This is interesting actually.
all heavy duty slicers seem to have a design like mine where the ring is attached to the cover so it can easily be removed and cleaned. it's extremely simple and makes perfect sense.
light-duty slicers or cheap ones seem to have a ring that's fixed in another manner and you have to remove the blade to clean. and it's not just the cheap no brand Chinese ones there are good manufacturers that their economy models are the same way and they would know better. (Berkel, Univex)
I'm guessing it has something to do with safety standards for household use vs institutional. Or fear of litigation. Joe Dumbass can't be relied upon to expose his blade while on a machine that can be powered, and needs a blade removal tool to safely remove it, to clean behind it. Volrath has a good video , their blade twist-locks into place and is easily removed using their removal tool. I'm guessing cheap knockoff Chinese manufacturers didn't provide for easy safe blade removal when copying. A removal tool like the
Volrath should be required to come with a slicers that needs it.
This seems to be a conscious design difference. Maybe a tradeoff between risk of injury, and the # of persons who could be sickened by improper cleaning.
It would suck to remove blade with screwdriver and cut resistant gloves each time to clean. But seems that is what a lot of the light slicers require, particularly chinese ones. (Quick google of slicer cleaning gripes). On some the back of the blade is exposed , the ring is very small and maybe that it can be cleaned ok just by wiping around with a sponge that goes into the crevice. Seems to me this is probably an area where the Chinese knock-offs failed to give much consideration.
