90% of my roasting is done on a pair of TurboCrazies. Both of these have been heavily used for over 18 months with only minor tweaks. Last night during a marathon session, both of the StirCrazies died!! Within 20 minutes of each other! Fortunately I had backup, but one batch was at about 360?F when it went out, which is about the worst place for a roast to die (during caramelization, . One was a complete motor failure (on the newest model, but the one that I had used the most/longest). The other was only a drive shaft failure (on the older model) which was due to the half-assed way that I had attached the stir bar with a washer and self-tapping screw (in order to keep most of the shaft plastic, which transfers less heat to the motor itself, and should prevent the failure I saw in the other one).
I had forgotten about just how much I take these things for granted, and how much I have come to expect out of them... Hundreds (thousands?) of consecutive, trouble-free batches had made me complacent...
