Looking to hear about members success with solventless extracts and a centrifuge. I have seen lots of posts on live resin and sweat baskets for only THCA lest in the frit disc or rosin bag but I’m curious to hear about experiments people have done with rosin.
Is this spinning cold cured, hot cured or are you able to separate it fresh off the press?
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Can you explain why would you expect crystallization “fresh off the press”?
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I’m not sure how homogenous fresh press is. Also mechanical separation with a press is done using low heat and pressure which leaves behind thca from fresh press. Not sure why a centrifuge through 5u or under wouldn’t work over enough time.
Idc about crystal structure or size more interested in mechanical separation using a centrifuge.
If you want to separate in a centrifuge, and you want to avoid solvents, you actually DO need to care about crystal structure and size.
If you can’t see crystallization, you’re gonna have a hard time filtering out the crystallized thca. the larger the grain size the easier they spin clean. Something about surface area I reckon…
The low temp re-press is probably driven by solvent (“terpene”) loss via evaporation leading to rapid (finely divided) thca. Haven’t looked at the problem explicitly.
Actually performing the squishing of trichomes in the fuge?
Not what you asked, but nevertheless implied by
If you want crystalline thca, you have to make its formation possible. The EASIEST way to do that is wait.
Here’s the link that goes with the picture above: Rosin press go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr - #1720 by Alwaysworking
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Me neither.
Wanna explore that?
Might be lumpy?!? But not everywhere?
Then it’s not ready to spin…
Before spinning down my thca, I stir, then wait 24hrs, then do it again till it DOES look homogeneous. I’m spinning BHO, but spinning before your material has actually finished sugaring up isn’t going to increase your isolate yields.
Back to “can’t I just spin the fuck out of it?” Which again isn’t your question: There might be room for solventless ppt of thca in an ultra-centrifuge at 100k rpm, but there is fuck all room in the tubes it takes, so I’m not clear there is any sense in exploring it.
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With oversaturation, you can ReX (a little bit) with terpenes as the solvent and no terp loss.
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Who’s using the force of the fuge for the actual pressing part of the process? I know @Waxplug1 is working on some cool stuff in that direction, maybe he can chime in
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I’m dubious.
I can see a piston/plunger based method that used a fuge to push the plunger working at accessible rcf, but (as stated above) I don’t see the forces required to express the resin directly from separated trichomes being accessible in large enough “tubes” to make it viable.
A ultra-centrifuge (Eg https://www.beckman.com/landing/ppc/cent/ultra) might get you into the correct range, but loadings are going to me miserable, and the ROI is even worse.
SORVALL DuPont Ultra 80 Refrigerated Floor Centrifuge | eBay? Might seem to change that equation, except you really don’t want to spin rotors of unknown condition at 50-100k rpm.
And new ones are not cheap. Eg this rotor can handle 300k rcf. And lists in excess of $22k
But only holds six 13.5ml tube as a payload.
You can manage 150k G in this
AH-629 (36mL) Swinging Bucket Rotor?
And get six x 36g in there. Cost? $35k-ish
I’d be happy to attempt proving myself wrong on this, but don’t currently have access to the required gear.
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Rosin presses operate between 300 - 1000psi, right?
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Yep. Imagine a 10g plunger with a 1sq.in face and turn gravity up to 45… you’ve got ~1psi.
So at 45k rcf you have your 1000psi.
Which you can manage for $50k or so if you shop around.
Now try it without the plunger…I suspect you’ll need considerably more G, but admit I don’t have a framework on which to support that contention
Rosin presses can also be thrown together for chump change…
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…it might be that putting 10g of trichomes above a frit capable to 3kpsi and turning gravity up by 45k would work, and might even work at 15k G
If you’ve got the tooling it shouldn’t hurt to try
Unless you blow your rotor up…
https://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/news-and-stories/CentrifugeDamages.html
I don’t see why something like this couldn’t work. How’d you work out the math to get pressure from RCF?
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That looks really cool
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At 5um you got an idea that’ll make all the heady boyz grab fuge cup inserts & centrifuges.
I thought I showed it…
with the hope that someone with more knows than I might correct if I missed.
10g at 45.4 rcf would be 454g = 1lb
With a 1sq.in surface, that’s ~1psi.
Multiply by 1000 to get 1kpsi =~ 45k rcf
@Lincoln20XX, @TheGratefulPhil ?!?
Most of the fuges folks are playing with thca in will not hit 5k rcf, let alone 45k.
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taking some liberties with the math here
the centrifuge cups we have are 81mm ID iirc, 750g max. 750*4000 RCF over a 2.54 in^2 surface is ~2601 psi
to get to 1000 psi with a 2.5 in^2 face would only need 283.75g 891 of pressing mass at 4000 RCF, if the math works as you demonstrated
I get 40.5mm radius => 5153mm2 which I make as almost 8in2
But let’s go with a 45mm diameter plunger (pretty close to
your 2.54in2)….and assume the rest is correct?
What do you make the swing radius at the top of the stroke? At max depth?
So maybe 1/4 to 1/2 of the listed rcf?!?
Doesn’t look like a win to me with the rest of the mass needed to construct those buckets. Looks close enough to try…but the payloads look abysmal
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I skipped pi, that appears to be my problem
it still appears you can hit 300+ psi on a rotor that will sustain a load of 750g+ if you design it with weight in mind
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