Now you can own your own ‘non working’ orignal Sticky Machine. Only $430 right now on ebay, a fraction of the original $3000 price tag. Unfortunately it sounds like the seller had as many problems with the machine as others I’ve talked to about it.
Having filled quite a few honey sticks by hand, it’s not really surprising there are some problems with it. The viscosity of the honey can vary significantly from jar to jar, at least enough to throw off any sort of timing for filling and sealing. Temperature of the heating elements plays a big part in sealing time. Too cool and it seals slowly, too hot and it may melt though the plastic breaking the seal. It’s really a pretty tricky operation to get right, even by hand. So with apparently little or no feedback in the system I’m not sure how one would get it to consistently work.
Dear Mr.Tim,
the ebay site says the “stick Machine” has been sold.
If not, I would be interested to buy this non-working automated machine, and try make it working at my end.
If You can take trouble of confirming from the seller if another unit is available ? Or yet another member contact who has trouble with the machine ?
I will be interested to take a risk to loose a few bucks, and try making it worthwhile!
Thanking you.
Naseem Dawood.
Naseem Dawood,
Although it has been two years since your post, I feel compelled to reply to save you and/or another person from stress & irritation.
Please save your money for worthwhile causes. We bought this machine many years ago and could not get it to work. Although we were refunded our money (minus 7% stocking fee), it was one of the worst experiences I had in regards to buying something over the internet.
That was probably our honeystick machine that was up on eBay. We have since been asked if we have other machines for sale (we do not), and our opinion on the machine.
We were told that it would need some tweaking after shipping. I’m handy with tools, and I know a number of engineers. We tweaked and tweaked, but what it came down it is that it is simply poorly designed. Then the manufacturer told us that we must be doing it wrong, and wanted us to fly her and her boyfriend down here for a week, rent a car for them, and put them up in a hotel. That’s when things started going sour between us. 1. It should not take a week to tweak anything. 2. I should not have to fly her and her boyfriend. 3. It was sounding more like she was looking for an all-expense-paid vacation to DC.
The straws rarely dropped properly into the chute, when they did, they never seated right for the heat seal, and when I seated them by hand, the heat seal was never consistent, and rarely correct.
Upon further talking with her, she admitted that there were some problems with this, that she had taken to babysitting the machine and performing many of the functions by hand, that she often had to sit by hand to trim the seals, and would run the entire batch of completed honeystraws through the DISHWASHER to rinse the honey residue off them. A far cry from the automatic honeystick machine I had expected.
When I asked to return the machine and a refund on my payment (I had never even run honey through the machine, it worked so poorly), she cut off communication. Hence, I eventually put it up for auction on eBay. I have since been asked for recommendations on her machine, and well, you see what I have to say. Don’t buy it.