Curious about how a blender motor works? Perhaps you want to build one for yourself, or maybe you want to use it to make a unique blend but need to understand how it works first. Or perhaps your blender is faulty and you want to get it fixed.
Regardless of your reason for this quest for your knowledge, you will find your answer here. So, how do blender motors work?
Let’s take a deeper look into the inner workings of a blender.
What is a Blender Motor?
This is one of the most basic kinds of motors. It is a small electronic motor that sits in the motor base or blender housing unit in the blender and is cooled by air.
The blender motor spins fast, causing a vertical coupler shaft to spin along with it and rotate the blades of the blender.
Many blender motors are designed to keep the air in circulation within the ventilation ports to keep the motor from overheating. However, not all blender motors work this way. Some blender motors have an extra fan that keeps them- as well as other internal parts of the blender- cool.
It’s important to note that blender motors are not designed for prolonged use. This is because there isn’t enough air to keep it cool; hence, you can only use a blender for about a minute at a single stretch before giving it time to rest.
They are designed to give bursts of speed, but the motor tends to overheat this way; hence it is advisable to take breaks in between blends. If not, depending on the power of the motor, your blender could overheat and get shut down by the thermal cut-out.
How Blender Motors Work
Now let us take a look at the whole design of the blender and see exactly how the blender motor works.
Once you plug your blender’s power cable into an outlet and turn it on, the motor in the blender’s housing unit draws power from the electrical outlet and begins spinning. This spin causes the vertical coupler shaft to spin as well, which ultimately turns the blades of the blender. This is the basic principle behind every electrical motor.
Whenever you increase the speed of your blender, you are controlling the shaft that holds the blade and making it spin faster. If you dissemble your blender and take out the blades, you’ll notice a gear-like object, sitting at the base of the blade assembly. That is the coupler.
When you place your ingredients in the blender jar, the blades work like a vortex and form a whirlpool inside the blender jar.
The whirlpool is not just for show but serves a purpose. The blades spin at high speeds and form the vortex that draws in your ingredients and chops them into bits, and then it pushes them back out and draws them in again to slice them up some more until you get a perfectly smooth blend.
But this only works when there is liquid mixed with the ingredients. You cannot use a blender to blend dry. It would damage your blades and shorten the lifespan of the blender motor. If you want to blend dry, you can use a ribbon blender or dry blenders made for home use.
How Blender Motors Change Blending Speeds
Blenders are designed in different ways. Some come with different speeds while some only have one speed. Some blenders can come with up to eighteen different motor speeds; however, most blenders come at low, medium, and high speeds.
Once you turn on the blender, the speed you put in would determine the amount of electrical current absorbed by the motor which makes it change speeds, moving the coupler shaft which in turn moves the blades.
When you place your blender at the highest speed, then the motor draws out its full power and delivers a burst of speed that would give you great blend results, but can ultimately fry your motor if not done with care.
Some blenders also come with different controls like; grind, blend mix, crush or liquefy.
Blender Motor Maintenance Tips
Here are a few tips and tricks to maintain your blender motor. You want it to last as much as possible, but you also don’t want it to suddenly shut down when in use.
Use more than one blender
If you can, try to get more than one blender. This way, you can shuffle between them whenever you want to make a blend.
Your motors would have more time to rest this way and ultimately last longer, and then you wouldn’t have any problems with your blenders, as opposed to just using one blender every time you want to make a blend.
You can interchange between them once every week especially if you blend mixes quite often.
Make sure it’s always cool
You can make sure your blender is always cool when blending. One way to do this is to place your hand on the side when blending. If the air that comes out of the ventilation ports is hot, then you should consider letting it cool down.
You can do this by taking off the jar and running the motor at high speeds for about thirty seconds to one minute. This should help get all the cool air to circulate inside and cool down the motor. Then you can continue blending your mix.
What you want to avoid is getting the motor to shut down due to overheating. The motor’s thermal cut-out would detect the heat and shut down the motor to protect it from getting damaged.
Shutdown from heat can happen in two different ways. It could be a build-up of heat on the coil of the motors which happens over time. This holds the heat longer and it might take about thirty to forty minutes to cool down before the thermal cut-out will allow the motor to work again.
Thermal cut-outs can also shut down due to heavy loads on the motor. So you might want to consider using liquids to make the blend easy and lessen the strain on the blades and motor.
Some people speed up cooldown time by placing their blenders in a refrigerator. It’s a great idea for fast cooldown time, however, you would be introducing condensation on the electrical components of the blender which could ultimately shorten its lifespan.