INTLLAB VM-370 Vortex Mixer Review....

 One of the issues most of us tabletop gamers and painters have is the process of having our beloved and often rare paints separating during periods of non-use, aging, etc. Sometimes the paint separates to the point that all the shaking by your hand and stirring doesn't seem to do the trick.

Plus the fact that mixing paint by hand shaking usually really doesn't do a decent job on pigment allocation and getting things properly mixed.

One such fix for this is a paint mixer.

There are a variety of these on the market, but in this case, I am going to review this little baby I ordered off of Amazon.

I had seen numerous posts from people on various Facebook pages talking about Vortex mixers and during my research, I had narrowed it down to two different models. After more research, I went ahead and dropped 60 bucks on Amazon and within a week had this at my doorstep.

INTLLAB Vortex Mixer VM-370

Before we begin, if you don't know what a vortex mixer is, well...it's a piece of laboratory equipment that is used to properly mix laboratory samples and vials quickly through the use of high speed rotational vibrations.  

So the box arrived:

Easily labelled and no damage....this is good....

Opening the box, we see the item, (note. This is NOT the way it was packed. I took the unit out and looked at it, and then repacked it into the box. The cardboard damage, etc. was from me.

The unit consists of the mixer itself along with a power unit, a small card of instructions, and that's it.

The power unit plus into any outlet, and then into the back of the unit itself. 

The upper housing, (mix area), of the unit is rubber, while the lower half is hard industrial plastic with a nice identifier label on it.

Unit with the power cord. A simple enough setup, even for me...

The base is flat, but there are no real grips to hold the item onto whatever surface you place it upon. An idea I have for the eventual future will be to figure out where it is going to go and drill three small holes into the mounting base and run securing screws into it and the table. This will keep it still and in one place while in use.

Let's try it out!...

There is no "on/off" switch. The unit is activated by placing the item to be mixed down upon the small circles where it will automatically begin a high vibration. 

The first thing you have to remember is that you DO NOT hold the paint container, (pot, jar, eye dropper bottle) in a death grip. You hold it with a slight firmness to keep it in place. I learned that with eye dropper bottles it is best to put them at a 45 degree angle. 

So here we have some pics and video of yours truly testing it out. The video is approx 1 min long as I try different containers, and I run the Vortex to mix the container usually on the bottom and the top.

The first main test was with a pot of GW/Citadel "Nihilakh Oxide". (Please note that during the video the unit stops frequently. This has nothing to do the the VM-370, but has to do with me "learning" how to hold the paint pot on the mixer properly.)...

And awaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy we go!!!

After that was the end results...

Wow! Really well done!

Next up was an eye-dropper of Reaper "Tropical Blue"...

Same procedure, but you can see that the pigment has separated and comes out initially as "clearish"...

Oh dear, this is NOT good.  Note: The white and brown are "before" and "after" shots using Vallejo "Natural Wood" with the VM-370...

Unfortunately the videos I took are way too long for Blogger to handle, so I will post the results pic here.

You can see the results!

And last try, is with an oooooooolllllld container of Reaper Pro-Paint Copper...

Before the mixer.....YIKES! Is this still even any good?

And the "After" the VM-370...And yes, it is STILL good!

A helpful suggestion is to also add 2 3mm or 1 6mm glass agitator bead to each paint pot. Please do not use "stainless steel" as they can rust, (if the coating on it goes away), and FOR GAWDS SAKE, DO NOT use "bb's"...or you WILL get rusty paint.

And finally I was able to actually finally properly mix up this ANCIENT bottle of Armory Tibetian Blue that I bought in the mid 1980's and is still good! (It's the last one of my Armory paints still working)...

An oldie but a goodie...

If anyone is out there that would like to see the actual videos of this things (the ones that are too long to post) and see the full before and after operations, let me know and I can post it on youtube for you.

Final Analysis:

The VM-370 is a sweet little machine. It's learning curve is essentially 10 minutes of learning how to hold the paint pots properly on it to get it going and give it a good mix. After you learn that, it's easy peasey. The only suggest I would have is to mount it somewhere so you don't have to worry about the unit slipping while using.

Thanks for checking this out and as always, comments, and questions are appreciated!

More to come!