Not my gadget...
... but inspired by sandettie light vessel automatic's post about the ice crusher, which reminded me of it.

I was working on some radio equipment in a meat "processing" plant, where basically they make sausages and burgers. Much of the meat for this starts off as quite large bits of beef or pork, which arrives frozen at -24°C. It's allowed to warm up to -18°C (warm is a relative term) slowly, then up to around -10°C before being chucked into the gigantic mincers.

Now these mincers consist of a steel hopper about the size of a JCB front bucket, on a massive steel frame made of scaffolding poles welded together. Inside is a big whirling blade and a sort of auger thing that pushes the meat out through the mincer. It's really important that the meat is thoroughly thawed to -10°C before being chucked in though.

The one I saw in their workshop had been fed some meat at -24°C. The massive three-phase motor about the size of a beer keg had whirled the blade around, got jammed, and then the meat had ripped the side of the hopper open, bending two of the scaff pole legs and tearing the motor off its mountings.

Apparently someone manages to do this about once every two months there.
(gordonjcp, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 0:13, Reply)