STX International Megaforce 3000 Series 5-in-1 Electric Meat Grinder | 3000W Max | Air Cooled | 3-Speed | Size #12 | 5 Grinding Plates | Stainless Steel Blades | Sausage Stuffer | Kubbe Maker & More

I received my STX MEGAFORCE 3000W WITH "COWL AIR INDUCTION COOLING SYSTEM" - 3000 WATT" 3.4 HP meat grinder yesterday. It arrived right on time and in perfect condition. I bought this grinder to make my own raw dog food and knew I needed one rugged enough to chew through chicken bones. I considered the STX 1800 WATT" 2.4 HP model since it has such glowing reviews, but this one was only a few dollars more and had more 'ponies under the hood' so I sprung for the newer model. I also liked the idea of the cowl air induction cooling system this model has as I plan on using this machine for many years to come and the cooling system should keep this one running optimally for the long haul. I have to tell you, I am not disappointed! I had it put together and grinding twenty pounds of chicken wings within a matter of minutes after pulling it out of the box. I hand washed all the parts that would touch the food and began grinding. What I noticed right off the bat was that this machine is quiet for such a powerful grinder. I fully expected it to be much, much louder, but was pleasantly surprised. The chicken wings were about half frozen (which is recommended for optimum grinding) and still had the skin on and this machine ground them up easy as pie. Once or twice on a particularly thick bone it hesitated for about a second, then ground it up quickly and thoroughly. It did all twenty pounds without missing a beat - in fact, I had a hard time keeping up with the machine! It was grinding them that fast and easy. So here are my pros: Priced amazingly well for a machine that can do all this one can do The machine is well built and sturdy but not overly heavy or cumbersome It's much quieter than expected It grinds through chicken bones, skin and gristle like a hot knife through butter Not once did it bog down or clog up on me through 20 pounds of large chicken wings Grinds quickly and efficiently Very easy to put together, take apart, and clean up Lots of extra parts for grinding and sausage making And okay, there have to be a few cons, right? But I don't have many and none would stop me from buying this machine again! First, the instructions you get with this machine are terrible. It's one page folded in half (which is okay, BUT . . .) it's written in teeny tiny print that looks like a copy of a copy of a copy - it's that hard to read. (Even with a magnifying glass I couldn't make out some of the instructions.) The saving grace of this 'con' is that this machine is pretty easy to figure out. But still this has been the same 'con' I've seen over and over again on the review page for the 1800 watt version of this machine by the same company and it's time for the problem to be addressed and corrected. My only other con is that none of the parts are dishwasher safe. You MUST hand wash all the parts that touch the food. Now this isn't a huge con for me, I never did mind hand washing and it goes very quickly when you're done grinding, but I do like the sterilizing effect of the dishwasher, so having this as an option would have been fabulous. So to sum up, if you're looking for a powerful, easy-to-use, well-made, excellently priced meat grinder, you can't go wrong with this one. I highly recommend this machine! Update** Okay, I just left this review yesterday, but I had to come back today to add that just a couple of hours ago I put about ten pounds of more than half frozen chicken legs (drumsticks) through the grinder. I have to admit, I wondered before I put them through if I shouldn't let them thaw more, but WOW! No problem at all for this grinder. It ground them up easily and thoroughly. Then I put about five pounds of boneless chicken breasts through that weren't frozen at all, just cold from the fridge. Again, no problem whatsoever even though it is recommended you use partially frozen for best results. This machine didn't care a wit! lol When I was done, I put a few whole carrots through to push out all the meat (plus, since this is for my dog, I like the idea of a little bit of veggies in her meat), and of course the STX ground them up beautifully. If you're looking for a great grinder at a fabulous price, go press "buy now"!

