You can also piece together little ‘add on’ gauges and such down the line.
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And that’s a good plan for cleaning, definitely when you’re done with the brake cleaner, wipe that fucker down at least twice with iso I’d say.
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thats the same tape I use, works pretty decently.
I don’t know if I’d clean with brake cleaner, it might be difficult to get out of some places. I always clean with 90+ iso and let it all air dry before assembling.
Is that a 4" collection base or 6"? It looks like a decent setup for the price. My advice on upgrades would be high pressure clamps and a different lid with a sight glass… It’s going to be tricky knowing when you have recovered enough, or you may end up recovering too much and have a mess to scrape up. I’m sure you’ll figure it out after some runs though
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Good point about the nooks, but if you already started, I’d soak whatever pieces that needed cleaning in iso, wipe down, then soak and wipe again.
And sight glasses are nice for sure. In the mean time, you can use a scale to try to estimate solvent levels during extraction and recovery.
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Woke up this morning down probly 5hg, backed to - 29 before bed, woke up tk what looks like about - 25… Time to break her down and rewrap I guess lol
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It’s a 4x2 shatter platter (I think that’s what it’s Called) with another 4x4 piece in top that gives it a total of 4x6… And ya before it even got here I realized I wanted a sight glass… Is there a general rule of thumb for going by weight? Like say a fella crammed 120G good buds in that fucker what’s a general idea what kinda weight I’d wanna stop recovering at l?
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the weight method works when you know your starting weight of solvent in your injection tank… Once you inject it into the system, you can weigh it again to see how much solvent is in there, then recover until you’re at a good enough range. It all depends on how much you want to recover really… Say you inject 5lbs of solvent, you would recover to 4lbs if you wanted to leave some left over, or maybe even a little more… This is where a few runs of experimenting will give you the best way to run in your situation.
If you don’t recover enough, it will be in the platter as a liquid… It stays cleaner in there this way as the resin isn’t sticky yet. If you recover most or all of the butane, you will have your extract all over the platter. This isn’t bad by any means, it just means you have to scrape it all out of there and transfer to your purging area. You’ll be dealing with a small amount of explosive vapors at this point, the risk is still there.
The downside to recovering not enough is you will have to offgas the remainder into the air. This can be more dangerous since we’re dealing with a higher volume of explosive gas vapors.
I’m not sure if they make lids with sight glasses in 4", you’ll have to check out some suppliers. I find the sight glass on the collection pot to be crucial to my process. I’m looking in there constantly to see how rapid my recovery is boiling, and I’m able to tell how thick the solution is so I know when to drain it from the collection pot.
Personally I don’t use a scale so I’m not in a good position to give advise on actual weights… The sight glasses tell me all I need to know while running.
I do wish I had one up top though so I could see when my solvent is done running into the column haha
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it’s part of the process haha, I had to rebuild mine 5 times when I first put it together.
Also, I’d advise pressure testing over vac testing… Vac can help seal things when pressure will leak, so you may think your system is fully sealed by testing it under vac, and then have a leak once you’re running it under pressure.
My method for pressure testing is to dunk it under water while pressurized and look for any bubbles coming out of the joints. @Killa12345 gave me some good advice when I was doing this - Just put it in the water, smoke a joint, and stare at it for 10 mins. Some bubbles will take a bit to show themselves for a small leak. I had tons of these tiny leaks… I would lose 1-2psi overnight which was unacceptable to me. It ended up just being tiny pin hole sized areas where it wasn’t sealing in the fittings… Generally this happened from over-tightening the NPT fittings. They don’t need to be on there so tight you can’t get them off. They’re tapered in a way they tighten themselves as you go further in.
For pressure testing, I just hook up an air compressor to the system… You can use a typical air fitting to a JIC hose for this. I’ll fill it to 100psi for this. Once it passes the water dunk test, I let it sit for at least a couple of days, but more often than not an entire week… I take a picture of the gauge so I know exactly where it was when I pressurized it.
