I’d appreciate some advice from people smarter than me on this one - I’m looking to do some validation on extraction efficiencies for an R&D unit, and have three main options on the table I’m considering. The only thing I really care about is potency for this unit, though terpenes or residual solvents would be a bonus for future projects.
High precision (repeatability) is more important to me for this unit than high accuracy. I’m not too worried if the actual potency is 10% but it outputs 9%, so long as it consistently outputs 9%. High accuracy along with high precision would be great, but I know that’s super unlikely with a sub-10k unit.
Here are the options currently under consideration:
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The SRI “420” GC, maybe with a 15m column swapped in place of the stock 2m one. Total cost likely $6k ish?
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SRI 310-MM GC - comes with heated injection port, columns for potency/terpene and residual solvent measurements. $10k from the factory.
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Used ebay-special 8610C - maybe 4-8k ish as a guess depending on options available and upgrades required.
Would upgrading the column on the 420 model increase the precision or accuracy or both of this unit?
Are the heated injection port, double columns, and other upgrades worth the extra $5k for the 310-MM unit?
I’ve got no problem with doing a little manual fiddling/hacking with a used 8610C if that’s the best option.