Gallery.

DIY Lab Mixer from Cuisinart Stick/Immersion Blender

Part 1: Removal of control board and replacement of switches and speed pot.

Why move the control board?

Simple -- the switch will not stay in the on position for safety reasons. It is a momentary switch which must be constantly depressed. The options are:

• jam or jump it closed all the time and use a switch directly on the mains to turn it on or off
• solder new switch in place and fit it into the body
• remove board entirely and place it into a new enclosure and replace the switch

I chose the last option.

Removing the board means taking off the top control knob. The requires some leverage and a bit of force. It popped off and the rest of it could be unscrewed.

Next remove the metal cover.

Next remove the bottom guard and mate for the shaft.

This part was extremely tough and ended up damaging the plastic housing.

Oh well. It came off and I was able to remove the board.

Desoldered the board and removed the switch and the control pot (pot is short for potentiometer which is a resistor that changes resistance as it moves along an axis -- a common example of this is a volume control).

Add new switch.

Extend motor wiring and jam it all back in.

With new pot in enclosure.

Part 2: Shaft and impeller replacement

Why change the shaft and the impeller?

Immersion blenders are not ideal for mixing the things I want to mix. They incorporate a lot of air and the blades are sharp and meant for chopping. I want something that can create high shear and homoganize.

For this reason I picked up a mixing / dispersion blade called an 'F style' and/or 'sawtooth' blade. This is the one I got. The shaft on this is 8mm in diammeter.

I measured the motor shaft diammeter which is about 4.8mm and got a 5mm to 8mm rigid shaft coupler.

The plastic piece on the end of the motor shaft can be removed by pulling straight out with a pair of pliers.

The one on mine is a 'D' style with ridges.

In order to keep it from wobbling it is necessary to place the coupler so that the flat part of the D is parallel to the screw which tightens the coupler.

Tightening the coupler required a lot of force on the allen key with a pair of pliers. If this works loose I am going to add some loctite threadlocker to it before tightening it again.

Here is the impeller shaft coupled.

Here is a video of it running on the lab stand.