New Old Cuisinart Or How To Make Things Complicated
 

Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me.

I decided to replace my old and feeble Braun food processor, that struggles with grating hard cheese.

The Kitchenaid's looks dont appeal and Robot Coupes are way too expensive, so I chose Cuisinart. Heard that the current Chinese-made Cuisinarts aren't so great, and looked into vintage models. Some think the old French made Cuisinarts of the 1970s (made by Robot Coupe) are the best, others think the Japanese made Cuisinarts of the 1980s are the best. Parts and accessories for the latter are plentiful on eBay and vendors, but for the former not so at all. Researched and learned that in the 1970s Robot Coupe made food processors for a number of companies, so bowls blades etc for that era's Cuisinarts, Magimixs, KitchenAid, and Robot Coupe will interchange. Ok, more availability than it seemed. Also learned the difference in safety systems, feed tube, controls, materials, etc between the French and Japanese made machines. Still can't decide which is better. So I'm buying one of each and will compare them and decide which to keep. The machines are cheap enough but in the end it's still going to cost as much as buying a brand new (Chinese) Cuisinart and will take weeks, not hours, to do. Especially if I end up rewiring an old French one to add ON / PULSE buttons.

Not sure why I make things so complicated.

It is because like a lot of of us Porsche tweeks we are TWISTED indivduals.

Sounds like a cool project.

I've never needed a machine to chop food up for me. I've never had the though "hmmm I really need a food processor right now". Just sorta realized this.

margarita mixer is a different story.

If you are gonna rig it, go wholesale on the rigging. use some sort of power tool motor set up to hold something like a bit adapter to hold the blade shaft of whatever company's blades you like. Think red green meets tim taylor. Probably could make a heck of a margarita maker too...

Shredding 5 lb of potatoes and 2 pounds of onions for roesti is a PITA with a knife. I can use my mandolin, but it produces rather water-logged shreds.

I'm living on soup as part of my weight loss effort, so am currently doing a lot more shredding, dicing, jullienning, brunoise etc than I care to do manually.

buy one of each and run 'em till they break

If they're all they are cracked up to be, they shouldn't really break in reasonable home use. Bowls crack and are replaceable, but so many people choose to get a new machine, not thinking that they are replacing their French or Japanese made workhouse with a Chinese product. The other thing that can happen is burning out the motor with too much dough. I suppose you could then rewind the motors, probably get more torque.

Can anyone tell me how to estimate the effect on torque and rpm from changing the number of windings on an electric motor?