I was going to wait a bit longer to review this grinder, but Amazon emailed me asking for a review. Also, we've used it alot in the short time we've had it, so a review is in order. We got this unit to grind raw chicken necks for dog food, and for elk and venison for us. While the unit seems light weight, it has never had a problem bogging down while in use. The first thing we ground was 40 pounds of close to frozen chicken necks. The motor does slow a bit with a large, fatty, frozen neck being fed by the auger, but never stops. What I found was that even the coarse grind ("wagon wheel") head doesn't easily pass something as fatty and stringy as 'skin on' necks, so I changed to the three opening sausage stuffing head with cutting blade still attached to the auger. It makes a great coarse ground meat, and that's perfect for the dog food. Set up like this, it went throught the 40 pounds easily. The recipe we got for the raw dog food includes veggies and organ meat to round out the diet, so we also fed whole carrots, apples, and elk organ meat through the grinder. It handled it all effortlessly. Then we ground some elk flank (for us) using the wagon wheel head, and it worked fine. We tried the stuffer head to see what the consistancy would be like, and while a bit coarse, was fine enough to use for burgers. We had some beef fat to mix into the elk (elk is very lean, and if used alone will make dry burgers, for those who've never had it), so ground the two together. Those were delicious burgers. I also ground some goat flank when I butchered the buck, and it came out great. The last thing we ground was two 40 pound boxes (80 pounds total) of the necks for the dog food, and the grinder flew through it without problem. What sold me on this unit is the cooling fan. We processed our first elk at a friend's house, with their much larger, expensive, and powerful grinder. That unit got quite warm twice during the day... to the point that we could smell it getting hot, so shut it down to cool. This unit does not get hot, thanks to the fan. Slightly warm air comes out of the rear vent after working under load for extended periods, but never hot. With my experience with the two machines, I'd say that spending the little extra money to get the fan cooled one is worth it (this same unit is available without the cooling fan). We also chose this unit because it uses less wattage than a true 3/4 HP grinder like the one our friend has. We're offgrid, so we carefully choose every electrical appliance we purchase. I have to say that I did have doubts about the power of this thing, but I guess it's geared low enough to work as well as the other more powerful unit we've used (I think that one was from Cabella's). This is a great little machine. If things change, or if it stops working anytime soon, I'll update this review. So far, so good... NO complaints.

I really think this is closer to 5 stars but I've only used it for about 4 hours of grinding so far. I harvested a couple of small deer in Georgia and those critters have a lot of silver skin and connective tissue all over the place. For the first grind pile, I meticulously trimmed away everything I could, leaving virtually nothing but pure venison behind. After a few hours of this, I started the second grind pile by leaving some of the thinner silver skin strips and just trimming away the most egregious bits of "gunk". I wanted to see just how the grinder would handle that. As expected, the first pile - about 30 lbs, went fairly quickly. I ran it through the wagon wheel die first, then ran a few pounds of pork fat through and mixed it all up. Ran it through a second time with the large diameter hole die. Worked perfectly. First run on the low speed setting took about 10 minutes; second run on the low speed setting took a little longer, maybe 15-20 minutes. No clogging, no motor bogging. Worked flawlessly. The second batch with the little bits of imperfections also ran amazingly smooth. Took about the same amount of time, but I did have to disassemble the worm gear after the first run to remove the trapped bits of sinew and silver skin trapped behind the die. Easy to clean and reassemble for the second run. After the second run, the worm gear was still clean so I added some bacon to the mix and ran it a third time through the smallest die. Disassembly and clean up was easy. There are warning everywhere in the paperwork about making sure you clean and then DRY your parts. I got a little lazy on the drying part and there's a little discoloration on the dies after sitting overnight. I'd say after drying the dies, apply a light coat of vegetable oil. I could easily give this 5 stars but who knows?......Might just die next week. For now, it's a solid machine that does the job I bought it to do. Makes amazing, consistent, clean minced meat in a hurry

