Damaeus wrote:
>
> In news:rec.food.cooking, "kag" > posted on
> Mon, 17 Nov 2003 14:05:07 -0500:
>
> > i am looking at getting (someday) the medium heavy duty one
> > (with the arms that clip onto the bowl) i like the fact they
> > can be used to make bread dough and sausage and pasta etcetc
> > with extra accessories. or are there any better ones out
> > there i am not aware of?
>
> I love my Kitchen-Aid stand mixer. I think it was $299. However,
> here's a word of advice. Get a Kitchen-Aid model that has the little
> twist clamps to hold the bowl in. If you get the kind that has the bowl
> that twists into the base, when kneading or paddling things like large
> batches of cookie dough or even bread dough, you'll find yourself
> calling the new governor of California to help you untwist that bowl out
> of the base. That mixer keeps twisting it on in there until it's so
> tight you really have to hug it and brace yourself against something to
> get it out.
>
> I've also heard that in recent years, to reduce costs, Kitchen-Aid has
> been using plastic gears in the mechanics of the mixer instead of metal
> gears as they used to. I don't know if that's really true or not
> because I've never taken mine apart to check. That's just what some guy
> told me.
>

The plastic gear are there to protect the remainder of the transmission should
the user try to mix something that is just too heavy for the mixer, usually a
heavy dough. There are warnings on the manuals that state you should not try
to mix more than a certain amount of dough. Mine says 6 cups of flour, I
think. At the 63% hydration I use that is about 48 ounces of dough, enough for
two loaves.

I understand that this (a plastic gear in the power train) is a common design
feature of most stand mixers, not just KA. It is like a fuse.