we have the same machine and we have this thing apeks made its basically a pole and on each end has two metal round plates and then a rubber kind of silicone disk in between and it fits the column and it just pushes everything out of the bottom. dont take the cup off yet so it will just fall into the cup. then put the cup in the oven until it melts down and then pour it into a beaker and use a spatula to scrap the sides
That metal / silicone rod is definitely handy to have! If you set the chiller to 105 idle that helps as well post recovery. We rarely need to use the rod anymore…its a pain to clean also!
we use the rod every time unless its already settled in the cup. Then just use the spatula and clean the majority off the disks and we just take them off and soak them in an ethanol bath
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Take the filter screens out of the extractor column. Thess one at the top and bottom. Soak in eto and or replace. Some nasty colors leach out when your clean the filters and im sure nasty colors leach into extract if they’re not clean.
Run a dry run of CO2 through the system at typical extraction conditions, it should carry over all of the extract into the separator
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We clean the machine after every run. We do pack the vessel with 8-10lbs depending on the material. Its decarbed prior to if its thc.
When your machine goes into recovery turn your chiller way up and problem solved. I run an Apeks 20Lx5L
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What is your separator temp?
Extractor temp is what when you operating?
turn your chiller temps up on the last 30 min and during recovery… it will help
Thanks for all the replies. We posted this about a year ago and have pretty much figured out things, but I think it’s a good thread for anyone else that might encounter issues.
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Awesome!
Yep, helping others learn the easier way is really what this place is about.
Any chance you could DM @Raybhayes1 and share your experiences over the last year?
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I would be grateful for any input on what I am doing with this extraction.
Would you mind sharing your extraction settings for your CO2 extraction? I run a 20Lx5L Apeks and I’m not 100% on it at all
Feel free to send me a DM and I can help you out if you have not had your questions answered yet.
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We stopped doing CO2 extraction over a year ago. However, we did about 2 months worth of R&D on the front end testing various settings with small 2 lbs loads and comparing the results. The biomass was from all the same batch so we could eliminate any variance there. I would recommend you do the same and document everything about each run and compare the test results to see what works best for you.
how does one “dm” someone?
Curious why did you all move away from CO2? I have noticed this pattern where some people drop CO2 after a year or so. I personally hate it - good for recovering terpenes but pretty poor for cannabinoids. Ive also noticed that seems like no matter the system there is always residue left behind in those damn separators.
Well there were a couple of reasons really.
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The biggest reason is we moved from being a licensed cannabis business over to hemp. CO2 especially that little machine just doesn’t scale well for hemp.
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With reason #1 in mind the cost of extraction wasn’t competitive with ethanol for hemp. Capital expenditure and time to extract a given quantity are way too high to be competitive for hemp.
We were able to make pretty good product when we were using it but ultimately it was a business decision to switch to hemp. Ironically though, the reasons that we left the licensed cannabis industry (oversupply) are now plaguing the hemp industry too.
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I have these machine.
1 turn the chiller up and let it sit 20
Minutes
2 after taking all big stuff, take apart top of separator and wash down with warm alcohol.
That’s it done in 5 minutes even with 900 gram loads
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