I generally do not invest the time and energy to write reviews on products that I purchase (this is a flaw that I am genuinely making an effort to change, since I do value the reviews of others when making a purchase); however this grinder mandated a response. As this is my first experience with grinding, I spent a lot of hours researching material, reading reviews, and sifting through questions and answers about all sorts of grinders. My intention for purchasing a grinder was for raw feeding my dogs. Although there were many mixed reviews on this product concerning this grinders ability to grind chicken bones, I took a chance and purchased the Megaforce 3000. Let me just say that I AM ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT ANY HESITATION OR RESERVATION, SATISFIED WITH THIS GRINDER FOR THE PURPOSE OF RAW FEEDING MY DOGS! This grinder chewed through LARGE frozen chicken thighs and legs (INCLUDING THE BONES) without a hiccup. I was amazed with the speed and power of how this grinder handled the job with ease. It is important to know, if you are going to grind bones in the Megaforce 3000, you should use the Sausage Stuffer grinding plate (the three slotted plate). The wagon wheel plate worked as well, but it took more effort from the grinder to get the bones through. The 1/4" plate required the grinder to work extremely hard, and I stopped grinding with this plate after about 3lbs of chicken and returned to the sausage stuffer plate (only because I was afraid of damaging the machine, the grinder would have probably kept going if I had continued). I did not attempt to try the 5/32" plate (perfect meat only, but I don't recommend it for bones). To sum it up, this grinder is a GREAT buy for any of your grinding needs. If it can fit through the feeding neck of the grinding head, this machine will chew it up. Just be mindful that the sausage stuffing plate (or the largest grinding plate) is the best option for grinding if you are raw feeding your animals. The consistency of the ground product with this plate is very coarse; but if you like it more fine, then just run it through a second time with a smaller plate. I believe the Turboforce will work just as good, but the Turboforce is not air cooled and it does not include the sausage stuffer plate with your purchase. I sincerely hope that this review puts to rest any doubts about the Megaforce 3000's ability to grind, not just bones, but anything you can feed it. If you are on the fence about the purchase, take a little advice from the NIKE Corp, "JUST DO IT".

Bought one of these for general kitchen use, just for the occasional grinding job, not having a clue how often I would actually be using this thing. I've easily run 200# of different grades/types of meat through this grinder. As long as I do my part and keep the meat at a partially frozen state it is a work horse and I can't feed the meat in fast enough. I've saved I don't know how much money by grinding my own chuck for meals. This thing is built like a tank, rock solid. I have yet to even have it slow down when grinding through even the smallest of the plates that comes with it. I don't know if the cowl is truly necessary, but, it sure isn't going to hurt the performance, and I'm enough of a nerd and gearhead to get a kick out having a cowl induction meat grinder. It's less noisy than other models I've looked at. Sure it makes noise, but, really not much more than my food slicer. Walk out of the kitchen and it's hardly noticeable. Can't wait for November deer season to do my own sausages and ground meat rather than paying a ton of money to the processor to do it. Also, a note on the seller (The Mercantile Station). I can't say enough good things about these folks. I had a question on a different purchase so I popped off an eMail through Amazon, less than 5 minutes later I was getting a phone call from 'em. Very polite and super helpful, I wish all stores, online and physical, had this level of customer service. If I had it all over to do again, I wouldn't have waited so long to buy one of these. Update (June 27, 2016) Thing is still running like a champ. Have ground easily 1,500 lbs of meat with this grinder over the years, and it hasn't even begun to slow down.

