Plastic components in extraction equipment

Hash and Stuff Extraction
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This isn’t to bag on anyone using a trash can. I have used trash cans, friends here use trash cans. It is done for economic reasons.

When there is no economic reason for its use why would you use it?

Why would you use it on a 30k ice water extractor where it will undergo abrasion and release micro plastics? There are so many premade stainless vessels to start from or who wholely fabricate something unique.

Someone make it make sense to me, these answer has to be something besides the owner of the company and designer of the equipment are out of their depth?

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If you’re concerned about micro plastics in ice water hash, wait until the general public finds out about the prevalence of PFAS contaminated cannabis in general.

Hint: It’s everywhere.

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due to biosolid fertilizer (aka human shit), it is quite literally everywhere, even in the deer you hunt to keep away from them.

As far as microplastics go, I don’t know. In cGMP and similar regulated laboratory settings, serialized equipment is standard for track, trace, cleaning/CIP/SIP/sterilization and materials compatibility. You may rest easier knowing once you squish it, it is much less likely to have those kind of contaminates, but the dried sandy hash I wouldn’t bet on. If you wanted to cool your water hash, a trashcan doesn’t have a jacket (for the people who operate outside of cold rooms and use ice).

I guess the last point would be optics. When people come in your lab, they will leave and say “did you see Bo Jiden’s lab?? He was running hash trash cans! I Are they serious?” as I recently heard from others on this site talking about Jungleboys/the Flowery/710 labs. When you make hash by any means necessary at your house, it’s one thing - when you are chasing funding and PR, having nice equipment makes the difference. You never know who is going to knock at your door asking for a collab. That football player might walk into your lab and laugh his way out, versus asking to invest or run a “famous football player vape pen line” or whatever.

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Possibly just saving on cost to maximize profit margins Or planned obsolesces to keep buying more since Either the product wouldn’t need regular upkeep otherwise unless the contact point was subject to massive wear and tear from regular use.

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I’d personally use stainless if I was in any sort of licensed operation without question. There’s no reason not to, really

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Suppose it depends how far you wanna go with avoiding plastics too. Even if you get a stainless steel Rez, you’re still likely to be using plastic hoses. Just a thought. Unless you wanna go all the way and get the braided stainless hoses like a CLS?

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whataboutism helps noone

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Honestly i’d probably use gravity fed draining - but my reasons wouldn’t be so much for plastic avoidance but ease of cleaning. I think using plastic is fine as long as it’s not being repeatedly beaten by instruments so a plastic hose and whatnot for a water return line doesn’t bother me

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I noticed you had already answered your own question and wanted to add to the discussion. Go practice your edgy online persona somewhere else

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If you’re concerned about people that just want to post to see their avatar, wait until the general public finds out about the prevalence of these type of fuckwads in cannabis in general.

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Still hasn’t been a celebrity that invested in cannabis besides Drake and diddy amd Drake lost his ass and diddys bout to

They all want royalties because some d list athlete or comedian or musician is gonna get me to buy mids

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I met chelsea hannler (idk how to spell celebrities names idc), a few of the detroit lions, and the migos while working in cannabis. All toured our facility looking for market entry via whitelabeling. The migos were especially brainless, but they have (had?) money to blow. None of that came to fruition. The point is, image can matter depending on the vision you have and direction your company goes.

Edit: what about Mike Tyson? Im sure theres others too.

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Although I’m not sure you actually want reasons, I’m interested in the topic so here are the reasons I have opted to use plastics (of various kinds) instead of stainless steel in the past.

The biggest one by far is making them disposable this was HUGE when I was working in sterile manufacturing. The evaluation was done between the cost of maintaining, cleaning, and sanitizing a 316L SS bioreactor unit (very similar to a hash washer) or going instead with disposable components that came “pre-sanitized” and could be recycled instead of maintained/cleaned/sanitized, etc. The price difference was HUGE - it was way better to do that than to go forth with the stainless option.

The corrosion/rouging, pitting, scraping, leeching from 316L SS was a big deal, just normal wear and tear. Moving away from that and into insulated bags or buckets that were single use, BIG BIG economic savings. Add onto that the cost of cleaning and sanitizing (which our industry is just barely starting to care about) and going with a “bucket” or a “bag” that you can take out and recycle is huge.

I don’t know which system you are looking at - as you didn’t mention on and the price you mentioned is more than most of the plastic units I have seen and way less than all the other systems I have seen that are not just a metal bucket with a person stirring… -shrug-

I’m interested to know why your specific interest is “micro-plastics” from possible abrasion. Are you thinking these are micro plastics more than is normally found in water and ice in the US? Are you thinking that this would be such a high level of impurity that it would cause harm?

Is tank/bag in question easily removable and replaceable and is the replace seriously cheap? Like less than $100? If so - I would learn towards the easy to clean/sanitize direction. That’s how I have designed most of the filters/hoses/bag in tank systems I use. However - I’ve also been at places where the local AHJ wanted to see stainless, so that was my only option.

Another big reason for me to use plastic has always been WEIGHT. Meaning the size of the lift or the person moving the thing around doesn’t have to be as large. And that has also really mattered for mobile units that I was preparing, where I had to stay under a specific weight limit, and other things like chillers / heaters / raw materials were more important to have.

Occasionally, I’ve seen systems made from plastics that are coated with lots of different things specifically because they came from other systems where material compatibility was important and using glass or metal would have been incompatible. I’m thinking mostly of chromatography stuff - for when you are working with things that corrode/etch SS and glass.

Without knowing their full design - I could also consider that its possible someone in their engineering department thought, “Does plastic sweat less than SS? I think so…” and then decided that because of that they would need less insulation. Because plastic doesn’t conduct temperature as well… would that be a good thing? Perhaps not if you are trying to cool it with a recirculating pump or something, but maybe it would be okay if you were just dumping ice into it. Maybe. -shrug-

Anyway - sometimes there are good reasons for using plastic beyond potentially being cheaper. Its also worth noting that at this point food grade plastics are almost the same price as their SS counterparts. I can get a 500g SS tank for around $2k - I can get a 500g heavy wall plastic tank for around $2k… you know what I mean?

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he didnt invest, hes just a spokesperson paid in royalties

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Someone working with Sean Kemp and Redman reached out to me for extraction consultation and when I mentioned I’d need compensation they left me on read xD

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some starfucker probably jumped at the chance to give them everything for free lol

people forget we are the shawn kemps and redmans of hash

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bad enough to sell some plastic shit

i saw some dumbass consultants on IG promoting the thing

plastic is not 3a sanitary when being abrased, its for single use and disposal

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You realize those hoses still have plastic on the inside? They are PTFE, the braided stainless just reinforces them.

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Oh shit, good point. So literally if you wanna involve a hose at all (hose coming from water line/r.o. included), then you’re gonna be using plastic.

@SubstituteCreature I dig the gravity drain as well, just meant all the other hoses involved before it hits the bucket.

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Yes… and all the gaskets are plastic as well.

The only way to avoid plastics 100% would be to hard pipe and weld everything and be completely seal-less. I have never seen such a setup in this industry.

EDIT: Or better yet try finding a ball valve that doesn’t have any plastic in it…

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