Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I'm wondering if my Vitamix is working properly. I used it to grind flax seed the other day in the dry container. It was a mess. I only put around 1 cup of seeds in at a time, but instead of flying up towards the top of the container as seen in the videos that people have put online, mine swirled into a clump that cavitated (is that a verb?) and clogged the process up. I felt like I needed a tamper, even though that container doesn't come with one.

Since the recall, I have to confess that I've been noticing that things are less efficient in terms of my smoothies too. Sometimes clumps are left the size of peas after a smoothie cycle that I do not recall before.

What do you guys think? Should I send it in for repair?

I don't have one but based on what you are saying I would say yes.

I do have one but never tried flaxseed in it. It does, however, sound as though yours needs service.

Yeah, it's working, but just not at the same speed I don't think that it did when it was new. I've watched all of the grinding videos and all of them toss things into the air, whereas mine just clumps around the blade no matter what it is. Plus it didn't sound happy when I was doing hummus the other day.

Shoot...the thought of going without my daily green smoothies sucks. They took their sweet time during the recall to get me a new container, so I suspect that service will be equally slow with the base. I actually blamed the new container for a while, so they sent me a new one, and then I told myself it was because I was using frozen fruit instead of fresh, but I think it's actually the motor that is the issue now that I tried the dry container and it's not doing super well either. I was secretly hoping that the videos online had been edited to make things look better than they really are...

This may sound really obvious, but are you sure the dial is set at 0 speed when you turn the machine on? When the dial is set at any speed at all when I turn on the machine, it never seems to rev up. I've never done flax seed, but I do do wheat, and it doesn't really fly up and I do have to use a tamper, but it does a great job of grinding and doesn't clump. So I'd send it in if you're sure that your turn on procedure is accurate.

Lindsay,

I haven't been paying attention to that, so it probably isn't. I'll have to give that a try. I usually use the presets, so I'll confess to being a bit awkward with stuff that requires the variable speed dial.

The flax ground ok, it was just a process. I ended up carefully using the handle of a wooden spoon as a makeshift tamper. Mine sees daily use for green smoothies so I'd rather not send it in if I don't have to.