What element is changed to use the same appliance in US and in Europe ?

Hi,





We can often see the same household appliances in Europe, Asia or America even though the voltage is different.


They don't use a heavy voltage converter, so what element is changed in the appliance in order to use it anywhere ?





Thanks|||Often a household device is using a transformer to step the 120 volts down to something lower and DC. For the higher voltage, the device's DC power supply's transformer would merely have a different ratio.





As the other person who replied already said, a switched mode power supply would also be capable of doing the same thing. The key thing to take note of is that the device has a power supply producing a low DC voltage for the electronics (which can't operate off of straight AC) to run.





An exception would be anything with an AC motor- like a vacuum cleaner or blender. Also things with resistive heaters, like toasters or space heaters. These would need to be designed with thinner, higher resistance wires in comparison to the US versions so that they draw the proper wattage.|||usually there is a simple slide switch which controls a step-up or step-down transformer example- that little orange switch an the back of your computers power supply|||switched mode power supply?