Pollinator Vs. FloraWhirl Review

I'll throw this up for anyone who may be looking to buy a tumbler, I first got the pollinator p3000. Very pricey at $2250 cdn + shipping, but it could handle 3 kilos at a time & I had lots to tumble. Worked great for about a week before the block that holds the drum to the motor broke off, I had it welded on again & its lasted since, no biggie. The real problem came a couple months later, now this unit had seen quite a bit of use, at least 500 hours, & the plastic housing the motor was in had been slowly stretching as the drum turned. It finally got to where the motor end of the drum was falling off the bracket with each rotation, so I had to cut a couple steel plates to stiffen up the motor & put in spacers to attach the housing more firmly. I've put up pictures of the stretched plastic, the plates & spacers in case anyone needs a similar fix. It's run smoothly ever since. For the best average of yield & quality in a 15 minute run I generally use 1500 grams per batch in this unit

I just recently got the FloraWhirl 3500, way more reasonable at $1200 cdn + 55 for shipping. It arrived with the block broken off the motor end of the drum, they shipped out a new one & i had it in a week. Meanwhile I had the old one welded on, which broke off again just before the new one arrived, but the replacement has lasted & I have a spare ready in case...
Again the only other problem was a bit too much flex in the motor to drum assembly, the best I could adjust it to the drum would still fall off a couple times a day. This one I just ran a strap around to pull the motor in a little closer to the drum & it seems to work well so far. This machine spins about 4 times faster than the pollinator, I should probably get a smaller transformer & slow it down because I really have to babysit the thing to make sure it doesn't get overdone, although I can load more in it to get a better yield in the same time as the pollinator.

And a quick pic of some dry sift, this was done in the pollinator. The florawhirl is pretty much the same unless I forget to watch it & it gets all contaminated...

Hey FTW, not sure how i missed this one, But nice to see the comparrison.
So bottom line which would you prefer to purchase again? florawhirl or pollinator?
or are they simliar?
let us know


Bubble man

I'm not familiar with tumblers, are the cylinders attached or supported at both ends?

If not, they should be and then you wouldn't see the problems mentioned above by FtW

and those high prices blow me away!....both those units do not sound as if they as strong or reliable as they should be. I'd guess the next models will be improved.

I'd like to see a built in timer, slide out kif tray and other features like variable speed, quick change mesh sizes...perhaps even another tighter mesh screen positioned inbetween the cylinder and the bottom of the plastic box. Depending how fine this mesh is, the tray might need to be agitated, vibrated or tapped.

this is a cool experiment :)

can you change the screen to get diff. grades?

I am not sure if mila has offered that in her pollinator but i know the florwhirl guys were offering that. ONe of my friends was involved with the starting of florwhirl and the first thing i told him to stand apart from the competition was to offer different grade tumbling screens. This to me is the next level of tumbling.


Bubble man

they(pollinator) make various size screens to replace i think green harvest had a 160 135, and an 85, i think. silk screen only cannot be replaced with out damaging screen, but you can buy the screen already mounted on the ends and all you do is swap existing hardware.

Kinda forgot about this thread. Since making it I have killed a couple of motors on the florawhirl (the motors actually work, but the attached gearbox gets all stripped). If it didn't see constant action it would last awhile, but for heavy use I'd have to say the pollinator stands up better. After the modifications I made anyway.
Kif it Kunta, the cylinders are attached at both ends in both machines. The pollinator has a pull out kif catcher as well, & I agree that variable speed would be great.

hmm those tubs of trichs look nice ,ever run a pile of those through the bags?