacuated quickly, or, more importantly, if I just wanted to make a new bag up, I had to go through the entire cycle. Waste of time, especially if I have to seal 30 or so bags or make up a bunch of new bags. More expensive units have seal-only functions, but I didn’t want to spend the money for that when I bought mine.

So, I flipped it over, removed the Phillips screws, destroyed the sunk security screw, and gained access to the innards. Behold, a PIC microcontroller, power supply, vacuum switch, and associated electronics goodies.
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