Walmart Mainstays Electric Hand Mixer
Fixable but no parts available.

Problem: This modern electric whisker stopped working. I was making icing and used the higher settings on the mixer. Soon after doing this, the whisks stopped spinning and sounded like something was stuck.

Troubleshooting: I opened it up and saw that the PLASTIC gears were worn down. You can see it in the picture below this paragraph. This is why using plastic gears is very stupid, they break or wear down way too easily. Turning the fan portion is supposed to turn the gears. Only one gear would turn. The other gear was very obviouly worn down and wouldn't catch on the middle screw part.

I pulled away the worn plastic pieces of the gear to make the grooves of the gear more defined.

Pulling the plastic with tweezers to make the groove defined once again. Repeated this for every groove. Removed all torn pieces to make the gear back to its original state.

I reassembled the mixer back together. Here is what the inside looks like reassembled.

However, upon starting the mixer, only one gear turned (thus meaning only one mixer utensil turned), and the force at which it turned was way too fast because there was no resistance from the other gear since the other gear wasn't catching. The gear that I cleaned up was too far gone, it's not able to catch because the plastic has been too worn away.

Solution: Replace the gear.

Problem: This gear is not a solo gear. It's an entire gear piece that molds into a holder for the whisk. Finding a part to replace this quasi-gear would be impossible, and even with that, replacing the gear/holder piece itself would be a nightmare due to how it's the same piece molded into a holder for the whisks. As much as I want to fix this, the cost of finding a very specific part for a cheap Walmart mixer is not feasible. I'm sure there's no replacement part for this whisker. I never want to resort to throwing these things away. If only I had the right gear, I obviously could have fixed this. Even if parts were available for this mixer, it would only be a matter of time before the plastic gears wear down again. I wonder how much of the shredded plastic from the gears ended up in my food. Because of this, the gear isn't worth replacing. I don't want a mixer that I have to be extremely careful with, and that's shredding plastic pieces into my pancake mix.

Moral of the story, plastic gears are in modern appliances. After looking more into it, plastic gears are even in high-end Kitchen Aid stand mixers. Yes, they still choose to skimp out for plastic over metal even in appliances worth hundreds of dollars. Luckily my mixer was only $20, but still, this is ridiculous and shows that modern items are not made with repairability/parts in mind. Either buy a vintage appliance with metal gears, or if you really for whatever reason insist on buying a modern appliance, try to replace the plastic gears ASAP with metal gears (if that's even possible with your appliance).

This was not a failure out of stupidity. This was a failure due to the lack of the manufacturer's thought put into fixability/ability of parts for modern appliances. This is why I do not like modern appliances and heavily prefer vintage electronics. In the future I will buy a vintage mixer that is repairable and should last me decades compared to this modern mixer that lasted me only 2 years.

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