Is my blender broken?

June 8, 2010 9:05 PM

My blender has a bit of black dust at the bottom after I use it, presumably from the black rubber connectors under the container and on top of the motor. It still works, but is this normal? Will the black stuff get sucked up into the food stuff I'm blending?
posted by jyorraku to food & drink (6 answers total)

> Will the black stuff get sucked up into the food stuff I'm blending?

Probably not. Are any of the contents of your blends leaking through the gasket on the bottom of the container? If not, then most likely nothing is going up the other way.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:21 PM on June 8, 2010

My blender, RIP, had similar weird black dust under it after being used. It wasn't long after the black dust began that it started making a burning smell and kind of a grinding sound. Those were dark days of daily smoothie making where I knew our days together were numbered.

The dust didn't seem to be coming from the rubber wearing off in my case. It seemed to be coming out of the blender's motor innards. Is it a really weird stuff that is quite hard to wipe off the counter?
posted by fieldtrip at 9:27 PM on June 8, 2010

Fill the blender with water and run it. Is your counter wet? If it's not leaking out, it's probably not leaking in. I am not your, uh, handyman.
posted by GilloD at 10:12 PM on June 8, 2010

Look at the bottom of your blender- there will be a black plastic part that fits into the mechanism on top of the motor. The black coating you are seeing is the powdered plastic that is sheared off because the bottom of the blender is not mating completely with the motor. No, it's not getting in your food, but it is slowly destroying the blender. Make sure that your pitcher and its blade mechanism is securely mating with the motor, otherwise, you will begin to lose efficiency and eventually, it will fail completely.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 10:43 PM on June 8, 2010 [1 favorite]

The Light Fantastic has it right. There's a (in my case rubber) coupling that has teeth, which turn the blade assembly. If you've got dust, it means the rubber is old, getting brittle, and you'll probaly start loosing teeth soon. It'll keep working until you loose a significant number of teeth.

Don't worry, you can likely replace the coupling if it was a nice, name brand blender. Replacements for my KitchenAid blender were $3 (though there was about 45 minutes of cursing and yelling at the stupid old one)
posted by fontophilic at 7:50 AM on June 9, 2010

Thank you all, now I know what's up with the black dust. It's not super hard to wipe off, so I think it's the rubber.

So I ran it with water, and on observation, it is leaking out. What are the odds the leak is one way only?

I guess I'm on the hunt for a new blender.
posted by jyorraku at 7:47 PM on June 9, 2010