LEM Products #8 575 Watt Electric Meat Grinder - Heavy Duty Aluminum Countertop Meat Mincer for Home Kitchen, Perfect for Grinding Beef, Pork, Chicken & Sausage Making | Great for Home Chefs, Butchers & BBQ Enthusiasts

Let me start this review with an engineers rant about about choice of material vs design. People in the market for a grinder worry far too much about metal vs plastic gears. First of, neither all plastics nor metals are created equal. For example, in many applications quality nylon, poly carbonate or whatever is vastly supperior to mystery chinese cast metal. Secondly, as long as design and dimensioning is appropriate for the material choice, even a weak material will work for the intended purpose.I've had my grinder for several years now. Its processed well over 20 big game animals, much of it poorly trimmed sinewy meat and well over freezing temperature (worst case scenario for a grinder). The output is perfect and the rest of our processing line is nowhere near able to keep up with it.Looking at this device its quite clear it was produced by a designer that makes professional meat grinders for a living who was tasked to make a more affordable unit that would only produce maybe a thousand pounds of meat a season rather than a thousand pounds of meat a day at a professional locker. It uses nylon gears, cheap aluminum cast for the housing and screw and only quality stainless where it really matters: the knife and the plate. The motor is an ancient twentieth century brushed design that stinks of ozone when fired up. Everything is ridiculously overbuilt and there is no way anything will strip on a properly manufactured and assembled device. It is big and clunky, super noisy, and the parts, while super easy to clean manually, are not dish washer safe, but for seasonal use i feel the savings are totally worth it over a pro-grade device.On a final note, the most common problem with any grinder is clogging due to sinew build-up around the knife. This can happen due to poor knife/plate alignment or because they've become dull, but will quickly be an issue even on a quality device with sharp edges if not assembled right. A grinder cuts by shearing the material between the knife edge and the holes in the plate, similar to a scissor, and just a like a scissor the fit between mating surfaces needs to be tight. As such, when tightening down the aluminum head, don't be shy. There is a happy medium, but better a little on the tight side - practice makes perfect :)