Shake it up, baby!

After a little bit of research and a little bit of a whim, I ordered a Robart Paint Shaker for my separated polishes.  I read a ton of reviews and there was no consensus, other than that the battery operated model did jack squat.  I looked into the OPI version, the one that's made specifically for nail polishes (gel, actually) and wasn't sure I wanted to drop 100$!

I can't say that it works, though... You get what you pay for.  The Robart Paint Shaker sells on Amazon for around 40$.  It's changed price four times in the last 48 hours.

I was very excited when it arrived.  I had visions of mixing all my separated stamping polishes back up, getting glitter crellies properly distributed, you know, doing that a mixer should do.  Mix!

It doesn't mix.  Basically you use a rubber tie to strap your bottle into the machine and press the button to turn it on.  It then agitates the bottle.  The bottle is strapped in on it's side and the process really doesn't DO anything. 

I tried several separated polishes and well as a few crellies and it literally did nothing for them so I created an experiment.

Taking a bottle of plain polish base I added a few drops of colour concentrate to it and loaded it into the machine and let it do it's thing.

There are no instructions in or on the box, but researching online the company says to use it in short bursts, running it for no longer than 60-90 seconds at a time.

I ran it for a 30 second burst.  Nothing.  I ran it for 60 seconds.  It moved the blob of dye, but hadn't 'mixed' anything.  I ran the machine for three 60 second cycles and then three 30 second cycles.

This was the finished effort of about 6 minutes of combined mixing.  I should mention I also picked the machine up at one point to move the bottle into an upright position and that seemed to have helped slightly.  As designed, though, the bottles to be mixed lay on their sides.

I am completely skeptical of any positive review of this machine.  I get much better results shaking bottles by hand than putting them into this mixer.  In my opinion it was a complete waste of money.

Do you have a Robart Mixer?  Does it work for you?