Luke Highwalker

im sure there are no patents on this thing. if you pay attention this is actually a knock off of the electric trimmers, just designed to be hand powered. so they got the price down from about what... 2500 bucks, to 600 bucks.

im sure the wires are nothing special. and can be easily replaced with guitar or piano wire. the ends may have something attached to make replacement easy. i dont know. but if they are held in place with grips and set screws any random single strand high tensile strength wire would work fine.

it seems pretty obvious not too many people have tried putting an object into production here. its not that patents that cost money... patent search is only about 10 grande.

this item is built out of stamped pieces. requiring molds, punches and dies to be made. there are parts that are obviously machine formed and robotically welded. the production cost per piece would be low, but you have to make enough to offset the cost of tooling and setup. also the factory that makes it, they arent going to stop production of something to make a run of 200 of these things. you are paying the salaries of an entire factory for however long it takes to produce a run of your product. im sure this thing is already made in china. or at least its parts are. where its assembled, i have no idea.

if you want a realistic idea of cost, take your drawings or pictures of the finished product and submit it to mfgquote.com its an outsourcing firm that will get you bids on cost and time to production.

Even if this thing is built in prototype or small run fashion that would escalate the price even more. the more you make the less they cost but the more total investment required. alot of these parts look like they came from something else, which is smart and would help keep production cost down. but, you have to be clever enough to source these manufactures.

i buy from china all the time, and let me tell you. they wont build you shit unless you order enough to fill at least a 42' container. the product i buy costs me about 30 dollars per unit, maybe a bit less. to buy enough units to fill that container would cost me just over a half mil, not to mention freight charge and whatever customs hits me in the head for.

if you produced these on a walmart scale you could surely sell them for under a hundred dollars, and possibly increase tolerances/quality. but as all things chinese... what you spec and what you get are often very different things. and if the first run is crap. well its still yours. there are no refunds on international manufacturing.

just for example. a little tool i use alot is a tungsten sharpener. its just a dremel style rotary tool for power source, with an aluminium head on it that holds the tungsten {1/8th" rod" at a specific angle against a diamond rotary disc. it sharpens the tungsten for welding, much like a pencil sharpener. these little boogers are a million times more common than growers gadgets and they cost about 3-600 a pop. well over a grande for the decent ones. which is annoying because its a 20 dollar power source with a 35 dollar head on top of it. thank you supply and demand

mattdreads

I wwas just looking to make one for my self. old school, bang in out of sheet metal. if I want to make molds, I've got the resources, but I'm not going to dedicate my timet o it that much, I'm going to tr to find a way to find away for other people to makybe make theri oun

damnit I'll stop there....my fingers son't work right right now. hahaha

daaaamn

I do want a trimmer though, and I had in mind a cheap weak ass electric weed wacker, under a screen like that one, but then with little teeth to give grip. the scren itself wil turn, and exact rotation speed you rotate it, but you've plugged in a weed wacker, so you don't need to go fast.

the top I haven't worked out 100% yet, I'll try a few things to see what will let the buds roll over it. but I was thinking maybe those wide metal rollers, like the ones used at costco, you know, the wide metal bars that roll forever if you touch em. well, those out of fiberglass would be light, and with the proper bearings, I think that'd roll the buds relatively un harmed, while only applying a small amout of pressure to roll the buds. you could also make it un limited bud size, the cap don't have to completely close, it'd still turn on and cut.

shit you could turn it on, and set the buds on it and turn the buds like it was a kebab and it cut it. I'll make the screen on slides with a simpl twist clamp for fine adjusting, letting you get it as dangerously close to the bud as you'd like. with the proper attaachment you could make it so it didn't throw too much shit everywhere. but that'll be a bit of trial and error once I get the bowl banged out, the metal around the weed wacker, and the welded to the bowl.

this could be really cool. wonder how it'll work. I the the screen moving with little teeth solves the breaking little neddle problem, but I'm not sure how well it'll work yet of course just an idea.

anyway, that's what I've got so far, or at least. some of it.

-Matt

bobbooty

i was trying to think of how to make this from scratch myself.

heres what i see:

2 large stainless steel bowls, one small one in the center. a salad spinner, with the handle on top. the "cutting wires" look like nothing more then something like rubber "windshield wipers" cut into sections. i believe the cutting "wires" are rubber, because they "sag" in the pic, towards the ground, gravity is causing them to "droop" in the pic. the grate looks like a simple metal oscillating fan grate, welded into place with a metal plate on the back.

i was thinking of putting something together, but its going to take a while to acquire all the pieces.

