681
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★☆☆☆☆
Cuisinart CEK-40 Electric Knife -- needs to be modified
I bought this knife and wanted to use it to carve up a roasted pig for a luau party I was having. The knife was a little under powered, it seemed to struggle when cutting larger slices. The pig was quite large (60 lbs) and after about 20 minutes of continuous use the knife became quite warm and stopped working. After a few choice explectives I handed it to my husband. Lucky for me my husband is a mechanical engineer who owns his own business which includes a metal working machine shop. Later that week he took it apart and discovered that there is a very fragile plastic Nylon gear that is part of the main drive. The plastic teeth on the gear were stripped and that is why the knife stopped working. He told me he did a few quick gear calculations (he is a smart fellow) and determined that the plastic nylon gear teeth strength was way underpowered for the design. He was able to make a duplicate gear out of stainless steel in his machine shop and assembled the new metal gear into the knife replacing the junk plastic one. Since that time the knife has worked flawless. I have since carved all sorts of roasts, pork, turkeys and no matter how long or hard the carving is, even if I hit a bone, it never stopped working. The Cuisinart engineers should be embarrased, this is such an easy fix to make (all they need to do is change out the Plastic nylon gear for a metal one, maybe cost them an extra 10 cents?), it is like they never did any research and developement on this product because I know if they tried to cut anything other then bread the dam knife would stop working after about 10 minutes of use. I would say that all the good reviews here are from people slicing bread, if you want to slice meat and use the knife for more then 10 minutes you will need to find an engineer and a machine shop to replace the plastic gear, after that it works great.
August 2006 · Home and Kitchen