How does this orange juicer work? You'd think it's just a simple motor and a switch, and you'd be right, but the design of that motor and switch is what allowed Braun to sell millions of the MPZ-6 at a low cost since 1992. You can still buy it brand new today under a new name (Citrusquick 1 CJ 3000), with the exact same internals. While a few minor revisions have been made to the graphics printed on the outside, this design is truly timeless, which I love.
My grandmother has been rocking this juicer since the 90s, and the main star in the video here is older than me! I'm the handyman around her house and the biggest tip I can give to any grandchildren in the same position is: even if you deem the newer solution to be better than the old solution, that's not the point. It needs to work the same, or similarly enough so they don't have to learn an entirely new way of doing things all at once. Be iterative. She's still going with the last iPhone SE that had an actual home button, and I dread the day it needs replacing.
So I'm always looking for simple, timeless solutions to age-old problems. The Braun MPZ-6 is probably not the value or best designed orange juicer on the market, but I wouldn't know that because when her most recent one broke, I just went and bought the exact same one. I was prepared the scour eBay or Marktplaats but to my surprise I found the exact same model, in box, brand new from the manufacturer just being sold on Bol.com. So the decision was easy.
So I did a bit of scouring the internet for facts. Braun says that they reinvented the classic design in 2014, but looking through closer, it seems that their "reinvention" was just to hand over the designs and molds to a Chinese manufacturer. Innovation at it's finest. They did do some slight modification to the mechanism that allows you to choose how much pulp you get in your juice, by putting numbers on the side of it instead of the symbols before. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
This left me with two old juicers from over the years in need of a new home. I had taken the broken one previously and came up with a free fix of my own, soldering the internal switch shut and adding a new power switch to the cable. But the oldest one still worked perfectly fine, it's just that the plastic had degraded from years of daily use with acidic oranges.
Because they were both exactly the same model, the fix was simple. I just swapped the motor from the old unit into the new one, and put it back together. Now I have one perfectly functional unit for myself, all for free!
And my grandmother still makes orange juice for herself with the brand new juicer every morning. We all have our habits, and it's a healthy one.