It finally met its demise when I tried to send TWO of those thinnish credit card receipts through the machine--the slips got stuck, jammed the gears, and permanently disabled the machine

The gears broke on the previous version after several years of infrequent use

It also seems like the gears are about to crush each other vs the paper it is supposed to be cutting.

Most likely cheap nylon gears

Now I have to buy a whole new shredder because of a poorly engineered design and a freaking 20 cent teflon gear that shouldnt have been in there in the first place.

It didn't work again in the morning--it was getting power but the gears were jammed.

Taking it apart led me to a basic design flaw: the gear on the motor shaft is metal but the gear on the shredder side is plastic

The motor had burned up the gears, i.e., melted them

Worked great for a year then stripped out the gears

I forgot to pay attention to look at how long I should use before break... so after ~ 15 minutes of continuous shredding, my shredder went straight to the e-waste stack right after

I noticed it stop taking the paper as fast as it once did, so I took it apart.

Works as I expected.

My replacement showed up a week later and it's died as