Does anyone have experience with feeding machines? I've been thinking to get a machine, to improve my consistency/better my technique, as I sometimes have some spare time, but no one near me/available/want to do drills. And I only live less than 5 minutes down the road from a leisure centre. I've sort of occassionally been keeping my eye on them, the good ones seem to be quite big and bulky, heavy, needing a power source, or expensive (a few £k!) and the little ones just didn't seem to have enough power to reach high to the back to simulate a good lift. I've recently seen there's this one called Pusun PB-Mini, which you can get for about £800 from aliexpress (I've bought cheap things from aliexpress before but is it sensible buying £800 electronics from there?!). I can't see any reviews of it, only seen in a couple of youtube videos and it seems to be the real deal. Relatively small, light, battery powered and enough power to reach high to the back. Any thoughts/suggestions, or experience with other machines? Thanks.
I have worked with both of these options and can fully confirm the things you mention: Club #1 has that super cheap one. Okay to have some beginners practising their overhead technique from half-court. It misses all the bells and whistles that would make it really interesting and usable for some "real" solo practise feeding - like adjustable length and angle, also adjustable interval. Club #2 has one of those few-k€ ones from Siboasi (I think). The performance is great, has loads of power (I think up to 140 km/h shuttle feeding speed), remotely controlled angle/power/interval, huuuuge shuttle storage magazine. The downside: It's super bulky, needs power source - so it always takes about 10-15 minutes to set it up correctly. That Pusun PB-Mini looks very nice and seems to have all the features you'd want but without it being too bulky. I like the integrated tripod stand. If it really does the things that are promised, it's fairly priced at those ~1.1k€ imo. I also have never bought anything that expensive from Aliexpress, so I can fully understand your concerns.
Yeah, I know someone who coaches and he has one of those £5k all bells and whistles machine, that has two separate feeding machines, one from low down, one from above the net. It's amazing and it would be great to use it to train, but it's just not practical (logistically) in the slightest! The leisure centre allows him to store it in their own storage fortunately for him. I might message the sellers and see what their policy is regarding any faults, etc, because if I have to send the whole unit back if it develops a fault, is not going to be cheap! I'm very very tempted though...
I found a UK supplier of them.. Just seeing if they have them in stock/cost. I guess I'll do an informal review of it whenever I get it
I was in exactly the same predicament a few years ago so I built one from scratch. It's portable as in 5KG! (not 12!), runs for 2 hours+ on a lightweight battery, can do as many shuttles as I want and can do what the siboasi does. This demo is set up for 75 shuttles which for me is a sweet spot between portability and convenience. I wouldn't pay £800 for that personally without seeing it in person, it looks a bit limited, the feeding mechanism is a rotator, very basic, - have you noticed they don't have demonstrations of it hitting down also? I'd be a bit wary of that. At £400 I might be tempted but at £800 you're not that far off the cheaper siboasi's which are in a different league. Also stacking that many shuttles is probably going to make the feeder unreliable and The rotator mechanism is very similar one they use in the cheapo feeder that I got for £60 when I first started out. I don't know. It also doesn't seem like it can slow down well enough and speed up again to do decent drops and clears in the same routine. Look at the time between the clear and drop in the demo. They haven't put in a demonstration of 4 corner practice either. Does it even go left/right? It looks like it's using the big can DC motors so not very efficient power wise, but they can be replaced easily. There's a lot that can go wrong with them so unless you know how to repair them yourself I'd be careful buying one. Even something as basic as the wheel foam/rubber wearing down is going to cause you trouble unless you can get spares and replace it yourself. You can use that one to train a few strokes but I think you might find it hard to get a real benefit from it other than that. The real time from hitting a shot and then moving into the net is around a second so the motors need to slow down very quickly from doing the clear to get a decent drop in. That's very hard for a feeding machine to do, and without that you may as well just put the shuttle in one place. If you can afford £800 easily then yeah, but I'm just pointing this out to bind your expectations. Having a feeder is great and it might be worth the risk, but you really need 2 feeders communicating with each other to do decent routines. The problem with feeders also is you have to fill them back up! I'm currently in the process of refining my design so I can get 2 feeders together at around 7kg, although I have a training partner now! and I have no plans to commercialise it. I am highly tempted to do a youtube video though going into the ins and outs of it
Thanks for messaging. You mention a lot to think about. The company messaged back, it's £660 which is good, better than I thought. I'm not sure what you mean by a rotator mechanism, but on one of the videos it shows the (same?) similar mechanism as what I thought is in the more expensive one; it's got two spinning wheels either side so it 'fires' the shuttles out. I've seen on the video the shuttle holder is detachable so no issues there. From watching a couple more videos, it can do both drop shots and lifts in the same sequence, but I think you're right in that I don't think it can move left/right. I will message the seller to confirm this, but also if it can shoot down as that's something I noticed as well, but not necessarily a deal breaker for me personally. The next machine up that they have is £1900 so a good £1300+ more expensive which is unfortunately more than I'm looking to spend at this moment. Whether I wait 6-12 months to purchase that one is another question.. That's awesome you can build your own, and it would be interesting to see the process if you have the time to make a thread on it. I wouldn't have a clue how to start something like that unfortunately, nor really have the time!
I edited my message as I noticed it was detachable The siboasi has a robot gripper to pull the shuttle down, it's more reliable and you can use it to load a lot more shuttles. You'll have to back and forwards after 50 shuttles so this will cost you extra time than if you were doing 100. The problem with stacking 50 shuttles together is they're more likely to stick to each other and end up causing a problem, I just don't like the design. The time between the drops and lifts is the important bit, the demo shows it doing it so slow that it's almost redundant. You will end up training yourself to hold back if you do the routine that slowly. £660 is a lot better than £800 though, it should be ok to do training of strokes but I wouldn't expect to be able to do decent routines.
Also it may affect the timing settings it it's using a rotator. Does it just go faster/slower or can you say set it to precisely 2 seconds between shots, or 2 seconds for the clear then 1 second for the drop? Maybe not dealbreakers for you but thought I'd mention.
Not sure if you can specify faster/slower between shots, I'll ask the supplier, thanks. But on the website it says it can fire up to 1 shuttle per second, I would've thought that would be quick enough? If it doesn't rotate left/right one way to get around doing a diagonal movement is place it in the corner so at least it's something. Doing a more complicated routine isn't actually something I had in mind, so actually it might be perfect for my use at a low ish price point. In any case I've asked the other questions as well so I'll update with what they say. Thanks for the help.
That could mean anything really, the shuttle can be launched after a second, but typically the two motors spinning the wheels won't get up to speed within a second of the previous one being launched so you might end up with it only going half the court. Typically the siboasi's are about 1.4 seconds so I'd be surprised if it beats that given the motors seem to be the same size. But it's more whether you can do realistic routines, for example if you are setting it at 1 second, by the time you've hit the shuttle from moving in after a clear the second clear has launched. 2 seconds and you are fine for getting back to the shuttle but it's too slow when you're coming back into the net. Training routines have variance in the time the shuttle comes back over the net depending on where on the court you've played the stroke that are difficult to replicate using feeders, that's why the expensive ones are expensive because they're set up to cope with that. Ideally you'd want as much flexibility and precision on programming them as possible. If it's just faster or slower times between the shuttle being launched, from experience you'll find it of limited use for routines. You could for example do side to side with a consistent time between launches but front to back you need variance. If the shuttle goes high then you want the next launch to be slower than if its been dropped. But yeah if you're fine with it repeatedly hitting a shuttle into a corner for stroke practice with some form of routine programming it's at a better price point and portability convenience than the other feeders out there for sure.
