I’ve done my best to research this topic on the forums here but I have a few technical questions.
I’ve also reviewed this video - his process seems to be very simple.
Take some live resin and put it into a centrifuge
Spin off the terps and separate + decarb the thca to prevent recrystallization in cart
Mix the terps, thc from decarb and thca at varying ratios
Fill carts
Is it really that simple? Is winterizing necessary if starting from live resin?
In posts on this forum and in that video they use a 50ml centrifuge - also lots of reports of broken cheap centrifuges of that size. It seems as though good quality medical units are available used but mostly in the 15ml size.
Does the size or rpm make a difference in terms of total separation capability (within reason) or will say a 15ml unit at 3500rpm eventually achieve similar results to a 50ml at 4000 rpm?
Can rosin bag material be used as a filter inside the tubes? I have not been able to find affordable filtered tubes in the 15ml size.
Is this a reasonable way to go about making a small quantity of live resin carts for personal consumption?
Eventually you’ll end up with similar results. Some fuges will take 4 hours and you might need to stir up the material occasionally. Some fuges will separate everything in ~30 mins.
You don’t necessarily want this stuff spinning forever imo. They will warm up a bit while spinning and might have a negative effect on your terps
Yes rosin bags will work
If you have a few bucks to spend on equipment, some cheap feed stock, and some time to figure it out, yes.
Bit of an update here - got a nice centrifuge in 15ml doing an equivalent rcf to the larger 50ml units.
Filtering has been the major issue. I tried a filter bag and didn’t have much luck - got the bag a bit sticky and there was a few streaks of terps (I don’t expect much as this is some dogwater resin im using that was quite dry) - I then ran it without a bag and got substantially better separation but it all ended up in the bottom of the tube and was difficult to remove the layers with any kind of precision.
Thank you very much for those suggestions. If i’m unable to see any progress with the fuge I bought, i’m going to go that route for sure. I’d much rather have a bit older more sturdy (usually repairable) equipment than new crap that will break.
The unit I got has a max RCF just north of 6000 at max rpm but the small confines of the tube haven’t been great.
Anyone else going down this path i’d suggest the units mentioned above over a 15ml one even if you don’t need the extra volume.
I was able to get really good separation, nice crystals in the filter. I used small rosin press bags turned inside out and stuffed most of the way down the tube. I ended up trying fresher material and got a nice layer of terps which flowed without too much trouble.
Problems: Loss from transfer - seems unavoidable and has a large impact on the small runs i’d be doing.
Loading the carts went south real fast with the syringe failing, product cooling and solidifying and basically yakkety sacks should have been playing the whole time
Solutions?
Remove the centrifuge entirely, just take live resin and slow heat it in a jar for like a day or two cap on - this would minimize loss from transferring terps which was my biggest source of loss and also took time.
Preheat carts and get a nice all glass syringe set up
@cyclopath - I wanted to thank you for your reply and other posts i’ve been checking out on the topic.
I def felt like giving up after my debacle. I also don’t want to get defeated by loading a damn cart.
Just beware that your product may become saturated/ have co2 diffused into it, without proper post processing you may run into a lot of bubbles in your carts.
@rikeget yep, he’s right.
You will want to pull a vac on your decarb’ed THCa after decarb (pre-mixing with HTE) to get the CO2 out. Or just decarb under constant vacuum… but that may take longer.
