I swear there's a patent incentive company that's selling into these programs. everybody was doing patent cubes for a while. I've got a patent light (from Facebook), which I'm guessing must have been a thing too.

About the only thing my patent was useful for was when a PM came around asking about a new vendor with a creative way of doing something, I could defer with "I have a patent on that, it didn't really work when we tried it"

I've always understood the plastic gears as a sacrificial, replaceable part designed to prevent damage to other components. (But I've got one of the old Hobart models that is pretty easy to service. Never worked on a newer model.)