Sat Trim machine

Thanks to tloft for suggesting I give more info @ this machine that I spent so much time on, and saved me so much time and money on trimming.

I ordered a sat trim a few years ago when the company first came to the public at Kushcon in Denver, an MMJ tradeshow. At the time I was running several grows in colorado, a few of which were pretty large, we were spending a mint on trimmers; harvests were large, and staggered, so trimming batches sometimes ran into each other... we needed a machine. I already had experience w trim reaper and trim pro, wasnt impressed w either one.
By ordering the sat trim early, i have to admit, i got to see this machine go from good to better to great. Basically acting as a beta tester, i used different machines over time, they would bring one we use it, get info about our use and take it back then bring another when we needed it, slightly tweaked.



Sat trim (Satellite) is a rotary style trimmer, blade beneath a grate, spinning fingers to move buds around, similar to trim reaper and some trim pro models. Sattrim also has a high power fan beneath the blade that creates a vortex action in the bud chamber, making a "popcorn" effect, so that the (foodgrade) fingers brush buds against the grate, not smash, not grind. Height and speed of the blade is adjustable, speed and rotating direction of the fingers is fully adjustable as well. Also the fan speed can be adjusted to fine tune the vortex action, for denser or lighter buds. Also the machine tips up to like 30 degrees or so on its stand, so u can use some gravity to change the rotation of buds and how they fall against the grate.
The top of the bud chamber is fully transparent made of high quality plexi like shit, so u can see exactly how trimmed buds are. There is a side chute w a slide open door on the side of the bud chamber, when u are satisfied, slide up the door and all ur buds are gently pushed into a side chamber by the fingers. nice.

OK, aside from saving time and money like mad, trimming hella buds quick, keeping trimmers on to prep buds (more on that later!) the machine still gets better.

Under the grate, under the blade, under the fan....
lies the magik


Where does the trim go?
into a 3 bag catch system.... basically a trim separator, good enough that i will go as far as calling it a trim extraction machine....

So there is this big fan, blowing all this air, up into the bud chamber, popcorning the buds around, where does the air go? back down thru the mesh bags on the bottom of the machine. this constantly is disturbing, tossing, the trim caught..... like gentle aggitation.
so the first bag is all leaf, green mostly, second bag is all red hairs, lil tiny leafy parts, third bag is the money.... all gold & white keif. and since air is still going thru that third bag, trich parts are going also.... never fear, u dont have to tape a peice of plastic to the floor and scrape it like i did (happily) back in the day. NO, sattrim now has a giant pizza tray like thing held just under the bag to catch most of this.
I have balls of keif from sattrim harvests.

the trim in the first two bags is still plenty ripe for further extractions as well.

OK, final addition, pure luxury... 1/8 inch outlet to plug in a music source and two kicker speakers loud enough to hear over the machine, fully adjustable volume right next to all the other controls.

more info later about operation, cleaning, my fingers are tired from typing

also ill post some vids of it in action...

just realized the catch bags arent in either pic... sorry,

VERY nice write up....been thinking about this if I go big later this year!

Thank you Avin!

Thanks mega yields, i def would suggest the sattrim for LARGE harvests.

look @ the pics, see the two nice workspaces on each side of the "trimming barrel"? work spaces!! music! extracting bags!
i love it

so ill give a lil info @ the workings of the machine, product prep, all that.
[YOUTUBEIF]bZt0nNO6zEI[/YOUTUBEIF]
watch this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZt0nNO6zEI

Here is how I did it:
one person cuts down the plant, cuts into branches and removes only the largest fan leaves w long stems that extend off buds and branches, sometimes 2 people did this job and often they didnt even use scissors, just tore big fans off.

then

a few people cut nugs off branches into bins (shoebox size)

one person runs the machine, dumps a full shoebox into the machine, watches, fine tunes, and runs machine, empties nugs when done, arranges on dry racks.

with a 5 or 6 person trim team we took down 30 dry pounds in an 8 hour work day. on average.
i remember at that time we did a wet weigh of finished trimmed bud, and one day we did nearly 100 wet pounds of product, drying to be just under 40 lbs. trimmed in a single work day by no more than 8 or ten workers.
our trim crews at first didnt like the machine, talked shit about its poor job of trimming, because they got fewer hours and had seen the trim reaper rape our buds a few months prior. eventually they liked the machine because there were enough hours of paid work to live on and had free time because we werent working ten and twelve hour work days to knock harvests out.

if u are really using the machine at this level cleaning every day is necessary, sometimes in the middle of the day even. clean machine runs better, more efficient and gives better trim, but thats just common sense, right?

cleaning is easy heres a vid. about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PySeabAwHhs


cleaning obviously not the most fun part of the job but def the most important. once i went to see a machine, the people didnt like it so i went to troubleshoot with them and maybe buy it back off them.... the machine was working out shitty for them because they were shitty stewards... it was all filthy, i cleaned it up and it worked great, told them to keep it clean or call me and for a hundred bux i would clean it for them. jokers.

more info later... im curious has anyone besides me used one of these?

Sat trim pics

Sat trim pics

Clean grate:


Dirty grate:



I kno this pic is sh*tty but just look and see, buds look well trimmed, because they are:

I don't think too many peeps have a GROW big enough to justify (3) of these babies, or even one, no-one I know of yet....unless my pre-IPO stock comes in then I will know one! LOL

LOVE this thread though, saw one at the local hydro whore shop, they told me quietly they were "renting" it out for larger trim scenes hehe....not that big quit yet.

ya nice write up, always interested in finding out about machines that dont rape product and work well. the speakers are a great idea.

