Speaking of kitchen hardware ...
A while back, we bought a Revel electric spice grinder, a CCM101 exactly like this one except for being a 120V US version instead of 220V. It's all, like, shiny and stuff, and has a honking big powerful motor (280W) for a smallish grinder. We figured it ought to last quite a while.
You can probably imagine, then, we were quite disconcerted when despite following the instructions to use it in brief pulses allowing pauses in between for it to cool, after the second use or so it was shedding debris that appeared to be partly-melted plastic, and smelling of hot plastic. About the fourth or fifth time we used it, it failed. The blade is driven by a shaft with a splined nylon stub on the end which fits into a matching socket attached to the top of the motor shaft. It turned out that the drive stub is attached to the shaft by being molded onto a small square piece of steel, maybe .375" square by perhaps .05" thick, threaded onto the end of the shaft. It appeared this plate had gotten hot enough that it simply melted itself free of the splined stub.
Well, the other day, intending to see whether I could fabricate a new splined drive stub for the drive, I took the blade and bowl assembly completely apart. (The blade is not intended to be removable.) Thus it was that I discovered...
Well, hell, how would YOU mount a high-speed rotating shaft in a molded plastic part? You'd use a bearing, right? Or at least a solid metal bushing? And you'd use thrust washers or something similar to control end float, and probably have some kind of lubrication, right?
Nope.
Revel's magnificent design features the blade shaft, with some kind of hard plastic bearing surface at the bottom of the blade assembly, going directly through the thin molded-plastic bottom of the grind bowl, then a single thin washer that's apparently there to give a solid shoulder to end-stop the drive stub, then the splined drive stub screwed onto the end of the shaft. Axial misalignment and end float are controlled by the simple expedient of the drive stub clamping the bottom of the bowl between itself and the blade assembly tightly enough to eliminate angular and axial play.
So, let's see. We have dry plastic (polystyrene or something similar), clamped tightly between dry plastic (possibly a phenolic resin) and dry plastic (nylon this time), completely unlubricated, and spinning at high speed?
EPIC FAIL.
In about five uses, following their instructions to use it in short bursts with pauses for cooling, this misbegotten contrivance had worn halfway through the bottom of the grind bowl. The half-melted plastic we'd found earlier was where the upper bearing surface of said splined stub was melting from friction where it was running dry pressed tightly against the bottom of the bowl. It was just chance that the drive stub failed altogether before the wretched excuse for a blade mounting wore and melted its way entirely through the bowl. In fact, it's probably only due to the use of mutually incompatible plastics that the thing hadn't friction-welded itself into an immovable piece of kitchen art the very first time we used it. The manual implies it needs to cool between bursts to prevent overheating the motor — not to prevent it from melting its own drivetrain due to frictional heating.
After a thorough examination, I concluded there was no way to fix it without completely re-engineering the bottom of the grind bowl to make it thick enough to support at least a solid or sintered bushing, and fabricating a completely new blade assembly from scratch with a metal drive stub and a shaft long enough to extend through the bushing.
Needless to say, we won't be buying another Revel kitchen grinder. We recommend you don't, either.