I recently had a bad experience receiving another honey extractor, and that experience has prompted me to write this review. From the beginning of receipt the VIVO extractor was head and toes above the previous extractor I received. Not only was the shipping box in good shape, there was actually another box within the outer box providing further protection of the drum and other contents. After opening the second box the first thing I came across was a warning about sharp edges. If you've read many reviews of honey extractors you will find this is a common complaint, but I was pleased to see another warning from the manuf (and the sharp edges were not nearly as bad as they were on the other extractor I had received...I still have two bandages on my fingers from that one). Another pleasant surprise was that not only were all of the needed fasteners/hardware provided, there were actually a couple of extra fasteners/washers (If that's on purpose, I applaud the manuf - if not, hopefully the QC inspector doesn't get dinged too bad for this review). I also liked that this manuf included thumbturn nuts instead of normal nuts to fasten the legs to the drum. This makes it a little easier to assemble and disassemble when needed. The honey gate is not easy to install mostly because the honey gate nut and flange are straight, and the drum is curved, but this is a problem with most 2 and 3 frame extractors. It would be great if the threaded throat on the honey gate could be 1/4" longer, but I doubt the extractor manuf made the honey gate. There were no directions on how to attach the legs to the drum. There are three different length bolts, so you have to figure out which goes where (long on bottom, medium on top, short in middle). The unit even came with concrete anchors to anchor down the extractor legs to a concrete slab if that's your intent, but they are permanent drop-in anchors with the threaded rod sticking up above the top of concrete, so you can't use that space for anything else once you've installed the anchors unless you protect the protruded threaded rods. Once assembled the unit appears to work well. I won't be extracting any honey till June, but I look forward to it.