I was looking for about a year for my first meat grinder in order to process my own deer and elk. I didn't want a cheap $50 one and I didn't want to spend hundreds for a commercial quality version that I would only use once a year. After a lot of online review reading, I settled on the "STX-3000-MF Megaforce". OK, so the name just screams "cheap Chinese junk!", but the reviews were good and it had everything I wanted, so what the heck, let's try it. First Impressions- I picked up the shipping package off the porch and thought "seems too light". Unpacked it and thought "not a fan of the polished aluminum parts", "the body of the unit seems pretty light", and "hey, at least the grinder plates, auger, and cutting blades are beefy". Assembly- Piece of cake. If you need to read the instructions or go online to figure out how to put this together, just ship it back and make friends with a butcher. First Use: Grinding- So I cleaned out my freezers and pulled about 21 lbs of deer, antelope, and elk steaks and cubed meat out and set it to partially thaw overnight. I also got 9 lbs of partially frozen pork belly and 3.5 lbs of pork country style rib meat ready. The pork was cubed into ~1-1.5" cubes. The game meat was a little smaller, but reasonably well trimmed of silver skin and tendons. I mixed up all the chunks and started feeding the machine as fast as it could take it, which was faster than I could feed it by myself. First pass was through the wagon wheel, second pass was through the 5/16" (?) plate (not the beaner plate and not the smallest hole plate). Working by myself, I double ground ~35 lbs of meat in less than 30 minutes. This machine never balked or slowed at all. I mixed up 9 lbs with summer sausage season and cure and then ~5 lb batches of Polish + cure, Bratwurst, Sweet Italian, Hot Italian, and Breakfast, adding a little less than a cup of water to each 5 lb batch. I'd probably go to a 1.5 C next time. I then ground the Summer Sausage and Polish through the smallest plate to get a fine consistency and left all of it in the fridge overnight to "marinate"(?) (not really sure of the correct term here). Second Use: Stuffing- Next day, I stuffed some large 3 lb casings with the summer sausage and regular hog casings for the rest. This was a bit tedious working alone. I highly recommend getting a partner to help. Also, the key to stuffing the casings was to push the pre-ground meat through the machine as fast as possible. Even on the slow speed setting with the cutting head removed, the auger would "smush" the ground meat into paste if it got held up. This was fine for the summer and Polish sausage, but I wanted a coarser mix for the rest. Eventually, I got into a rhythm where I would load up the vertical tube with the mix, start the machine and push the feed plunger down as fast as I could, stop the machine, twist the case, reload the vertical tube, repeat. This made ~ 1/4 lb links. Clean up- The polished aluminum parts cleaned up super easy. Spend a little time making sure you get all the crannies inside the grinder head and clean out crevices in the cutting head and all the little holes in the plates carefully. After drying, spray the grinding plates with oil to prevent rust. Leave the cutting head, tube, meat tray, and auger dry. Some reviews complain that you can't put the pieces in the dishwasher. Seriously? How are you so willing to put a fair amount of work into making your own sausage but too lazy to wash half a dozen parts by hand? Overall- I am pretty impressed with the power and utility. Having never made sausage before, there was a bit of a learning curve, but this machine made most of it pretty simple and easy once I got the hang of it. No idea of the long-term reliability, but I'll only be using it once/year. Noise wasn't too bad. Obviously its going to be loud with that much power, but you don't need to yell to talk to your partner while it is running. Not a huge difference in the 2 speeds. I mostly used the slow speed, since I was working alone. Never tried reverse since the machine ground through everything. The only thing that caused it to strain was trying to grind 1" cubes of solidly frozen elk. These were fresh out of the freezer, not partially frozen. It didn't like them, but it did grind them. I won't do that again and wouldn't recommend it. The result was pretty mealy anyway.

I was a vegetarian for 20 years in the past, so never thought I'd need a meat grinder. I got this to grind raw meat for pet food. I just got it a few days ago. Last night, I ran it for almost 4 solid hours, making up two months of food for three pets. Among other ingredients, it ground 20 lb. of chicken breasts, a 10 lb. ham, 10 lb. of chicken wings with the bones, 3 lb. of whole frozen fish with bones and heads, 5 lb. of apples, and 5 lb. of frozen vegetables. I expected it to catch on fire working hour after hour, but there was no problem. The cooling system apparently did the trick. If there's a jam, the reverse button usually fixes it immediately. If not, it's easy to unplug, unscrew the front and remove the bones or whatever that are stuck. I was grinding a lot of bony stuff, and had only 3 jams during 4 hours. I followed the instructions and used the coarsest grind for bony stuff, then reground it using the medium grinder. I can't feel any bone particles in the finished product. Some raw feeders online recommended $700-1000 grinders that were out of my budget. This much cheaper grinder seems to suit my needs fine. It was actually fun to use, and is very safe. All the dangerous parts are on the inside where your hands and fingers can't reach. It's also very easy to take apart and clean, though the parts must be hand-washed and not put in the dishwasher.

