Susan Joy

The bowl hitting the beater or scrapes the bottom of the bowl during mixing is one of the most common and most fixable stand mixer issues. It’s almost always a clearance adjustment

A mixer that shakes, rocking back and forth or visibly moving across the counter during use is almost always a mechanical or positional issue rather than a sign of internal damage.

A mixer losing speed means the beater is turning slower than the dial setting suggests it should even with little or no resistance from what’s in the bowl.

A mixer that feels weaker than it used to, struggling with dough it once handled easily, or mixing more slowly than before; is usually telling you one of two things

A burning smell from your mixer isn’t always a sign of failure. A faint, short-lived odor from a brand-new mixer is common and usually harmless.

Some warmth during heavy use is normal for a stand mixer motor. But a mixer overheating — where the mixer is hot enough to be uncomfortable to touch, smells hot

If your mixer starts fine but shuts off partway through a task, the most likely cause is a built-in safety feature — not a broken mixer. Most stand mixers

A grinding noise from your stand mixer usually means two hard surfaces are making contact that shouldn’t be — most often gears, an attachment, or a bearing. Some causes are harmless and fixable in minutes.

If your stand mixer suddenly won’t respond — no hum, no light, nothing — the instinct is to assume the motor has died. In most cases, that’s not what’s actually wrong.