I bought a used Hobart A200 20 quart stand mixer that hesitates or 'gets stuck' when mixing dough or other thick (hard to mix) material. When running without a load, or only a light load it doesn't stick...
First of all, I want to say that it is common for people to overload the A200 mixer when mixing dough. The owner's manual gives an extensive chart for various substances typical of what people may mix. Depending on the consistency of the dough, the maximum batch size varies, but as an example: 9 lbs. max with 40% absorption ratio thin pizza dough, 1st gear only, 5 minutes maximum mix time. I remember this particular batch size/specification because as a technician who works on these mixers frequently, I had a customer attempting to mix 20+ lbs. of that 40% pizza dough for much more than 5 minutes and didn't understand why the mixer would stall and why his mixer was so hot he could nearly cook eggs on it's transmission case. So, a word of caution (9 lbs. at 40% A.R. is approx. 7 lbs. flour, plus the water) about overloading these. If used to mix reasonable batches, they are excellent mixers and will last a lifetime (I regularly service 40-50 year old A200 model mixers that run very well).
If you don't hear any grinding when it's stalled (which would indicated stripped gears, damaged keys, etc. in the transmission) I would say you are overloading it. Many people want to say the motor is weak when the mixer stalls, but unless the motor has been repeatedly and severely overheated to the point of shorting some of the motor's windings, that's not the case. I suggest finding the recommended capacity chart from Hobart and abiding by it and you'll love your new mixer for years.
×