Freeze Dryer with Commercial Pump

I am a retired manufacturing engineer, and the machine seems to be made of top-quality components. Lots of stainless steel. No plastic tubing or piping. The door to the chamber is over an inch thick. The gasket to seal the door weighs almost 2 pounds. The chamber itself is made of stainless about 2mm thick (I only have inch calipers), not out of round anywhere that I can see, and beautifully welded. The valves and the cabinet are metal, and the wiring is skillfully done. The shelf unit is assembled with bolts, no spotwelds. The trays are fabricated from 1mm thick stainless, welded and ground at the corners and dead flat and uniform. Not stamped from a sheet of thin metal. I was a little concerned about noise from such a machine, but it's not noisy at all.

It came very securely packaged, banded to a wooden pallet. The only assembly required was connecting the wiring to the shelf unit, and it only goes together one way, so you can't get it wrong. And connecting the machine to the vacuum pump, but that was straightforward. It's quite heavy, and it was a 2-man job setting it on its bench.

It was almost plug and play for me to get started. The user interface is simple and informative. When I researched freeze driers, most reviews talked about how great customer service was helping to get a machine running. I have done almost 60 batches in the machine so far and not had a single alarm or malfunction, and haven't needed customer service for the smallest glitch.

It is a very impressive piece of equipment. The build quality is excellent. If you want to buy a freeze drier and plug it in and use it successfully the day it arrives, and use it successfully every day after, this is the machine to order.

I would say that the user manual could benefit from some work. Very tiny print. Such a costly machine could come with better documentation. But it contains the information I needed to operate the equipment.

Unit came scratched front and back, logo was attached crooked. Unit works as expected. A bit disappointed about the larger scratch on the front.

I wrote a big nice review and then it would not submit and then it went away. So I’ll try to do another one but probably will not have everything in it. I do like the machine but I had to get in the right mind frame and that could just be me. I had lots of questions We watched videos on you tube and they helped. I enlarged our book we could not read the tiny print. I think it would be nice if there was some examples of length of time to dry items. I didn’t d order a second set of pans and I am glad. I am able to have one set in machine and second set in freezer waiting for the next run. I am enjoying trying different foods. I like my dryer

Man this machine is "a tank"! There's nothing flimsy about it. There is a bit of a learning curve when your used to a one button push machine but not bad. I could tell right away that this will be a work horse. I bought the standard machine with the Premier pump because I already had an HR dryer so I didn't see the need to go Max. I'm a small candy, fruit, pet treats, and camp food business and it's perfect for me. I only wish the owners manual was a little larger with a few step by step instructions for newbies. But all in all I would definitely buy this again and I wish I knew about Stay Fresh when I bought my first dryer!

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