here is a handy little review for someone interested in picking up a grinder.
Background:
I had currently been using a "sweetleaf" herb grinder since about 2002.
Nothing is wrong with it, none of the "nails" fell out, it wasn't that hard to clean... but the action was never that smooth, and it had no kief collection. Now when I say no kief collection, I mean no separate kief collection - a lot of kief was generated from grinding, but it invariably found its way back onto new bud as it got ground up. The cycle would continue until the rim would get so gunked up that I had to clean it. And as for cleaning, it was mostly scraping - you can't soak wood in alcohol. And as the wood was porous, I'm sure I lost some kief to the grinder itself. Anyway, I wanted an upgrade.
Now I had been on the fence about what to get. I knew I didn't want another wood grinder, and I didn't want an acrylic grinder. I wanted a metal one, and I wanted it to be a combination grinder/sifter. There were a handful of $20 grinders with "names" on them: Aerospace, Sharpstone, Chromium Crusher, Titanium Crusher... Then there were some $30 grinders like MixN'Ball. Then there were $50 grinders like Mendo Mulcher, and then there was the $90 Space Case.
I had heard plenty of good things about Space Case, but the price was just too much. I almost got a medium titanium one from Gratefulbuys on ebay for $75 shipped, but the dude Brendon was the biggest idiot I've dealt with and after a month I still hadn't received it. I asked for a refund. I had a friend who had a mendo, and although it has lots of teeth, I have heard from some people that lots of teeth just mean you need to break the bud up more before you can put it in. I looked at the MixNBall, but the only real thing I saw that I liked on it was the "organic" coating to prevent scratching. So I found myself back down in the $20-something grinders.
I thought about the chromium crusher, for about $17 on ebay, but I wasn't sure if it was steel-zinc with a coating, or chromium with a coating, or aluminum with a coating, so I scratched it off. I thought about sharpstone, but I remember a vague story of someone who said the teeth broke off in their sharpstone; I don't know if its true, but I nixed that one as well. I considered the Titanium crusher, but I wasn't sure if this was a knock off of the Chromium crusher, and I thought a knock-off of a knock-off might be a gamble. So I settled on GotVape's Aerospace in 63mm (medium).
Pictures
$24 - 15% FC discount brought it to $21 shipped. It arrived in a small box, wrapped in cellophane; no fancy little cloth baggy, but that's ok. It was coated in some sort of black paint. I dont think it is anodized, but it may be powdercoated. The top edge had a hatching on it similar to the stippling on Space Case. At this point (besides the name) I realized how much of a copy this is to Space Case. However, unlike Space Case's "purplish" titanium coating (t may be black, but in some photos it looks purple), this was just a black surface coating.
It has a teflon ring around the top grinder section so you don't have any metal-on-metal scraping, prolonging the service of your unit. There is a nice strong magnet in either side of the top section holding the lid on very securely. The inside had the same number of teeth as the Space case, even the same layout it seemed. The only difference I might note is that from pictures it looks like the teeth in the space case are rotated in a staggered arrangement: the evens number teeth around the circle are tilted clockwise aiming a little inward, and the odd number teeth are tilted counter clockwise aiming a little outward. I could be mistaken though, but the Aerospace has all the teeth aligned directly on the circular path they follow. The center hub and inner walls of the grinder also had the same design as Space Case.
However, one design flaw I noticed was that the outer row of holes was very close to the outer wall.
I'll get back to this in a bit, as the explanation does better with another picture. Two and a half turns of the second part (the bottom of the grinder), and you have it off from the collection area. Here is the underside of the second part, you can see there is a slight dome in the middle which holds the magnet below the surface on the other side.
Now here is what to note - the outer row of holes is very close to the outer wall, and note the threads on the wall. These threads are on the inside of the wall. Now imagine the piece below this, the third piece down. It will have threads on the outside of its wall to join with these threads. This means the wall of the third piece sits inside a bit from those threads in the second section. And therefore, the wall of the third piece kinda runs right into the holes above it. So anything that falls into the outer row of holes is actually sitting partially on the top wall of the third section. Here you can see the top wall of the third section, and how it is thick enough to overlap some of the outer row of holes.