What a disappointment. Not only in this product but with Amazon as well. I've been purchasing through Amazon for years now and this experience was a real eye-opener. I should have known better: "STX MEGAFORCE 3000". Really? I mean, the name alone should be your first clue. But with all the RAVE reviews I decided to take a chance. And this is where my disappointment with Amazon materializes. I can no longer trust Amazon reviews. It is so obvious to me that the glowing reviews for this product are somehow padded. How? I have no clue. But my experience with this product in no way reflects that of which the reviews would suggest. It IS possible that I bought a defective machine. But since I didn't get around to using it for the first time until after the 30 day return period, (my bad), my request for a return was denied. I'm not complaining about the return policy. That was mostly my fault. I'm only here to say that this thing did not operate for me the way I expected it to. As soon as it starts to grind, it starts to bog. My one and only sausage made with this machine turned out with a mealy/pasty texture. Inedible really. I've been making sausage with my KitchenAid stand mixer with the grinder attachment for years with no problems. My reason for this purchase was due to my need for increased capacity. Although the KitchenAid works fine for small batches, for anything more than about five pounds at a time it was just becoming a bit of a chore. I was looking to upgrade. But this machine is not it. Not for me anyhow.

This is an excellent meat grinder. Very powerful with lots of accessories. Grinds meat very quickly with little effort. In addition, the manufacturer offers great customer service. Very happy with the product and the manufacturer. Recently I both a second grinder of the same model. The first one I bought 4 years ago and it still works perfectly.

Only used once but it had good power and was easy to use. Cleanup by hand was ok. You cannot put the parts in the dishwasher as the aluminum head would discolor. Overall seems like a decent machine.

Purchased this to process large game meat. Out of the box, quality is 4/5 for sure. "Heavy duty" might be a stretch. Certainly the auger, blades, and head is heavy duty. The tray and feed tube are not as heavy duty as the ad may lead you to believe- but heavy duty enough. The machine out of the box sounds rough and weak. Instructions do state that there is an 8-15 hr break in period. I would recommend during this time it be used for light use only. For the first several hours of processing, the machine was very noisy and bogged easily. I processed a mid sized whitetail buck with it, doing ground meat and sausages. It over heated during the first set of sausages. I do believe that after the "break-in" period it worked way smoother. Eventually I was able to run it smooth with ease. Conclusion- good quality for home use and your seasonal hunting. Run it with light processing before heavy use. Would probably buy again.

Fantastic machine ,arrived on time,washed it all up with soapy hot water dried the parts with scott towel ,put the blades and dies in plastic wrap with a little vegetable oil on them.I used the machine 3 times now still in great shape no tarnishes because of the cleanup each time right after use..Pretty powerful machine, ground 10 lbs pork in no time.I love the large in feed where you feed the meat in. Nice investment.The only thing I'm disappointed with is the warranty .I get it and find out there is no warranty on units sold in Canada.I'm sure there was nothing mentioned on site when I bought it.Or I didn't see it stated..When you buy it on Amazon .ca should have some kind of warranty.I did see a 3 year warranty marked on the site I bought it from..But none the less, looks like I will get years of use out of this machine... .

This is a piece of garbage. Used it for the first time out of the box and after 30 seconds it started to smell like burning and the motor began to make inconsistent noises. It then tripped off. We were grinding semi-frozen pork strips 1”x4” using the wagon wheel plate. After waiting a few minutes we tried again and it tripped within 10 seconds (did this 4x). Waited 30 minutes and took all off the attachments off so that it was only running the motor with no auger, blade, plate, or mouth attached. Burning smell within 30 seconds. Tripped again with no grinding taking place!! This machine motor could not even run on its own with no stress on it. Returned for refund. Will never buy this brand again!!!