Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have had a KA grinder attachment for many years, but due to a few moves I was left with only one grinding plate, and the housing had begun to crack (where it connects to the mixer) from use, so I thought "why not just buy a new one?" I unpacked the new unit and put the old one up on the shelf (fortunately I didn't toss it), and my first surprise was the new (improved?) design of the pusher. As shown in the picture, the old pusher was a nice, smooth, tubular unit, while the new one was basically a flat piece with a clumsy cutout for your hand, and a round disk at the bottom for pushing the food. I not only found this to be odd-looking and clumsy to use, but the worst part is that the food easily works its way around the small disk and accumulates to the thinner shaft so that after pushing, you lift it to add more food, and some of the clinging bits then fall off and land in various places. I put up with this for maybe 10 minutes, then cleaned it, tossed it in the drawer and grabbed the pusher from my old unit. The second surprise was the redesigned cutting blade, as part of the draw for buying a new unit was to have a nice, new, SHARP blade. As I have tried to show in the photos, the old blade appears to be a part that may have started as cast iron, then machined as needed, whereas the new blade (albeit nice and shiny) appears to be stamped from a piece of metal (assuming steel). I didn't think this would be a problem, but I could not have been more wrong. I have bought boneless lamb legs to make my own ground lamb for years, and have never had a problem till now. I know what I am doing, and I cut the lamb into the usual pieces, roughly 3/4" square. Shortly into the process it not only became difficult to push, but what was coming out was more like mush and could not be easily pulled off the grinding plate. I unscrewed the retainer and found that bits of sinew had wound all around the prongs of the blade, and also around numerous holes in the disk, and it took several minutes to clean before I could resume. Again I stress that I have done this numerous times with the old unit and never had this problem! Unfortunately I had purchased this 5 to 6 weeks before my first use. Had I used it sooner it would have been returned, but now I am stuck with it. Fortunately I kept the old unit, so I have at least salvaged the pusher, the blade, and the cutting disc on the old unit was also different than the two that came with the new one, so I now have three discs to use. But shame on KitchenAid for cutting quality on what WAS an outstanding attachment!