For anyone who may or may not be interested, here's what I've come up with re: juicers. I bought an
Omega 8006 juicer (f/ BB&B w/ a 20% off coupon), which is a horizontal auger style, and it works great for certain things. From what I've researched, it seems Omega makes the best juicers, out-performing competitors such as Breville and Champion by yielding more juice and a better quality juice. In addition, they have by far the longest warranty on the COMPLETE machine (10-15 yrs depending on the model), not just the motor.
Juicers can be broken down into two basic categories - auger style (which has an auger that has concentric spines that get progressively smaller, similar to a meat grinder) and centrifugal style (which spin at high speed and grind produce on a flat plate and force the pulp through a fine mesh screen, separating the pulp from the juice). There are other types and variations on these types, but for most practical purposes, these are the two most common types.
Most produce can be broken down into three categories - soft fruits & veggies, hard fibrous fruits and veggies, and leafy greens. Again, there are variations and other types, but this is a generalization.
Both auger style and centrifugal style juicers do well with fibrous produce. In an auger, the fibrous produce is efficiently crushed and pressed in the auger, and in a centrifugal juicers, things like carrots and hard apples are easily crewed up and spun out.
Auger style juicers (like my Omega 8006) are great for leafy greens and fibrous produce. They SUCK for soft fruits & veggies like pineapple, cucumber, soft pears, plums, citrus, etc. The feed tube on these styles is small, so the produce has to be cut into smaller sizes requiring more prep work. If doing a variety of produce, it should ideally be alternated in the feed tube so that the harder fibrous material is able to push the softer material through the auger without it backing up.
Centrifugal style juicers are great for soft fruits like peaches, plums, pineapple, citrus, etc., do very well with fibrous produce like carrots and celery, but SUCK at leafy greens and do not do well with stalks of leafy greens such as collards and beet greens. Most of these jobs have wide feed tubes, and can take whole apples & pears, 3-5 carrots, etc making prep time and feeding time significantly shorter. No need to alternate produce to keep it from backing up.
Auger style juicers run at a low RPM (80-100) - and are slow to use - and do not create the juice (produce little foam). Centrifugal style juicers run at high RPM (10,000+) and a very fast - especially the wide-mouth feed tube jobs. I've found that all juice will separate if left to sit for even a short amount of time, so my original thought that auger style was better because the juice does not separate was wrong. Centrifugal juicers may aerate the juice more - and produce more foam - but if let to sit the foam will subside.
In the end, there's not one perfect juicer for all applications. I actually now think centrifugal juicers are more practical, since they're faster and do fruits better. Especially in a pro kitchen if you're looking to do large quantity extractions of a single item, a centrifugal is the way to go. I do not think auger style juicer are commercially rated, so they cannot be used for juice bar applications. There are several centrifugal models that are commercially rated, and some specifically designed for such use. I really like the 8006, but someday I'll prolly add an
Omega Mega Mouth to my arsenal.