The job aid for this dishwasher shows that the chopper is turned by the motor and chops the food particles small enough for most of the food particles to be flushed down the drain when the drain pump turns on. This happens when the check valve opens and the suction sucks everything off the screen.
If the screen is clogged, either the check valve is bad ( rather rare), or the chopper is busted and no longer turns when the main sidewinder pump runs. Soap residue can also clog the screen.
Hope this explains everything.

I'm trying to get the bottom screen off, but there is a screw underneath the square plastic "tube" where the water flows up to the upper rack. Anyone know how to get that plastic tube off so I can get to the screw? The screen won't budge unless the screw is removed.:confused:

Well, I had to completely remove the square tubing for the upper rack to get that one tube off the bottom. I went ahead and removed everything and cleaned it all out. Sure enough, the channels leading to the chopper blade were blocked with food. There are about 5 channels that all converge into one which causes a bottleneck effect. Why they designed it this way, I don't know. The screen for the chopper was completely clean.

We'll see how it goes!

I realize this is an old thread, but it sounds relevant to my KUDS301XWH4 (which has had four repairs in its first 18 months, this will be #5).

How do you get the bottom spinner off to get to the grinder?

Oops, never mind, found that.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ho...pair/Chopper_Replacement
Thank you for posting this solution, which I would not have thought of myself. I will probably be ordering a new chopper from you soon!

Update: the chopper was in good shape but totally covered in food. Apparently, the design doesn't so much chop food as grind it into the mesh so it won't be dislodged. Real nice. Guess I'll order a new chopper just in case... since this seems to be a common repair.

One thing I found hard was getting the chopper back in. The advice of sticking a crescent wrench in worked, but what confused me was that there are two places the screen can go, an inner and outer ring. The inner ring is obvious and I have no idea why it's there because the screen actually goes into the outer ring. In addition, you have to know that the "smaller" part of the circle in the mesh goes into the LOWER part of the ring. Once you get it exactly right, everything else is easy, but re-assembling just that one bit took me 15-20 awkward minutes, about the same as the rest of the job combined.

Hi -

Just wondering if there are any electrical risks if I just start opening the bottom spinner apart - to get to the chopper.

Thanks for all the great advice!
june

Changing to crystals had little effect. I will clean out the chopper filter tomorrow and check the inlet valve; see if that solves my problem. If that doesn't work, I'll call the APP chat people. Thanks to denman for his suggestions.