Blade Has Begun Climing in Sunbeam Food Processor

[jim evans]

This is a Sunbeam LeChef food processor, Catalog # 14-11. We inherited it from my wife's mother. It's at least 20 years old. It sat unused for about 15 years until we developed a need for it about 9 months ago. Since then we have used it many times. It has always worked properly.

Our dog has no teeth so we use it to grind kibble into a powder. It has worked great for this, week in and week out. A few nights ago when we started to grind our regular three cups of kibble the cutter blade rose on it's support post until it reached the lid. This was high enough that it came off the center post, began to wobble and made a disturbing bumping sound.

We tried to grind the same batch about five or six times. It runs for a short time, then repeats the behavior. By the end it had gotten to the powder stage and the blade quit rising. To test it I ran it with nothing in the bowl and again with water -- it will run properly apparently forever this way.

Anybody know what's causing this?

[Hell Toupee]

It's often due to overloading the bowl. Food processors I've owned usually caution about that happening. Try reducing the amount ground by one-third to one-half and see if it helps.

[jim evans]

Thanks for the reply. After it started happening we cut back the amount to a third (one cup) and it still happens. After that we slowly poured in the feed tube -- it happened before we got even one cup in.

[Hell Toupee]

Well, the next guess would be that the blade is no longer sharp enough to process the load as efficiently as it used to. Have you tried a combination of a smaller amount and pulsing the machine, instead of having the blade run non-stop? The pauses between action might give the kibble enough time to settle back down in the bowl. The only other possible solution I can think of would be to add a liquid to the bowl to moisten the kibble as it grinds, keeping it down low - but unless you're going to feed it immediately, that wouldn't work.

If you're willing to invest in another machine, I'd recommend getting a coffee grinder for the kibble. Those are amazing at how fast they can render even fairly hard stuff to powder. I use mine to grind hard spices.

[jim evans]

That's an excellent suggestion. If I can't solve this problem I'll look into it. Do you know how long it takes to grind a cup of beans?

[jim evans]

We first tried soaking, but even after soaking for 20 minutes the brand we buy was not soft through-and-through.

[Oren]

Just moments. A coffee grinder also lets you pulse the beans. For me (we I used them) a few pulses and/or a longer hold of the button.

It would surely be a good option.

[jim evans]

I knew nothing about coffee grinders before I read your message. I've now looked at about 20 of them on Amazon. They all seem to grind 3oz at a time. If that's equivalent to liquid measure, unless it grinds the 3oz in a few seconds, it would take us too long to grind all we do at one time -- 12 cups or about 100oz

[jim evans]

I've found a Mr. Coffee that will do more than one cup. The reviews aren't great, but if push comes to shove . . .

[Hell Toupee]

Take a look at this one. It has an eight-ounce capacity hopper (that's eight ounces of coffee beans, to give you a mental image of the bulk capacity), and discharges the ground product into a larger storage jar. So you could grind, adding more kibble, till the jar fills up, then dump the jar, repeat as needed. It will be quick, and you can adjust the fineness of grind.

[jim evans]

As it turns out, my wife had a Braun coffee grinder at the back of a cabinet. We tried it and it sure works good. It grinds three ounces so quickly it may be as fast as the food processor. The thing that takes time is getting the powder out. If I can come up with a way to speed up emptying it I'm sure it will take no longer than the food processor. Thanks so much for your suggestion.

[hrhofmann]

A little ground kibble with your ground coffee might improve the flavor .

[The Daring Dufas]

I've never been a coffee drinker but you reminded me of the big self service coffee grinders I used to see in grocery stores. If you could find one of those old monsters, you could grind a whole bag of kibble at once.

TDD

[chaniarts]

turn it upside down whilst it's still grinding, then turn it off. all the dust will be in the cup

[Tony]

Is it threaded in the direction so that when working it *should* tighten itself? If so it's probably stripped. I used some good SLOW curing epoxy on my coffee grinder with the same problem. 24 hour epoxy, let it cure for 4-5 days. If it turns in the direction that normal use would unscrew it, just clean it up and put some loctite on it.

[Tony]

You need a *real* coffee grinder. Not the cheap little blender style ones (like I have).

[Tony]

I use one of the coffee grinders that are more like a blender, nothing like a real grinder like in some stores. Anyway after years of use the blade came loose even though it was threaded to tighten as it turned. Being the cheap guy I am, I used some 24 hour PC-7 epoxy and let it sit

3 or 4 days, the last few in the hot sun.

[jim evans]

To whom it may concern: As a result of this suggestion we bought one of these coffee grinders

By now we have ground several bags of kibble and it still works like a champ. It's not real fast, but this approach appears to have solved our problem.

Thanks very much to Hell Toupee for his suggestion.