One thing I noticed is my mantle gets mega hot, mega fast. I just turned it on to test my new magnetic spin bar. And within minutes I’m reading 220-250c on the sides of the mantle and the bottom of the boiling flask is crazy hot. Is this normal as the mantle is trying to heat up the oil?
In general the mantel heats quik
The mantel has a long spring like tread heating element down in iT controles temperature by gooing on or off When iT s a basic mantel
The other method is by changeing the volts running treu the heating element
Gotcha. I’m basically ready to go with my run. I’ll keep things posted here for future first timers.
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Good luck man!
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I’m waiting and watching. Can’t wait to see your results! I have learned so much from this thread, thank you all. Please post pics and details for us newbies!
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First hurdle of the day… I can’t pull the vacuum down like I was yesterday. It goes down to 550 microns or so, then jumps up. Then down to 480, and back up to 540 micron. It’s so frustrating. I took it all apart. Cleaned it, regreased it. The only difference today is that there is oil in the boiling flask, which is bubbling under vacuum with no heat applied. Could it be the off gassing of the oil keeping my vacuum up? Or a leak… I just watched it pull to 490 microns and jump back up to 535. And it just keeps doing it over and over. Leak? Reaction from bubbling oil? It took me so long to clean and reassemble I’m slowly creeping into the afternoon and was trying to avoid a run going into midnight. But kiddies, enjoy my frustrations.
Edit- went down to 380 microns, and jumped to 440. But it seems it’s working it’s way down. Also, I feel half stupid with constant updates like this. I’m only doing it for the next first timer to read through. Sorry if it’s annoying. It’s staying under 400 now but continuously fluctuating. I guess I’m just gonna go for it and see what happens. It gets down to 308microns now and back up to 340 lol
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I went ahead and started. Started ramping up my temps. I’m at abou 60c on the mantle, and vacuum is now up to 830 and climbing 
I don’t know if I should pull the plug and look for a leak or if this is appropriate since I’m adding heat and building pressure
Edit. I climbed to 1200 microns. Turned the heat off to see if the vacuum goes down. It sure is a pain pinpointing and repeatedly checking/cleaning/greasing joints.i only see air pockets on the cow connection so I’m going to regressed that one last time
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The only foolish question, is the one not asked. Im glad your paving the way for the rest of us.
I bought some silicone seal tape from HD or l0wes. 10.00 for a 1" x 33’ roll. It may help seal any leaky joints.
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I’m glad you’re glad. I wanna throw this through the window haha. So to simplify my current issue, I simply can’t pull the vacuum as low as I could yesterday, nor can I stabilize it. It goes down and up… as soon as I added heat it shot up to 1200 micron and kept going… judging by my very first try where I was at 2240 Micron, this can’t be good. Right now I’m just messing around with joints and all that trying to pull his vac. I just don’t know if it’s the boiling oil that’s creating the pressure, but like I said, from what I learned , being in the thousand+ of micron is not suitable. It’s 2 pm, so looks like I’m in for a long ass day.
I will say it means a lot to keep reading positive comments about my efforts. I feel like a dick as I constantly update every few minutes with my struggles. I appreciate any kind words more than I can express
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The only joint that is not near what I’d like it to be currently is the head thermometer… BUT yesterday it pulled and held at 112 micron… with an empty flask. Today I got it down to 300ish but it kept jumping, and once I added heat, it just shot up over 1000 and climbed. Just don’t know if that’s expected or completely fucked lol
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Yes, as you’re generating vapor and compounds begin to boil off you’re going to see your vacuum depth be unstable, it’s because you’re generating more vapor than your pump can pull off. That’s fine, you’re in the low BP range right now anyway.
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Yes hè is right You might have Some solvent or volatile terps vaporizing
Relax part of the path
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Once you’ve concluded your first pass, stripping the low BP and separating the desirable fractions you’ll perform a second pass on the same material, the lack of lower BP will allow you to achieve a deeper vacuum, which in turn will also pull the desirable fractions at a lower temperature and achieve greater separation as a result.
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I just got worried as it climbed to the 1400+micron. Should I still proceed? That was before I even got to much higher heat. I just began ramping up and it went way high. Perhaps I’ll leave it at a certain temp for awhile to boil off any volatiles and see if vac stabilizes
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Man, i wish you were local, or anyone running spd. It would be nice to give a hand or have soneone help when starting out. It would make things much easier
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Believe me I know lol. I have a great friend from way back who’s great at this, unfortunately he is been busy as hell and I respect that… a very respected forum member invited me over his home and showed me some amazing stuff and I learned a lot just by watching. I do indeed wish I had a close homie that could come kick it and do a run lol. It’s all good, I’m confident things will work out. Just. A little frantic, plus as I said this will make a great read for a future newbie
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It will stabilize as you stop boiling off compounds at that temp/vac depth range. It’ll crawl its way down as the compounds in that range boil off, and as depth changes and more are able to boil off it’ll fluctuate again. Then when you kick the temp up it’ll happen all over again.
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^ thanks man. I’m going to slowly ramp it up and then let it run until it starts coming down. I just panicked when I started seeing 1000+ micron lol
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The trick is to pull that fraction off fast enough and move on so that your residence time doesn’t lead to degradation/isomerization. As you get more comfortable with the system you’ll be able to move faster as your expectations for what is going to happen and how the run is going to progress will become more informed by experience.
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It happens, just don’t increase temp faster than your system can handle it and you’ll be fine. I know everyone wants to rush their run times, but while you’re learning allow it to dwell at different temps and depths and observe the reaction.
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