A simple way to remember (for the stainless cylinder) is to grip the top with one hand, the bottom with the other and twist your thumbs towards each other. (provided the “head” side is up) 
Once you have the base off, you can look down the cylinder to see how the end cap is locked on. 
Of the two units I have had in my hands, one was very easy to pull apart and one felt like someone had used Loctite on it. Tolerances vary in all manufacturing.
I just got mine today and OMG, I got one of the stinky ones!
This is not just a “new device smell”, this thing stunk up my entire house with an overpowering odor. Gave my wife a headache and made me want to gag. Had to put it out on the patio table because we can’t stand to have it in the house.
I put in a ticket to Anova support, so we’ll see how it goes.
I had to chime in on the annoying beep, beep, beep. This is where a snooze feature is needed. Just tap the face of Anova on the app and the beeps go away for a while, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever. That could be in the settings. You can stop the beeps if you physically go into the kitchen and press the timer on the display or you can stop Anova on the app then start it again.
Not normal at all! Glad you put in a ticket for support - they’ll help ya out.
Thanks! They reached out to me this afternoon via email requesting my invoice from Amazon and my shipping address. Impressed by the customer service so far. I’ve boxed my current unit back up and stuck in the garage for the time being.
Yay! Our customer support team is pretty solid. They’ll make sure you’re being taking care of.
I have the same problem… my unit smells so bad I can’t store it inside the house, even still after a week or so.
I at first thought it was just a new device smell. Strong enough my wife also commented when she came home to me in the middle of my first cook.
I can’t believe googling this actually revealed a common problem.
@Dkopack A slight smell is normal - what you’re experiencing is not. If you haven’t already, I advise hitting up support so they can help you out with this issue.
I also had a smell when I unboxed the unit today but it wasn’t overpowering so I just went ahead and used it. Four hours later it’s pretty well gone, just a bit of degassing necessary, I guess. Haven’t used the timer yet but the rest of the unit worked flawlessly on the first cook.
Bluetooth connected easily to my Galaxy S8 Android phone but the range isn’t very great, even for Bluetooth, so it’s basically useless. Couldn’t connect to Wifi so I put in a support ticket and waiting for a response. There doesn’t seem to be an automatic feature to connect to WiFi built into the app.
Overall I’m pleased and will be very pleased once I can make a WiFi connection.
In the ap, go to the ‘More’ menu (designated by 3 dots on the lower right). If you scroll down to the bottom section there after Temperature Units, Feedback & Support, Notifications and Other you will see, right at the bottom a section called Connection. First option is Unpair Precision Cooker and the second one is Connect Anova to Wi-Fi. This is the item you want.
I did that and did it again. App recognizes temperature settings on the PC and asks for the router password that I typed in. Then starts searching but doesn’t make a connection though the PC is only a few feet from the router. I’m running the app on a Galaxy S8 Android 7.0.
Do you have any symbols in the router password? #$%! Anova has to connect to a 2.4 gHz WiFi network and the password can have no symbols not even the dash.
No. Only letters and numbers. Total: 8
And your phone is also connected to the same 2.4GHz network, right? Are your 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSID’s named the same? If they are, could you disable the 5GHz network until after you have the Anova setup? (once it’s successfully connected to the 2.4GHz network, it will find it in the future). You just re-enable it after.
Thanks for your help but I only have a 2.4 Ghz network on this router.
I haven’t seen a router that wasn’t dual band in a long time. What is the model of your router and I’ll try and find the settings.
Thanks for the offer, Thom. It was an old Buffalo router. I had a relatively new TP-Link Archer C2 router that I hadn’t set up yet. I did and tried it with just the 2.4 band enabled. Wouldn’t connect. I’m using a Samsung S8. Also tried it with my wife’s LG G4 with no luck. Went over a number of things with support but no luck. They think it’s a problem with the cooker so evidently Anova will be getting in touch with me about another one.
Regards,
Richard
My smells AWFUL also… This is my second time to use it and my entire apartment smells like burning plastic. The unit smelled like that out of the box and the display unit at William Sonoma smells the same way.
Regarding the smell of my unit, although it pretty well disappeared after a day when not in use it does come back when it’s on as the upper half then gets warm. Fortunately, it’s not overwhelming.