This machine is capable of stirring, mixing, kneading, crushing, weighing, heating, cooking, and steaming.

However, what we're interested in is its inner life, which is why we make our own soup:

As a basis for our teardown we take...

... a Thermomix TM5 and separate the mixing bowl (including the cover) from the device.

Then we detach the recipe chip from the base unit.

Next we peel off the cover on the back with our Jimmy.

Then we remove the two screws and pull the handle out upwards.

Now we remove the program selector and motor shaft ring using the opening tool.

Once the program selector is removed, we remove the white holder so that the selector slides towards inside. In order to do that we turn it as indicated while we push backwards the clips highlighted in blue.

Now we first remove the three screws on the bottom side.

Then the six housing screws.

At last we remove the screw on the back side and then we can carefully open the housing with the opening tool.

Disconnecting the display cable is straightforward. It does not have a stopper.

Contrarily, on the main plate, a small clip must be pushed backwards while the connector is removed.

The motor ties the handholds to the front side via a mechanical hinge construction.

Several sensors register whether the cover is on the mixing bowl and whether the arms are completely closed.

Each time the mixing bowl cover is locked, a whole choreography of mechanics is triggered:

The first sensor (component of the 5-pin plug near the crankshaft) determines whether the mixing bowl is inserted at all.

Then the motor mechanically turns both arms and locks the mixing bowl cover.

Three more sensors check whether the cover is fixed and the handles are completely closed.

The next item on the menu is the control panel, which is used for most inputs.

The 4.3" (640×480 pixels) LCD TFT touch panel is inserted by simple plastic clips that can easily be detached by hand.

The board is served with two Torx screws on a ribbon cable connector. Here's what we find on it:

NXP MCIMX283DVM4B MPU 32-bit chip with ARM926EJ-S

NANYA NT5TU64M16HG DDR2 RAM with 128MB

MXIC MX30LF1G08AA-TI 128MB NAND flash memory

To get to the Thermomix fillet piece, we remove the selector knob encoder, the motor cover, and the 5-pin connector.

And out comes the juicy 500 Watt reluctance motor. It stirs at 40-500 rpm and mixes up to 10,700 rpm in turbo mode.

The accompaniment board features an NXP HEF4093B quad NAND gate with two inputs as Schmitt trigger for the engine control.

The Thermomix is fed with knowledge via the lateral interface with so-called recipe chips.

The interface with the 4 pins strongly smells of a standard USB connection. This connection is also used to make the Thermomix WLAN-enabled via Cook-Key®.

Four LEDs take over the lighting at the front. They sit in pairs on an exchangeable mini circuit board.

On the way to the core of the Thermomix, we pass a suspicious, almost empty cable box. That surely has something to do with some kind of DIN standard.

But we won’t let ourselves get distracted by such deco fruits. We take out the brain, which seems to only be of interest on one side— the backside just features a conductor salad:

ATMEL ATxmega16D4 microcontroller

STMicroelectronics STM32F100 with an ARM® Cortex®-M3 core

MIP2K5 High-Performance IPD (Integrated Passive Device)

To get the remaining cable giblets out, we once again take advantage of the flexible shaft extension for our precision bit holder.

We bravely grip everything and get it all out at once:

5-pin connector for the mixing bowl

LED light elements

5W speaker

3 rubber feet with load cells for the balance function

The Thermomix is dismantled into its components. We have tasted the TM5, and here's our conclusion:

We found no hair in the soup proprietary screws; only Torx screws were used.

The components are all individually exchangeable, even up to the LED boards.

Housing, display, motherboard, and a few smaller parts are mostly attached via easily accessible clip connections.

Some of the cable connections are somewhat tight and therefore difficult to access. This increases the risk of damage to the cables and connectors.