Here's the review:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064OLYO2/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Really disappointed with this purchase. I spent more money than I wanted to, but I thought this was a well built mill, and it is. However, there should be a huge warning label stating that it will not crack corn.
After doing some sheet metal fabrication because they sent me a hopper for the MM3, not the MM2 hopper that I ordered (after waiting for almost a month to get it), I got everything together. I was ready to forgive the error because I modified the hopper to fit in about an hour. First, I maxed out the gap between the rollers, then chucked up the shaft in a heavy duty DeWalt drill, filled up the hopper with dried corn, and turned on the drill, expecting it to start spitting out perfectly cracked corn. All it did for the first few minutes was just spin. I made sure that I was turning it in the right direction, I shook the hopper, I varied the speed of the drill. I just wasn't working.
So I dumped out the corn and added a small handful of kernels to see what was happening. The kernels were just bouncing off the rollers. It seems that the maximum gap is still too small to crack corn. All of a sudden, one kernel caught and the whole bunch were spit through. So I started just grinding one handful at a time.
Several times, the corn caused the rollers to instantaneously stop, but the drill kept going, slapping and twisting my wrist. Very painful. One time the mill/hopper itself nearly did a 360. I could have easily sliced open my arm on the sheet metal hopper when that happened. After coaxing a few handfuls through over a long period of time, and having my wrist twisted again, I gave up.
This machine either needs a disclaimer that it won't crack corn, or they need to offer a different set of eccentric cams that provide a wider gap. There is definitely enough room to off set the bushings more.
Update: I fabricated my own eccentric bushing adjustment knobs, which gives me a gap of a little more than 1/8", and I added a couple of baffles to the throat of the hopper to decrease the amount of corn that can go through at the same time. The mill now devours corn and gives a beautiful crack with little flour. I can still adjust the gap down to crack smaller grains like rye or malted barley.
Midwest Supplies should offer these bushing as an accessory. It would take minimal effort for their supplier to change the bushing placement in the knobs.
Midwest made all their blunders right. They gave me a total of $36 in merchandise coupons, plus they told me to keep both hoppers.
Watch my video of the mill in action.
Update: In addition to being able to crack corn, rye, and malted barley, I successfully made some corn meal. Using deer corn, I started with the widest gap, and kept running the corn through the mill, decreasing the gap each time. The very last run through was with the rollers just barely NOT touching. The result was a corn meal very suitable for making corn bread. I made some using my deceased grandmother's hand written recipe. It was fantastic. I've never been able to duplicate her corn bread using store bought corn meal, but this was as good as she used to make. My grand parents grew their own corn, dried it, and took it to a local mill for grinding. This made all the difference in the world. I'm not sure if this mill will make rye or wheat flour, but it sure makes good corn meal.
Also, one thing I noticed when cracking rye grain is that the grains would get up behind the free-wheeling roller and the hopper, causing it to jam. I took the hopper apart and bent the edge of the hopper mouth to get it closer to the roller. This has prevented the grains from getting up in there most of the time. I still have to loosen the set screws, widen the gap, and rotate the roller by hand to get the grain free, but it's not so often to be a big pain.
