BreakingDabs Distillation Tek

Pump best practices / maintenance are both so very critical. Can’t reiterate this enough. This is why I try to steer a lot of first timers away from dry scroll if they can’t afford it. The advantage of maintenance on a rotary vane is actually very advantageous for our process. You can beat the absolute shit out these pumps, whereas a dry pumps can be misused and end up with a costly membrane replacement or rebuild

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Sort of like this but with a condenser off the head?

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Missing a few parts and no gl connections… as well as you need your main body head on there. This won’t remove all of your volatiles completely… I use my main body head because it’s taller.

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But besides all that, yes it does look similar. I’ll pat a picture after I break down my current configuration.

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No GL connections for vacuum you mean? Wouldn’t a glass joint be preferable?

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Yes, no gl for vacuum… ever… in my opinion. Glass to Kf-25 is most preferable imo

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I mitigate the vacuum exhaust a bit using several Kingsford BBQ briquette bags. My flexible exhaust hose routes out my screen door onto my covered porch and into a small hole at the bottom of bag one. Duct tape seals it. Then bag two was set next to it and a hole made at the top opposite the entry hole was opened on each bag and a bit of duct tape made a seal. I repeated this so that the flow has to flow around and swirl inside charcoal bags on its way out to open air. The exhaust blows into the first at the bottom and goes out the top then must go to the bottom of the next to keep going and so forth which forces a very long path as the exhaust goes around the charcoal inside each bag and flows through the length of the bag top to bottom or bottom to top.

It mitigates the noise so it is not noticeable three feet away as well.

I stack a few bags around it and from 2 feet away you would not know it was anything but a stash of BBQ briquettes. It does not stop all the aerosol and stink but it sure helps in my process and is discrete. The aerosol has to travel a fairly long path to go around all those briquettes and it seems to catch a lot. I used the 17.5 pound bags you get a real deal on at Amazon if you buy several at once.

It is amazing how many solutions involve duct tape in my life…:sunglasses:

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Have any tips on getting thermocouples to hold vac? Currently have BVV thermocouple cheapest piece of shit. Print lasted a few runs and now it’s way too big around to hold the temp probe. New o ring and or a new thermocouple is my next move.

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So, a person should change the oil between first pass and second pass?

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I’ve always had the worst luck with thermo adapters. I swear by thermowells now… but you must know your stir bar really well so as not to let it loose it’s path. Otherwise the thermowell can shatter… and I can only imagine the mess and cleanup process for that.

But for thermoadapters I’ve recently came across a solution. Summit has a new adapter. I had minimal luck with the adapter initially but I think there was some design flaws specific to the one I got. A difference of 0.2mm on the glass thickness caused the o ring to slide in. I got a new setup and I’ve yet to try it but but what I know is that the o rings will form a memory and shrink often times. So it’s always important to remove the oring soon after the run is over and set it aside… allow it to reform. Also… if you grab the summit adapter the o ring is huge… but it’ll fit on common adapter. And the o ring should really hold well

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In my opinion… always. I’ve never seen a first pass run pump pull under 10 micron after a single pass… let alone 2-3 micron… most often it’s around 40 micron with warm oil… that will never get you to 3 micron on second pass which is extremely helpful for removing all of the heads fraction tightly

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Don’t use the probe that comes with the mantle, it should have come with a plug that goes into the side so you can use the internal sensor. I use a one necked flask, and control the mantle temp from the outside. Less joints to leak, plus the mantle can never overheat your material. Think of it like this, once the internal probe tells the heater to turn off the temp will continue to rise. This is because it is further from the heat source and inside our favorate isulator glass. When temp is directly taken directly from mantle it’s
Pid controller has instant feedback. Also no probes, no chance of shattering anything. Ramp up the distalation slowly until volitiles are starting to reflux in the head, then run the apparatus by the head thermometer, just like any fractional distalation apperatus.

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If you slow down the pass the first pass you will reach a point near the cannabinoids where the vaccume improves, this is because most of lower boiling point components have left. Near then end of my run I don’t have to adjust the mantle heat to get thc, the vacuum simply improves until the boiling point has reached.usually less than .1 torr. The trick to getting a low vaccume and a good separation is removal of the lower fraction.

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My PID Control works best to hit target temp when I place the thermocouple sensor between the glass boiling vessel and the heating mantle at the midpoint of the boiling puddle sort of on the side. For me PID sensors in any PID application work best when they are closest to the source of power being controlled (the mantle itself). The algorithms used seem to predict things more accurately that way. For a horizontal run I place a thermocouple on the top of the glass at the neck too during the boil that is hooked to my yellow meter. The mantle controls the heat but the one at the neck tells me when cannabinoid will begin showing up in the first bulb. At ¾ of one micron when that top glass temp at the neck reaches about 132C I can see cannabinoid as a thick resinous material accumulating in the flask neck toward the exit into the bulb. At 140C it runs pretty fast and using time lapse on my iPad it looks awesome lolz. Running hotter makes it immediately darker.

Dialing this in is pretty easy when the probe is just outside the glass and between the mantle. I have tried other places but my PID Control has an overtemp feature to prevent mantle damage so the sensor must be in contact with the mantle for this to work.

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Amen on keeping it simple and rugged. I got my Edwards 28 from Craigslist. Three years old BHO purging pump. I drained the oil and I swear a puddle of terps not miscible in the oil ran out first as a seperate layer! The guy told me he had changed the oil once or twice lolz. I did two oil changes and it pulls down to rated blank off vacuum. It was beat up and no maintenance but hums along just fine for me. He delivered it for a $1000. Those are like $5000 new lolz. I use synthetic grade 20 oil. I also make a point to run copious volumes of air through it during and after the runs. I will not run the ballast as the volume and vapor generated is not acceptable where I live. So one second pushes on the vent button from time to time keep the micron reading from stalling. The fresh air through the lines seems to blow out the volitiles and it definitely holds tighter vacuums doing this.

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Check with the manafacture of the pump, but a great way to clean a rotery oil pump is a 50/50 mix of kerosene and pump oil. Run for 30 min with gas ballast open, drain, flush, and fill with new oil. Simple is best, the truest statement I have heard!

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Dam removing the o ring makes sense for sure. And I’ll def get one of those new summit adaptor and see how that goes. Will also be buying a bunch of o rings to have on the side. Thanks for the help. I did not get the o ring to suck in. More the o ring was too wide of a hole.

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Dam ok I’ll have to try that one no probe. I noticed the head temp was not consistent with the BF temp. Does the head temp probe need to be as far down the head as possible of more towards the condesner?

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The head temp probe monitors vapor temp, the BF temp is going to be higher, significantly so if your BF and head isn’t insulated/silvered

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Just use a standard ground glass thermometer in the head, immersion depth should place the bulb of the thermometer at the same level as the takeoff to the condenser. If you use internal temp sensor there is no need for the probe.

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