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Luke Highwalker

i didnt look that close at it before but... the black things that hang from the top in the video are the "fingers" that stir and rotate the buds, these rotate at the same speed as the handle is turned. as the nugs are forcibly rotated around inside the bowl the leaves are forced beneath the metal grate that looks like it came off a bbq grill. the wires or wipers either cut or grab the leaves and tear them off the bud. if you look close theres a spud that sticks out the top of the gearbox and attaches to the handle. this is what powers the cutters and gives them the 30:1 driven ratio.

this thing actually operates alot like a weedwacker. it appears to only have one "blade" or wire under the grate that does the cutting.

after closer inspections, it seems these are merely stainless steel kitchen bowls, in 2 size. top and bottom are identical, the "nose cone" over the gear box just looks like a smaller bowl. if these are infact custom made pieces you can spin bowls on a lathe pretty easily and it can be done by hand. the gear box is a simple planetery gear box. the mesh looks jacked up, but its really not. if you look at the bottom gear the mesh is perfect, but do to to depth of the "spur" and angle of the camera it looks like the other 2 planetary gears are not meshed well. but if you get real stoned and look extra hard, and slightly sideways you will see its just your eyes fucking with you. it seems the only part that really needed to be designed and produced is the middle section with the gear box, cutters and the rubber ring that joins the bowls. its very possible, even likely that most if not all these pieces already existed. and are just put together in a non standard fashion.

if you could keep the lists of parts that had to be made or fabricated down to things that are molded or cut on a CNC machine this would allow much smaller production runs, and are much less expensive processes to tool up for.

if you wanted to make one of these yourself, heres how i would do it. take a electric weed wacker, or any small high rpm electric motor. a motor with gear box off a model airplane would probably have more than enough power to handle this job. but you could use a slightly larger high rpm ac motor if your heart desires. take a bbq grate, mount a bearing in the middle of the bbq grate. this bearing would be the same id as the od of the motor shaft. drill a small hole in the motor shaft all the way through, drill another hole 90 degrees from the first but only half way through. tap that hole, this will be for the set screw that locks down the cutting blade, which would be piano wire, trimmer string whatever you want. they have diamond trimmer line that cuts a little better than the round stuff.

there it is mount all the crap into a bowl or whatever. probably just make it sit on top of a 5gallon bucket.

operation. well basically you fire the thing up grab the nug and manually push it forward so the leaves hit the grate and get pushed through it. the swinging line/blade whatever will snip off the leaves.

this is how the big electric pro models operate. except theres has a fan blade to cause a downward draft to aid pulling the leaves through the grate. you could easily put a screen or two a few inches apart to sift/sort your material leaving most the leaves up top and whatever kiff flys off down low. but these trimmers are designed to work with fresh harvested nugs. so i dont think much kiff will come off since everything is still so green and sticky {moist}

the pro models use what looks an awful lot like a radiator cooling fan blade off an automobile, or the fan blade that is on top of a home a/c unit.

heres a little video that kinda gives you an idea of the direction i was headed..
YouTube - Video Trimbox

Luke Highwalker

heres a couple more vids of the handytrimmer i found. they however are calling it the pro-cut magic trimmer.

YouTube - Pro-Cut Magic Trimmer 1

YouTube - Pro-Cut Magic Trimmer 2

YouTube - Pro-Cut Magic Trimmer 3

ive also heard the term spinmaster thrown around talking about these trimmers.

lastly if you want a cheap aardvark style trimmer and dont wanna spend cash. go to walmart buy a flo-bee. its those things that attach to your vacuum and you cut your kids hair with them. just get a clean new bagless vacuum and you are off and running. i bet the built on multi part filtration would seperate your leaves and kiff pretty freaking well. as one stage of the filter is to grab chunks of crap and the other stage catches the dust and particulate from recirculating back into the air.

just found this video that shows the magic trimmer in action, but the top bowl is clear so you can see it all go down.
YouTube - TUMBLE TRIMMER and MAGIC TRIMMER

bobbooty

i like the idea of maybe modding a fan or something, to fit a five gal bucket, man that would rock.

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vernonsupreme

I think you are speaking of the fingers in the top section that turn the buds over not the a cutting wire that is below the grate, right?

I got laid off a month ago and have a crazy surplus of time on my hands, so maybe this is something I could take up.

although I wonder what the marketability would be in the us, if it would even be legal. I know with the right "wording" it would be "legal", but tommy chong spent time in the fed for selling "legal" glass


I think the main selling point to this thing is the fact that its good for small buds, which are the most time consuming. And it doesn't need any power to operate. If I was going to build one I would definately try to keep both of those functions in tact. either that or sell two models or an upgrade for the electric option.

If this thing was 300 bucks I would buy it, and I think alot of other people would also

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Luke Highwalker

yeah same here. seems no ones buying race cars/toys these days. hmm oh well. unfortunately i no longer have my lathe, pretty much down to handtools and a my tig.

if i had the capitol or an investor id easily build one of these turds at about 1/4 the cost. that shows you how broke i am!

vernonsupreme

I'll build it for 1/8 the cost, that shows how broke I am

If I had access to a waterjet for an afternoon I could have 5 of em built.

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hbob

Sounds like we have the beginnings of a Gardens Cure DIY trimmer challenge!

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