Written by: Rick Lobdell
There are a variety of mixing blades out there on the market. Each of them has a different purpose for mixing materials. In this article I will explain a couple of them and show why we suggest one over another.
Let’s start with the size of your blade compared to the size of your bucket. We recommend your blade should be around 1/3rd the size of your bucket. Many times, on jobsites, we have seen a mixing blade that is way too small to mix a large amount of material. We have also seen the reverse where they forgot to bring the small mixers for extra colors or small batches and try to mix with a larger mixer that barely even fits into the bucket.
If you take the above images and look at the size of each of the mixing blades you can see a clear difference in their sizes. From left to right, the first mixer is very small. Using a blade like this in a large container would take a lifetime to try and mix the materials together and would probably result in inconsistent material being applied to your floor. Whereas, in the 2nd image you see a blade that is way too big for the bucket. This is forcing a ton of air into the coating. The 3rd image, is a blade that is the perfect size for the container. This allows adequate time and movement throughout the bucket to ensure the best mix of your material.
Here are some tips for choosing the best mixer. These first images are of a red propeller mixer commonly found. You can see in the right image that the mixer is pushing the product away from it. This makes it harder for the coating to fully mix together.
The mixer above is commonly used for remixing paint. The image on the right shows how well it mixes the material together. It is definitely better than the red propeller mixer, but it can induce air into your coating.
The mixer above is a Jiffy mixer. These are by far the best mixers on the market. The right image shows the material is mixing throughout the container. If you look at the image on the left you can see that the blades are on the bottom, top, and sides. This allows for the mixer to pull the product through it, ensuring a better mix all around.
There are many mixers out there on the market. You can see from all these images why the Jiffy mixer is the recommended choice for our Polyrez High Performance line of coatings.