Looking to upgrade my recovery pump and not sure what to go with. Right now I just have a tr21 and looking to upgrade to something better. I have been looking at something along the lines of the cmep ol or similar. I’ve heard mixed reviews on the cmep so I’m wondering if there is other options around the same price or if cmep is still the way to go?
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you can get a pnumatic pump like the haskell, but you need a big air compressor to run it. unfortunatly there aren’t alot of options out there. the cmep works, i know some people who have used them. Personally I would not run one due to possible contamination. what was your budget, how much material are you running and how often? @cyclopath you got any pictures of your cmep cylinder walls?
Trying to stay under 5k for cost. We are just caregivers here in Maine and run our trim and trim for a few others. Our usual run is between 2-5lbs of material 4-5 days a week. We are looking at upgrading to 10lb runs but don’t want them to take all damn day lol
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@Future you had mentioned skunkpharms greywolf uses a really great pump. Can you elaborate? I cant find it
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Greywolf designed the VaporHawg, a bad ass Welch pump originally built for pumping vapor off underground gasoline tanks attached to an exp. proof motor with a belt.
There are a few floating around the west coast.
However, he built this under the PharmGold name. This is the company that is currently suing the original skunkpharmers, including Greywolf, for some silly shit. They sell the pump, which they retained through IP contracts, but I don’t support Mr. Davies business in the least.
BTW, this is a major reason I champion the open source life.
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I believe you’re referring to the Vaporhawg, it’s unavailable afaik.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/pharmgold-vapor-hawg.909537/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BK6a6yzg--g/?taken-by=pharmgold
“May I ask what happened to the Vaporhawg?”
GW, “Pharmgold, the company building them, closed their doors and has yet to sell the IP.”
“Was Pharmgold your company? May I ask why did they close?”
GW, “No, but I did trade WolfWurx to them for a percent of Pharmgold. With WolfWurx went both the VaporHawg and the Terpenator. You can ask, but due to pending legal issues I can’t give you a straight answer. May I suggest that you contact their leader at james@pharmgold.com for that information.”
(above quotes from this thread,)
As I recall Future is correct, the original Vaporhawg design was belt drive.
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How about this one, the Vaporsmartz, and they seem offer what looks like the cyclonic filter GW came up with…
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Here’s the pumps I’ve used in the past and their pros/cons:
CMEP-OL - Good electric pump, faster than what you have but not the fastest out there. Holds its own for a while but has been known to need pretty regular maintenance or wear and tear on the bearings will eventually cause recovery to slow down and stop once they fail. It’s one of the grease lubricated pumps so it can get some “mystery oil” in recovery tank if you’re not totally careful.
Bhogart brand gas booster (Haskell imitation) - Solid pneumatic pump overall. Faster than the CMEP by quite a wide margin but does require a sizeable air compressor to drive the pump. I got a kick out of using these and I would totally use them again. Routine maintenance like re-greasing the shaft inside the pump is pretty easy to perform yourself, and the pumps seemed to perform fairly reliably for the duration I used them. This one I believe also has grease lubricated parts so may also be a mystery oil hazard.
Master Vapor Pumps - Easily the fastest pump I’ve used… for N-butane. This pump is not really tolerant of pumping against high pressures (over 70-80) and even has difficulty pulling vacuum against 35+PSI in many settings. I would recommend for use with butane only, but it works great with just butane. Best things I can say about it is that as long as you keep pressures low it is quite fast, and it has no grease wetted parts so mystery oil is a non-issue with this pump. Also, diaphragm replacement is fairly easy to do yourself as long as you have an inch lb and a foot lb torque wrench on site.
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based on talking to Welch and others about this, my understanding is the the PDX.GOLD is the PharmaGold or it’s brethren.
With a Welch at its heart, it would seem to be the go-to pump…if it wasn’t for the rest of it’s story…
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@Soxhlent you fishing for this link?
one of those images is actually of one of the cylinders 
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This is the VaporHawg, just with a dumber name…
Although one thing a friend and I on our own, post Greywolf design, was to attach the pump and motor with a belt rather than directly, which functions significantly better. I think the PDXGold (the new name for Pharmgold, still ran by Mr Davies) pump is setup with a belt as well
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Here’s GW’s VaporHawg thread,
Info on the Precision GC 5000 starting at post #91.
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I ran across an HVAC recovery pump with a variable speed brushless DC motor and possibly an improved condenser design, the Fieldpiece MR45. Here’s my post up about it,
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Maine caregiver here as well. I scored a 240v 10hp 35cfm compressor used on craigslist for 500 bucks. You could run a haskel ext420 off of it.
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I know someone who got conned into buying one of those at a hvac store… it shit itself after one run, don’t recommend at all!
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Any details? It’s heavily reviewed by HVAC techs at YouTube, they unanimously seem to have found it robust. It’s not rated for flammable hydrocarbons, but neither are other similar units that have been, or are currently in use for LPG recovery. The only way I can imagine “it shit itself” would be the seals failed due to incompatibility with the solvent vapors, a question I didn’t inquire of Fieldpiece. Odd they wouldn’t use the same or better seal materials as the completion.
Fieldpiece MR45 manual,
I guess I should have clarified the pump itself is awesome, especially with all the features it has. However, I don’t think it should be used for hydrocarbons, especially a 70/30 blend. The seals definitely leaked some and the pump itself shutdown with an error message. I’m pretty sure it blew a piston or something. It was also extremely loud.
The Haskell ext420? Works great for hydrocarbons.
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We’re talking about the fieldpiece MR45 that sucks for hydrocarbons.
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