The worst pencil sharpener ever

Ok, so I've looked online for examples of why electric pencil sharpeners are impractical and in all fairness, that's not true unless you're sharpening a whole bunch of pencils in one sitting.  Then it depends on the sharpener and some sharpeners have cooling fans so the sharpener doesn't overheat and it allows for continuous use.  But if you have a bunch of pencil to sharpen and you want an electric sharpener that's absolutely dreadful for your project look no further than the LEDAH 222 Electric Office Pencil Sharpener.

Here is a link to the webpage https://www.especiallyoffice.com/shop/contents/en-us/d94_Pencil_Sharpeners.html and here is a screenshot of the webpage with some of the text hightlighted:

Ok, at first glance it just looks like a normal electric pencil sharpener except when you look at the price, $94.14!  So now we know that it's an expensive pencil sharpener so for that price, it must be pretty good.  I'm sure it can go all day without overheating, making it great for what we need, why else would a pencil sharpener cost that much?  But then let's look at the duty cycle.  It's the second thing I've highlighted.

Now the Duty Cycle means how long it for before it has to shut down / how long it has to shut down.  For example this device can run for 4 minutes before it has to shut off for 30 minutes (probably because it takes 4 minutes to overheat and takes 30 minutes to cool down.)  So it's ALMOST like a battery that runs for 4 minutes and then has to be recharged and take 30 minutes to recharge.  So it's the same math as the previous blog post, but we're not gonna go over it again, I'll just cut to the result.

The result is 9 pencil sharpeners for continuous use.  That's 9 time's the price of $94.14, so will end up having to pay $847.26 if we actually want to buy more than one of these for continuous use (if you don't believe me, I'll explain it in the next paragraph.)

So if you don't believe me about the Duty Cycle, here's a runthrough of what would've happened if you had a whole bunch of pencils that you had to sharpen non-stop.  Think if it as the script for a very boring movie.

At the start (1)

Sharpener 1 is in use

Four minutes later (2)

Sharpener 1 has overheated 0 minutes ago
Sharpener 2 is in use

Four minutes later (3)

Sharpener 1 has overheated 4 minutes ago
Sharpener 2 has overheated 0 minutes ago
Sharpener 3 is in use


Four minutes later (4)

Sharpener 1 has overheated 8 minutes ago
Sharpener 2 has overheated 4 minutes ago
Sharpener 3 has overheated 0 minutes ago
Sharpener 4 is in use

Four minutes later (5)

Sharpener 1 has overheated 12 minutes ago
Sharpener 2 has overheated 8 minutes ago
Sharpener 3 has overheated 4 minutes ago
Sharpener 4 has overheated 0 minutes ago
Sharpener 5 is in use
Four minutes later (6)

Sharpener 1 has overheated 16 minutes ago
Sharpener 2 has overheated 12 minutes ago
Sharpener 3 has overheated 8 minutes ago
Sharpener 4 has overheated 4 minutes ago
Sharpener 5 has overheated 0 minutes ago
Sharpener 6 is in use

Four minutes later (7)

Sharpener 1 has overheated 20 minutes ago
Sharpener 2 has overheated 16 minutes ago
Sharpener 3 has overheated 12 minutes ago
Sharpener 4 has overheated 8 minutes ago
Sharpener 5 has overheated 4 minutes ago
Sharpener 6 has overheated 0 minutes ago
Sharpener 7 is in use

Four minutes later (8)

Sharpener 1 has overheated 24 minutes ago
Sharpener 2 has overheated 20 minutes ago
Sharpener 3 has overheated 16 minutes ago
Sharpener 4 has overheated 12 minutes ago
Sharpener 5 has overheated 8 minutes ago
Sharpener 6 has overheated 4 minutes ago
Sharpener 7 has overheated 0 minutes ago
Sharpener 8 is in use

Four Minutes later (9)
Sharpener 1 has overheated 28 minutes ago
Sharpener 2 has overheated 24 minutes ago
Sharpener 3 has overheated 20 minutes ago
Sharpener 4 has overheated 16 minutes ago
Sharpener 5 has overheated 12 minutes ago
Sharpener 6 has overheated 8 minutes ago
Sharpener 7 has overheated 4 minutes ago
Sharpener 8 has overheated 0 minutes ago
Sharpener 9 is in use

Four Minutes Later (10)

Sharpener 1 is in use (it cooled down two minutes earlier, but during that time, we had to
use Sharpener 9, so we still need 9 sharpeners.)
Sharpener 2 has overheated 28 minutes ago
Sharpener 3 has overheated 24 minutes ago
Sharpener 4 has overheated 20 minutes ago
Sharpener 5 has overheated 16 minutes ago
Sharpener 6 has overheated 12 minutes ago
Sharpener 7 has overheated 8 minutes ago
Sharpener 8 has overheated 4 minutes ago
Sharpener 9 has overheated 0 minutes ago

Notice how we've added 1 sharpener for each phase until phase 10, that's because we need to have at least 1 sharpener available at all times.  And our first sharpener (Sharpener 1) doesn't cool down until we've overheated 8 others while waiting for that to happen so 1 + 8 = 9 as in Sharpener 9, the last sharpener to be added before Sharpener 1 can be used again.  If you're wondering why we don't need more, here's what happens in the next step.

Four Minutes Later (11)

Sharpener 1 has overheated 0 minutes ago
Sharpener 2 has cooled and is now in use
Sharpener 3 has overheated 28 minutes ago
Sharpener 4 has overheated 24 minutes ago
Sharpener 5 has overheated 20 minutes ago
Sharpener 6 has overheated 16 minutes ago
Sharpener 7 has overheated 12 minutes ago
Sharpener 8 has overheated 4 minutes ago
Sharpener 9 has overheated 0 minutes ago

So each time a sharpener cools, —the sharpener that overheated after it— will have cooled for long enough that by the time the former sharpener overheats, the latter sharpener will have cooled.  For example, in this case, after by the time Sharpener 2 has overheated, Sharpener 3 will have cooled,