The walls of this collection area are slightly sloped at the top, and vertical near the bottom. I like this design, it makes sure that kief is directed away from the outer edge of the kief collection chamber. Note that this ground-herb collection area is very deep- plenty of room to store a bunch of herb and very nice in regards to the space.
You'll also notice they included a plastic triangle, just like Space Case. If you store this in the collection area above the screen it will help to knock loose more trichromes so your kief collects faster. You can then use it to scrape the kief area on the bottom. Space Case says theirs is 'precision engineered' but this one looks like it was just injection molded. It is indeed flat on all the sides to aid in scraping, but the corners are just a wee too sharp to actually contour to the edge of the kief collection area, which are slightly more rounded.
Here is another shot of the middle chamber.
You can see that a few trichromes are sticking to the wall. I'm not sure how well anodizing or titanium Space cases repel trichromes, so you can make your own assessment, but I think that powder coating gives an even distribution of coating that problably helps in some way over bare aluminum.
Two complete turns and the bottom section (the fourth) is separated from the third. The threads are nice and tight with little play or 'jiggle'. Here is my kief collection from some really dank stuff I just ground. I only ground about .15g, and had the triangle in the middle compartment. Not too bad. I'm happier collecting this stuff than losing it to the wood.
Here is the underside of the third section. What you can see here is that edge of the metal screen is actually fused into some sort of hard plastic ring. (I believe on SC they have it fused to a metal ring.) The ring is tight up against the edge of the wall, and secured above (or below, depending on your orientation) the threads with a small o-ring. When the fourth section is screwed onto the third I see no place for kief to hide in any little cracks or crevices. The screen is very fine. I don't know how to gauge how fine it is, but it doesn't look like it could let very much plant material through. I'm very happy with the hole size in the screen since too big and you get too much plant matter, but too small and you reduce your kief collection. Also I hear that smaller screens tend to get gummed up faster, so we'll see.
Thoughts and impressions.
PROS:
The teeth are very sharp, I have no lack of faith in their ability to shred.
I like the teflon ring.
I like the black coating, I think it helps in some way keep kief from sticking.
I like the large middle storage area.
I like that they included a little triangle scraper
I love the price point. I still have a lot more money for herb. And even if this thing gets lost/stolen/broken I can replace it, and it hasn't broken my wallet.
CONS:
Fit an finish wasn't 100%
- I noticed a small divot on the inside (side, not the edge) of one of the teeth. Not so much to weaken it, but visually it detracts.
- I also noticed a lack of black finish on inside of the top piece. It was a small swipe about 1mm wide by 1cm long on the outer track, like it was worn away by teeth in the bottom half of the grinder - but no paint was missing from the tops of any teeth in the bottom of the grinder, and there was DEFINITELY no contact with teeth now.
- I also notice that the magnet in the bottom of the grinder had a surface imperfection. Nothing more than a visual blemish, no affect on function.
- The triangle scraper had a blemish on one of the edges, where it looks like an attachment tab was broken off.
- The corners of the triangle scraper were not contoured to the rounded corners of the bottom section where kief collects.
Well, some people say you get what you pay for. George Carlin would say, 'No, you get what they give you.' But in this case I feel that for $21 I got a good deal. I think that there are some good things to say about this grinder/sifter, and there are only a few visual blemishes that detract from the quality. But the price for the value is outstanding. It may not be a Mendo or a SC, but it shreds herb just fine. I upgraded my $12 grinder from 9 years ago to a better model, and I'm happy with that.
That concludes my review of the Aerospace grinder.
Pictures of Space Case:
Website with nice zoomable pictues
http://www.vapeworld.com/herb-grind...m/med-titanium-space-case-herb-grinder-sifter
Small
http://www.vapemart.com/Images/Products/Space-Case-Titanium-Grinder-Sifter-Medium.jpg
Large
http://whgoods.com/grinders/spacecase/LRG_TIT_SC_GS_Parts_400.jpg
It lets a lot of herbal matter get down mixed in with the kif, but as I'm not using it in an extraction or anything I don't really care too much. It even seems like it makes it a bit easier to utilize, especially in my PD or SSV. 
