I have a question. We are currently making live resin carts and vapes. We are spinning out live resin decanting the thca, speparating the fats and dhit from the terps and adding back to the decarbed thca. My question is; currently we are using a top down high rpm blender basically an emulation blender to mix the terps back into the thc. Would I benefit from having a high shear homogenizer? Most of the stuff I’ve read deals with mixing terps back into distillate. We don’t use any distillate so just wonder if we would still benefit from say a cat 1000? Thanks for any advice.
Are your final products homogenized enough? If not then you may benefit from a cat1000. Otherwise, I would say if your emulsion blender is doing a good enough job, keep using it.
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I mean it seems to be working great. But after long term maybe 5 month you are seeing a tiny bit of terps collecting at the top of the cart. Could be oxidation also though. I just wasn’t sure if the homogenizer would bring our game up another level. Like make the terps more flavorful or I don’t know. Just making sure there’s not better options out there. Thanks for the response.
Do you have photos? I haven’t ever experienced separation in the cart, only in a jar if only partially mixed.
Keep in mind that using a high sheer homogenizer will introduce more heat into your solution than your current mixing setup. This may or may not be a tolerable amount of heat for your terpenes
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Not on me. It would probably be hard to see in a picture anyways. It’s hard to see but if you hold it up to a light you can just make out a tiny bit of darkening at very top. Now that I’m sitting here typing it all out it’s probably just oxidation from being live resin and 5 months old.
That sounds like textbook oxidation. You run into it a lot more pronounced with d8 products
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For reintroducing terpenes to decarboxylated a, it sounds like you are doing well. Have you looked at other mixing blades (auger, paddle, turbine, propeller shaped)? Having a few different mixing blades doesn’t cost much and enhances the value of your mixer. @lolwut lolwut is right about the high sheer homogenizer adding heat and that heat deteriorating the very terps you are working to preserve. How much weight are you working with? Do you want to process faster or better or more?
Yes, you should absolutely homogenize.
See: How do you Homogenize? for why.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to purchase/use a high sheer “homogenizer”.
If the only indication of lack of homogeneity you’re seeing is a ring (of oxidation) in your carts at the 5 month mark, then you’re likely already getting the job done.
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get a planetary centrifuge like a spin tech or flak tech they are the absolute best way for this kind of homogenizing
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You are correct about a planetary centrifuge, use one regularly. They are the best or only tool which can get that finish. However, they have a learning curve to perfect and they are a substantial capex which demands some scale for ROI. Additionally, it has been my experience that decarboxylated a is so thick that the planetary takes so much more time resulting in heating the mix too much for a live resin cart the way that the OP described (or that I inferred). I also tried a stirring hot plate, which worked . . . poorly. The benchtop mixer is just how I like to make Live carts. Simply separate the terps from the a, decarb the a, stir back in the purged terps. Ready to dab or shoot (carts).
the spin tech has a refrigerated option its pretty sweet i dont have that one, but if you preheat the thca before adding the hte it doesnt take nearly as long spin together, i havent had any issues at all. i do agree they cost a pretty penny, but if you do some digging you can get them for a large discount.
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Does the planetary fully flatten a mixture?
Idk, pour it in a tray if you want it flat, he still needs to get it into a cart. Seriously, are you experiencing muffining in a planetary mixer? Also, my english is good but not perfect, may not fully understand.
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yes it does very well!
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How about 1 Gallon Vortex Paint Mixer w/Digital Display?
~$2k gets you “1gal” capacity.
So long as you don’t try to purge solvent in one…
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yes but those max out at 430rmp the speedmixer is 1200rpm so quite a difference in sheer force
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Question: Are you separating and winterizing in order to boost thc numbers while retaining the terpene content to have the flavor of live resin? I’ve seen management in various companies demand higher THC percentages in carts, but in terms of Live resin I’ve never seen anyone choose a particular cart for higher percentages. The whole point is getting a full spectrum extract. Otherwise you’re pretty much just selling something that is equivalent to a flavored distilate cart.
As per my name, Live Resin is my specialty. I’ve made a few thousand batches (a couple cup winners too) and I haven’t seen this methodology before. I’m just curious 
this is a very standard method, and its nothing like a flavored distillate cart its just a deconstructed and then reconstructed live resin cart, lots of companies do it like that so they arnt exposing the terpenes to the heat of decarb
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I’d argue at that point it’s not really live resin anymore. It’s d9 + fractionated live resin terps. This recombination method removes a number of components (fats/waxes/cannabinoids) that I’d argue are essential to live resin. A disty cart’s components are d9 + terpenes, and whatever azeotropic cannabinoids that are present depending on the quality of distillation. This process takes separated thca that is decarbed to d9 and adding back in terpenes that have had post processing. That’s relatively the same product and testing would show it’s not similar to a full spec live resin extract that is directly taken from extraction and decarbed without losing terp content and put into a cart. For some reason folks here think it’s impossible to decarb without losing terpene content…