Nice writeup, thanks Avinash! I have two additional questios, How may people do you use on one trimmer for maximum efficiency? And what kind of performance could i expect with a 2 to 3 man crew?

two or three people crews can really kick ass on this machine.

the problem ive encountered is prepping to keep up w machine, almost a 2 or 3 hour headsart, and the machine runs for 30 or 45 mins straight, then we turn it off and play catchup again.

in my experience w LARGE harvests, it takes at least 4 people who kno what they are doing and stay on task prepping, and 1 person manning the machine. so that's 1 or 2 peeps de-leafing and branching each plant up, then 2 or 3 people de budding off stems into shoe boxes... and one person putting shoeboxes thru the machine (fine tunign machine if neeeded) and onto dry racks. if u run like that, maybe just maybe u can keep up w the machine, IF u prep 3 or 4 hours before the machine turns on....

in reality this machine is for big harvests so it takes a big crew, not that 7 to 10 people is really a big trimming crew at all. Honestly, to take down 4 to 8 lights at a time, me and one other buddy would casually knock a harvest out in one to three days tops. thats 2 people, bare minimum.....

the machine performs well no matter how many people work w it, its about the size of ur harvest and how urgently u need it processed, my feeling always has been get it done and setup the next run!
for outdoor crops... just as well take ur time, no rushing next season. also @ outdoors, this machine runs on standard 110 power, regular old ext cord gets it anyplace u need it.

happy to spread info

How much does the machine cost? How long did it take to clean the machine, was it hard to take apart and clean?

Thanks again, Avinash, that sounds awesome! How does it run with different bud sizes ad shapes, anything it cannot process? I guess you have to cut up really large buds, right?

Michaelswines :
im not sure of the cost, check the website or contact the company, im guessing around 8k maybe 12k. Cleaning is easy, dis-assembly is easy. depending on how anal u are and how long its been since last cleaned.... i like to use alot of iso to clean the machine so it takes a lil longer to wait for all the iso to evap completely. cleaning could take as little as 20 mins if u are thrifty w the iso and the machine is cleaned often & regularly.

Tloft13:
diff bud sizes run well, i decided to keep all larger buds separate and run them together, i think that made a diff. kina like everything smaller than ur palm goes together, then the bigger nugs get run together.
some people didnt like that we needed to chop big colas into buds, but i dont mind. but the machine can process big-ish nugs,
i remember growing this purple haze that foxtailled like a mother and we all were amazed to see thebuds come out of the machine w every foxtail in place... i swear it was amazing.

I forgot to tell u about another feature:
if u take the box off the side, where buds shoot out when finished, u can take big buds and roll them across the grate, just like table top method of trim pro.... thats super slow compared to running the machine regular, but its an option!!!!
so if u really wana keep those colas whole, just use table top method.

another cool thing about the satellite is that u can experiment w it.... lots of diff. adjustments, leave the buds in longer to tumble, they never will disintigrate and be ruined, i left buds in for 10x longer than they should have been (like 25 minutes) still looked good.

I'm sure the quality is superior, but 8-12k? Damn.. A trimpro rotor is $1600 and does the same thing and does a fine job. Does the fan/vortex action make that large a difference? The trim sorter sure sounds awesome.


For that kind of dough I'd be getting a twister machine and not have any fingers smearing my trichs. Have you ran and compared this against the twister @ 14k?

one person runs the machine, dumps a full shoebox into the machine, watches, fine tunes, and runs machine, empties nugs when done, arranges on dry racks.

Click to expand...

I wanna be that guy I buck a bit into a bucket.. walk over to the machine and do a few runs.. back to the bucking table


Do you lube your grate/fingers with anything to keep it from getting sticky quick? If not.. how many "batches" do you do before the machine gets iso'd.


..now I gotta go figure out how to mod my rotor into a popcorn tumbling/ trim sorter. How big is the fan..or is it merely the bades creating the air vortex? Doesnt seem like it'd be too difficult to add some popcorn power to my rotor.

8-12k and theres three there, jeeezuz

bong toke:
u have to remember, i got in on the ground floor of this business, at the time when that photo was taken of the 3 machines.... retail price had not yet been set. these three machines pictured probably even had small differences, for beta testing purposes.

just wouldnt want yall thinkn im one of those more money than sense people.... altho the machines are worth the cost imho, they are expensive.
like i said before, these machines are worth if once you hit certain levels of production.... big levels.
i hear of 30 person trim teams working for 5 weeks straight on outdoor and greenhouse harvests.... sat trim would make it a 10 person one machine job for a week.

but yes, 8 to twelve K and there are 3 pictured there... jeez

yea it makes sense too if your croppin out big like you were also to limit the amount of ppl that kno the gro location,not as big of a concern for medi growers but still.

prolly save you money in the longrun by not having to hired so many trimmers too.

I mean near 30k in trimmers,the amount of money in a op like that is mind boggling.

I been hearing Trimmers do bad things to product .. I have not used nor seen byproduct of trimmer ,, buit they claim it turns the product brown and it noticeable. What do u guys think ?

less employees even for medi growers, like me

def does not turn product brown

Thanks Avinash.miles you always hear things , some truth some not lol .. thanks for the answer ! I def will keep it in mind.