Excalibur 9-Tray Food Dehydrator

The reason I bought this was was to make jerky out of deer meat. I decided to buy 5 pounds of ground beef and do a trial run with it. DO NOT USE BEEF in this thing. You will never get all of the grease out of it. I have run the trays AND screens through the dishwasher twice now. They are still slippery with grease. I am now running three at a time through the dish wash, hoping the grease will come off this time and not just wash onto the screens and racks. I have wiped grease out of the inside of the dehydrator several times, using dawn dish liquid. I'm working on it again today, trying to get this grease out. It was about 1/8 of an inch deep in the bottom of it when it was done dehydrating the hamburger. It ran down the front and is even on the bottom of it. I know, what did I expect to happen when dehydrating beef. It was lean beef, but still is real mess. I guess it is not the fault of the dehydrator. I'm mainly warning you about this just to let you know what to expect when doing beef. Think about frying 5 pounds of burger, and then think about all of this grease you'd have in your frying pan. Now, imagine all of this grease inside of this dehydrator, all over the front of the door, under it, and all over the trays and screens. The instructions say just wipe the screens off and not to put them in the dishwasher. If you don't run them through the dishwasher at least 3 times, they will not get degreased. I hope the third time through the dishwasher works this time. I ran the sausage shooter through the dishwasher once and it came out squeekyy clean. It's like these trays and screens and the inside of the dehydrator has a surface that won't let the grease come off. I hope that I don't have this mess when I finally dehydrate some venison. This so frustrating. I gave it three stars because of the level of difficulty in getting this thing clean. It performs it's job just fine. But just try and clean it. You are in for a real job.