For those that have Panda spinners, you all know how awesome they are for what they are. But, they are not designed for our use.
While my pandas are retired as we upgraded for compliance, safety and practicality, it’s hard to deny their ability especially for newbies. Hell we even captured slow motion video to see if they are really spinning at 3200rpm. Result? That and more.
Anyway, get your tools around. An Allen wrench kit, Phillips screwdriver, diagonal cutters, a drill and a beer.
Then, you’ll need to go to the hardware store. Get foil duct tape, the real kind… not the general stuff, but the nice thick stuff that is practically sticky tin foil. And also an ac remote switch. You can go as fancy or basic as you want. We started with the $7 one.
I’m not going to post pictures of removing the lid. It’s pretty straight forward. There’s an allen wrench in the handle. Loosen that, lift up the handle (it may be tough) then remove the 3 screws holding the lid on.
Next step is reinforcing the spout. That freaking thing gets so brittle after exposure to solvents that you don’t even have to bump it. Take your foil tape and cover 100% of the spout, inside and out.
If you have the top removed you can push the basket to the side, allowing you to get inside there a little easier. Careful, the outside of that panda is a cheese grater.
Drum removal (optional). The drum was actually easy to remove once I figured out how. There’s one nut in the center of the basket. Remove that. Now the basket is only held on by that bolt, but it’s wedged on there pretty good. We found that after removing the nut, one person holds the basket, and lifts up the panda an inch or so off of the ground, and another takes a long rod or punch tool and taps the head of the bolt that was holding the basket in. The basket will drop and voila.
Next is going to be the electrical upgrade.
Flip the panda upside down, and use your diagonal cutters to cut the plastic bottom off of the panda. Make sure to cut the zip ties also holding down the main power cable.
About where I put the red dots on the picture is where you want to cut. Don’t wince… your already risking life and limb using these pandas so you might as well use them more comfortably.
With the bottom removed first find the switch, it’s right here:
Take the diag cutters and pop off the head to the switch (or fiddle with it, I don’t care) Spring and cap will go flying.
Push the switch in. There, the panda is now permanently on.
Re-route the break.
At fast as fuck speeds this unit can spin your biomass forever when you turn it off. The brake is nice, but it relies on that stupid handle. I like my manual option.
Cut the brake line at the spring like shown.
Take that spring off, and pull back the brake line until it meets the brake junction. Drill a hole in the panda(1) and feed the brake line out. Now I went ahead and removed the other spring (2) as it was hard to engage the break by hand. Just pull the brake line all the way back, remove the spring, then feed through the hole you drilled.
Metal switch bar removal.
Now that the metal bar is not needed, might as well take it out. First, take out the inside plastic rod.
just lift up on it. Flip the panda upside down and remove the metal bar,
you may need to manipulate it a bit but once it clears the bottom of the panda, go ahead and practice your pull out game.
You’ll see that you are still left with a hole from where the plastic rod held on the rubber stop. Cut off the plastic above the rubber rod. Also note the rubber starting to break down. Something to take note of.
Tape the hole closed with the metal duct tape, and then put the stopper back in the panda. If you are ambitious you could probably make this a drain, but it’s right by the motor and kind of a bitch to work around in. You would have to completely strip down the panda.
Anyway, after all of that, put your basket back in if you need, plug it into your remote switch and enjoy your remote activated panda. When you need to stop the basket from spinning just pull on the brake line.
If you want a better lid, now that you will have a flat surface on top of the panda you can put anything flat on top.
There you have it! With ours setup this way we had 4 pandas plugged in at once and could spin 100 lbs in less than two hours.
