Meat Processing Equipment: 202 Grinder Maintenance

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Plates and Knives
Lubricate your plates and knives with white oil before your turn on your grinder. If you do not do this then you are going to cause friction and heat with your plate and knife and will end up with a mushy product. For a more complete list of tips for plates and knives check out this post on extending the life of your plates and knives Also, you should marry plates and knives, meaning if you have two different plates you should have two different knives and you only use them with each other.

Locking Ring
Do not use a wrench to tighten the locking nut on your grinder head! Some models of grinders come with a wrench that is specifically designed to loosen your grinders locking nut. They are NOT designed to tighten them down, you want to tighten it down with your hands or you are going to create too much pressure between the plate and knives which will lead to a host of problems!

Augers
Check your auger stud and replace if necessary. This the part of the Auger that the plate and knife sit on and they are replaceable in many models. A worn down stud is going to allow everything to start bouncing and will eventually ruin your auger which is a lot more expensive to replace than your stud.

Stuffing With a Grinder
If you are using your grinder to stuff product into a casing make sure you are using a star stuffing adapter! If you do not then your auger is going to ride on the bottom of the throat of your grinder and you will be lucky if you don’t ruin both your auger AND your head.

Run Time
Check your manufacturers operating time instructions and abide by them. Some grinders are not designed to be run for 20 minutes at a time, the motors are just not powerful enough and some of them have plastic gears. If you have to do 4 5 minute stretches that is a lot better then ending up with a blown motor! Grinders like the Weston Pro and Butcher Series.

Cleaning Your Grinder Parts
Also check the manufacturers operating manual for cleaning instructions, not all grinders are made the exact same way so some of them require different parts to be cleaned than others. Some have parts that are dishwasher safe and some don’t, my suggestion is to hand wash everything. We like using Neutra Sol General Cleaner but you can also use Dawn or other dish soaps on most parts, again check your manual.

If you miss something and some meat residue makes it’s way deep into the throat you are going to have a nasty surprise the next time you grind something! After you have cleaned everything I like to spray it with Sanitizing rinse as well. Cleaning it with soap gets the fat, meat and dirt off of it but sanitizing it will make sure anything living on it will be killed.

Getting a grinder head cleaning brush can make cleaning the throat of your grinder a lot easier on you. It can be hard to get anything down the throat the grooves and just running water down there is not going to work!

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