[HeyLaughingBoy]

I have one of those mixers and I've replaced the sacrificial gear at least 3 times, although I usually get the gears for far less than $50. I gotta learn to not overload it with bread dough :-)

Based on what I see when I open up the unit, the reason they don't have an all metal gear train is that doing that would impose the need for higher strength on everything in the transmission and the chassis up to the motor. That would increase the cost to the point where it would cut into sales.

The larger consumer mixers (6qt?) are built more heavy duty since I know that they can take a larger vertical load, but I don't know if they also have the nylon gear.

[kortex]

Why not a shear pin? There's no need to make the (more expensive) gears the shear point when you can use a pennies-each shear pin (or shaft, or similar).

[HeyLaughingBoy]

No idea. I didn't design the thing :-)

[winrid]

They can use glass reinforced plastic instead, and powdered metal or nylon gears like the mid range $150 consumer drills...

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I think I may have misunderstood GP's post. I thought they meant that one of the gears was changed to plastic (as in mine) with the rest remaining metal. But it's more likely that they meant that the newer models are now using a fully plastic geartrain based on what I've read since.