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.
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
They work great, and we use them. It is just really alot of money to slap down for the air compressor and all the accesories like the dryer, filter and plumbing. You can’t beat it for c1d1, but the inital expense of the accesories puts alot of people off.
Although not medical grade or purdy. I built a dryer using a donor 80 gallon junk compressor and dessicant, a filter is fairly simple to build as well. I think I have about 700.00 into my 35 cfm shop compressor with DIY dryer I use for painting, sandblasting etc. I could probably replicate it for a lab but I’m really cheap and try to do things cheaply when I can. That ext420 isn’t really cheap either but you could maybe score a used one needing a rebuild
If you’re at all interested in the poverty tek like me here are some diy air dryer links:
how much butane/min can a single mvp recover? I’ve seen other posts you comment on and know you’re running a couple of those, figure your the right guy to ask.