imo making distillate for carts, for home use, is a waste of time and energy.
Do you grow weed?
If not, it is likely going to be more expensive to make distillate than buy it.
…and these days there is zero need to make or purchase distillate, when the hemp bois are now openly selling thca isolate. See: Is this even legal?
The correct solution is to purchase thca isolate, decarb, add terps and go. See: Please humor me. How are decarbed diamonds that much different from distillate?
Have you made carts before throwing money at that SPD?
Do you have all the pieces? (Pictures?!!).
Vacuum pump?
Circulator?
Digital gauge?
If you want to wrap your head around EtOH crude production, start with: Bucket Tek (Cold Ethanol Extraction on a Budget)
You’ll need on the order of a liter of crude to appropriately load that 2l boiling flask.
You’ll likely wreck your first few liters of crude before getting distillate worth adding to your expensive terpenes, although I have seen folks nail it on the first try (not I).
Here’s a little math.
Let’s start with 10kg (~22lb) of “whole plant” at 10% THC.
How much THC? 10 x 0.1 = 1kg!
Let’s be real, and imagine you’ll get 80% of that.
That’s 800g.
That 800g of pure THC will be in the form of crude, which will be in the 65% range.
So that 800g thc will be in 800 / 0.65 => 1230g of crude
Which is enough for you to load that boiling flask…you might get away with loading 1/2 that.
Can you afford to destroy 5kg of weed?