I’ve seen a few threads looking for presses, specifically that can do 100 carts at a time and not break the bank. I’m not sure I really saw a cheap solution so I figured I’ll just post mine:
Bench top 10 ton hydraulic (manual lever) press: ~$350.00
2 6"x6"x1" steel plates - $100 total
That’s it. My foam trays have the mouthpiece and the base of the cart exposed so it’s a solid touch point on the steel plate. Load up the press with the mouthpieces sitting on the cart tanks, sandwiched between the two steel plates, and voila, just crank down and cap all 100 at once.
I will admit, there are a few other things I would like to do to optimize this. Because it’s not a completely directly even pressure coming down, sometimes the whole thing just twists one way and nothing gets capped. Right now to remedy this I just use my hand to keep everything straight, I will need to get some kind of enclosure to keep everything from twisting at all.
But, this still caps them faster than I can fill semi-automatically, it’s extremely cheap in comparison to the more automated options out there, and so far after capping almost 12,000 carts I have only damage 1, and have had them all close perfectly fine with no issues.
I do use the mouthpieces that close down with very little force. Ez-press or whatever nomenclature you want to use. If you are using mouthpieces that do require much more force to close - I would NOT suggest this without making sure you have a rigid enclosure to just keep all the carts upright and not twisting when applying force.
Here you go brother. Some pics of before, you can see I align the mouthpieces and they are partially on the cart. Then the set up. Then the press.
As you can see, it looks like it starts to just slightly twist, I usually use one hand to crank the lever and the other to stabilize the 100 carts. The two upgrades I plan to make will be to (1) create a metal box with 3 walls (so I can slide them in and out) that would essentially keep the set of carts from twisting, so I get better application of force downwards and (2) for safety purposes I have some polycarbonate windows on the way that craft a little barrier in case anything does happen to break or to fly off, it’s more safe.
Having said that, I just started using this setup this week, and I’ve put almost 18,000 carts through it already with only 2 of them being damaged due to my own misalignment of the mouthpiece. Other than that it’s been flawless so far.
It’s not a perfect solution, but I have seen countless threads where people need to operate on a budget, and this gets the job done.
Why do this with ez press tips when you can just buy the biggest vevor leather press on amazon for cheaper and it fits 3x 50 packs( cap 150 at a time) for $350 total and it takes up much less space. Your setup seems like it would be viable for doing 50 packs of press tips(requires 8 tons of pressure)
I’m not familiar with a vevor leather press, so I went with what I knew. I’m familiar with arbor presses and hydraulic presses.
This also gives me the ability to close mouthpieces that actually require significant pressure to cap. Is it overkill for what we require? Sure I would absolutely agree with that. Does it work for what I’m using it for? Absolutely.
It gets the job done, it’s within the confines of a low budget requirement, and let’s me be flexible to use different types of mouthpieces to cap.
I think I got the press off grainger or some other general website, and the stainless steel plates were just cut at a local steel shop to fit the dimensions.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for them, in theory it functions the same as an automatic pneumatically powered press…just manually operated and a bit more macgyvered in design. This one can go up to I think 8 tons of pressure…So just figure out the compression force required to adequately cap the mouthpiece onto the tank and be sure the press you get can meet or exceed that pressure.
