I don't know about Cuisinart, but I know the first change to a plastic gear in KitchenAids was intentional to make it more durable.
They added it as a sacrificial part in case you jammed the mechanism. Without it, the motor would burn itself out, or multiple other parts could break; basically the whole machine was junk.
With the sacrificial gear, catastrophic failure could be fixed with a cheap, easily serviceable part.
SirBinks t1_jea5803 wrote
Reply to Robust kitchen stand mixer by Riccma02
I don't know about Cuisinart, but I know the first change to a plastic gear in KitchenAids was intentional to make it more durable.
They added it as a sacrificial part in case you jammed the mechanism. Without it, the motor would burn itself out, or multiple other parts could break; basically the whole machine was junk.
With the sacrificial gear, catastrophic failure could be fixed with a cheap, easily serviceable part.