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Thanks. Will the under water tech work to produce any bubble under vac? Or would it just be sucking in water? My compressor won’t come on, think she’s pooched… Reason I ask is j broke it down and rebuilt it this morning and vaced it, (my Guage went out a bit in the process. I think I dropped it. Way she goes) than submerged it in 5gal bucket of water. No bubbles. But now that I think about it I’m doubting if it would anyway
Ill have to get my comp or fixed replaced today either way and get this sorted as my dry ice comes tomorrow around noon and wanna have it at pressure overnight tonight (successfully) before using it
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this is a bad plan already…you should cancel the dry ice and properly test the unit. Your playing with fire without a sight glass. You can retrofit a 4" on top of the collection. Also you material column is too big for your collection. The most that collection is gonna be good for is 45g of material.
harbor frieght has $40 compressors easily able to pressurize the unit. dont take shortcuts with your life. good luck
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you’re right, vac will suck anything outside into the system, so you’ll end up with water inside and no bubbles visible.
I agree with this, you won’t know for sure if it’s fully sealed without letting it sit for at least 24 hours and holds pressure. I like to go a couple days minimum because there WILL be small leaks I can guarantee it.
I also wasn’t sure the exact capacity of the collection base, I assumed it was too small but this confirms that. I run a 1.5 x 18" material column as well, and run a 6x10 collection pot with hemi cap for some extra space.
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So how big of a pot would one want? Because BVV sells and identical kit as their starter. Only their collection is only the 4x4 no shatter platter
Also I live in PEI Canada. Dry ice gas to be shipped and ordered and paid for 3 days in advance than you get the call when the truck gets to island oxygen to come pick it up… Canceling isn’t an option at this point… Letting it sublimate away on the deck and eating the 45$ is tho
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And that was my plan, 24 hours, get my compressor fixed or go get a new one(it’s 1057am here. Fill up unit with pressure, throw in tub, smoke joint as advised, assuming no bubbles let sit till tomorrow when I get my dry ice around noon… 24 hours… I can wait longer if getting the compressor takes till 2pm or 5pm or whatever… I’m just going over my plan, and short of this new info regarding the size of my collection chamber I’m lost as to the flaw
yeah its the mini and it only holds 45g if your lucky.
So by adding a 4x2 your expecting to increase capacity 3x. hope you can get return some of the parts. the material column is not needed that big and if only 45g its gonna happen so fast…no need for the jacket or the valve.
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I guess if you operate on the assumption that they rate them for exactly what they are capable of and nothing more than ya…
You seem to be the resident expert on this so what’s the math? How big of a pot do I Need, not based on BVV using a 4 inch for 45G, like the legit math… Not trying to be rude, lol I’m dead serious there has to be a mathmatical equation for this…
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And it was a kit. For 398$, shipped, to get one without the sleeve was actually 5$ more
ive posted the math formula god knows how many times…your looking for volume for water,then convert water to the liquid mass of butane. its posted a shit ton of times though
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So I plugged the dimensions into a calculator and It spit me out the volume for both the column and the collection pot, total volume for pot is a bit under double the column… But that doesn’t mean anything to me lol… I guess what I’m wondering is what’s the ratio one wants? Size of column vs pot?..
Like it seems to me the answer to the current pot being to small, knowing I can’t return to China, and that I’m just trying to learn how to make my own meds here (rather than keep giving 30% to buddy in NS) and that none of this is for resale so efficiency isn’t the be all end all for me… Would be to do smaller runs, or use less butane… No?
I just don’t want to run into a situation where I’ve got my collection pot full of butane slurry and the column still partially full of butane too… But is that even possible? Like my 2 tanks r the same size 4x6 so if I’m just going from one tank through the column and into the other, so I don’t understand how I’m too small
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I also realize these are likely stupid questions to you guys so I appricate the ones who are humoring me without being condicending hahaha
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