Dear Ferret Folks-
I am not a natural mechanical genius, but I am married to one. The
spouse fixes things for a living. Pumps. Huge industrial pumps. For
businesses. For cities. For reasons I cannot explain, he is allowed
onto our government's nuclear sites to fix pumps, there. Obviously our
government has never seen what happens when said spouse tries, say, to
make pancakes. Well, I'm told he is good with nuclear cooling pumps,
and New England isn't a pile of glowing slag, so they must know
something I don't. I wish the vacuum constituted a *pump.* He might
start pushing one around here. But I digress...
As I said, the spouse is good at all things mechanical.
My mother had one of those marvelous blenders that Starbucks uses to
make umpteen million frappaccinos a day. Think heavy use. And she
killed it. From overuse? Hardly. She put the detachable plastic
"pitcher" part into the dishwasher to clean it. The spouse explains
that this lets water *into* the rotating bearing housing at the bottom
of the pitcher that the whirring blade is slaved to. Soapy detergent
and water get in, dissolve the oil that lubricates the bearing, the
bearing rusts. Then, the bearing experiences "drag" when it tries to
spin, your blender motor has to work harder to turn the whirring blade,
and this will eventually burn it out. But before it dies, it will start
to make a horrible, I'm ripping my guts out mechanical squeal when that
degraded bearing tries to rotate at speed. Think friction. Think heat.
Think new blender.
If you want a blender that doesn't up and die on you with alarming
regularity, clean the pitcher by hand. Make sure to just wipe the part
on the bottom with a damp cloth, don't soak it. That pitcher can hold
liquids happily from the *inside*, but that opening on the bottom on
the outside is actually very veunerable to liquids. And trapped liquids
in that bearing housing can dribble out and into the actual motor when
you place it upright on the motor spindle, killing the motor itself.
Just a word to the wise.
Alexandra in Ma
[Posted in FML 5788]
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