Did you call, text, whatsapp, instagram, or email? I don’t ignore people with issues on purpose, so I appologize if you feel that way. You can always call in for an immediate response.
DO NOT CART POLYMERIZED MYRCENE!!! Flow issues will be the least of your problems!!!
You’re not stupid but please don’t use those terps. Call me tomorrow and I’ll send you some on the house to replace them!!!
Could you elaborate on polymerized terps?
I read his post wrong. I thought his botanicals were thick and syrupy. You will notice it in terps left uncapped, a pickle juice smell and super thick consistency, almost like distillate. Those terps are not to be used.
In OP’s case, their resin probably has higher levels of cannabanoids and lipids compared to volatiles. Their resin is most likely partially decarbing in hot spots and defeating their check valves. They can beat this by heating their distillate to ~130c in the microwave and resin to 80c in a water bath. They can then homogenize the two together with their desired ratio of terps. The material will be warm enough to IMMEDIATELY run through the farmer without changing their current formula or settings. The carts will be thicc tho
OP could add in 1% CBT or CBC to thin as well
Seems to me it’s @Kronco’s custies that are being shilled here, with those 17% “live resin” carts…
Sounds to me like he’s doing the live resin hte with flavored terps dosing into disty method I mentioned would become pretty popular since consumers struggle, if they aren’t downright incapable, to differentiate the source of their sufficiently pure THC.
@Kronco some of your bubbles could also be from continued decarboxylation, or even terps beginning to phase change in the solution, if you are running at temps above 180°F. I like to fill at about 170°F for very viscous mixes, and as was stated you need to keep all parts of the liquid path hot, including the needle, any lines, and any reservoirs, you may even need to clean everything thoroughly to ensure the flow paths haven’t been even a little restricted. Working fast will help prevent future restrictions, and following a strict cleaning regimen.
A heat gun nearby does wonders. Heat that whole cart farm up here and there.
I started with the cf50, upgraded to the cf1000 and couldn’t be happier.
Let me ask, are you using the mesh filter screen that it comes with? The one that goes in the reservoir (awesome btw).
So one thing I found with the screen is, if you just dump all your oil onto the screen, it has a real hard time filtering through the screen and filling the tube and gun, you will get a massive air bubble stuck in the middle.
Trick is, lean the cf1000 over, pour your concentrate on the warm metal side, slowly, watch it work it’s way through the filter mesh and fill the tube. Continue to fill with the reservoir tilted until you fill oil up to / past the metal screen filter. This will prevent an air bubble getting stuck in your line and under the screen.
If the metal screen filter becomes caked in oil, it may form a bit of a seal and sort of create back pressure. Simply push the screen down to burp trapped air bubbles, or scrape the screen the thin out the oil so air and flow as well as oil.
First few times I used the cf1000 I just dumped a bunch of oil in and had a hard time dealing with air bubbles and proper flow, the screen was the problem, but once you learn to work with the screen, it’s fantastic for helping keep your end product clean
Will say, you also need to wrap the gun, I use the end of the rope silicon to wrap around the inlet port and glass portion of the gun, found the gun itself was staying too cold and the oil would thicken up a lot because of the cold gun.
Wish the thin silicon strip for the tube was another foot longer, that way I could wrap it around the tube tighter and still have some length left for the gun itself
I tried fixing it with the button heat belt to no avail so now I’m moving on to heat socks
I don’t own a CF50 but I have used it and it was good to use. Guy I used it with didn’t have proper temps going so it flowed slower, tried telling him he needs to run it slightly hotter but he was insistent as to not burn any terps.
I have spent a small fortune on custom machines and what is available in the market. Machines that can fill single units to 5 units at once or even 100 cartridges/disposables at once.
This past Monday we had to run a job on a new 2g disposable that wasn’t ideally suited to some of our machines and of the two machines which could run the disposable one of them was acting up.
Decided to fire up two of our cart farmers Monday afternoon. Did 10K disposables in a couple of hours training multiple ladies filling who had briefly used the cart farmer months ago when we first got them.
@qma was nice enough to explain on facetime how these things run. We got a 10-minute crash course on it for our manager last year or early this year I think.
We had two Cart Farmers (cf1000) running with 1 person dedicated to just pouring the oil into the tanks.
These two cart farmers fed into 3 table setup with two ladies on each table placing mouthpieces on the disposables quickly as possible.
1 person was dedicated to simply using a 7-ton press machine to finally press the 50 mouthpieces at once in the original foam tray.
We could hardly keep up with how fast the disposables were being filled. We did on average about 26K-29K disposables a day by Thursday Morning we had completed 97.5K
This was such a smooth operation it is unbelievable.
I have used the cart farmers before. I have done maybe 100K plus disposables before with different employees over the last year but never ran full jobs like these.
The product itself is a beast!! I can’t imagine keeping up with two of these but my manager just asked me to get two more just in case.
I will say this though and it isn’t a complaint I think we are doing something wrong which I need to discuss with @qma we keep damaging the rubber seal/rings inside the barrel every now and then. Luckily I had a couple of repair kits in stock so it wasn’t an issue.
LOL I just feel we are very aggressive with how fast and how hard we press the oil out.
I couldn’t be happier with my purchase. I sell a lot of hardware to a lot of folks who use these and I can understand why. While I have spent an insane amount of money on automated solutions.
If you have personnel who are capable of doing manual work. These damn things put 100K-300K dollar setups to shame in number of output units.
Over the next month, we are going to be completing this entire order (400K units) only using the cart farmers.
The answer to the black washer is this:
That washer is thicker and has a larger outer diameter, allowing for far longer life
How much is that team of people being paid per hour?
10 people - 200-300
That’s a good question. Hourly labor costs will eventually make automation cost effective.
He’s making more carts per hour than say a xylem tech (1100 carts per hour) which is $100k plus, using @Greenleafpro numbers would take 333 hours of filling time (aka someone has to be in the building) to become cost effective. A ten man team with manual cart farmers produces at least 3000 carts per hour, which is almost triple the xylem. Multiplying that 333 hours 2.7x is 908.2 hours to become cost effective for ONE vape cartridge style. If you have someone in the building 24/7 you could become cost effective in 37.8 production days. That’s approximately 7.6 weeks (5 days 24 hour days)
Since your initial investment for that 10 man team is about 1600 in cart farmers, 5000 in cappers and about 1000 in misc equipment (that you’d need for the autofiller) the guys with the farmer can close down shop and pivot to something else if the guys with the xylem take over. And they wouldn’t have had to give a portion of their company to someone else so they can go buck wild buying whatever else they need to pivot.
Of course I am juicing the numbers because a 10 man team can easily sustain 4000 carts an hour if fillers are constantly rotated every batch. If that 10 man team is using dual farmers, (+$10,000) that number increases to 7500-8000 per hour. And every year I’m gonna find new and more elaborate ways to make that number higher
How long are the heat pads you’re sending out with cartfarmers supposed to last?
This thread is answering all the questions a few of my clients have had when I suggest they consider bootstrapping with a CF vs dropping a bunch on a fancy filler.
Thanks everyone for asking the questions and @qma for the levelheaded responses
It depends on how much concentrate you get on them or if you double wrap them. I know some operations with 3 year old heat pads still plugging away, and others whom churn through one every other week.
How about the temp controller themselves? I got one that overshoots then quits, the other works fine… had to switch the belt elements to another PID.