Looking for suggestions on best press to purchase for small-medium scale usage with zero prior experience. Want to have option for consistent and evenly heated dual plates, pneumatic or manual doesn’t matter. Only working with estimated around 1 lb finished full melt hash rosin every 3 months. If I have to press for 2 days straight no big deal just don’t want to experiment with equipment that inevitably will be tossed out. Thinking medium sized plates for ~30g kief/hash presses should be appropriately sized. Pure pressures 2x9 looked like best option from my research but hoping other’s experience could help point me in better direction and avoid any wasted expenses. Thanks in advance for any advice
Open to China or offbrand equipment. $5k+ press is wasteful for my scale but I would like to not leave money on the table by purchasing a press that doesn’t allow proper adjustments for me to learn from or just in general doesn’t give me my moneys worth leaving wasted material on the plates
You will find an issue with every press for one reason or another. This aspect of the process, technology-wise has really been at a stand still for years and none of these devices have really improved. Hash production has gotten all the attention.
This really leaves us with very few good choices, each with a notable down side.
Dab press: cheap, well sized and surprisingly durable. It is caged, and therefore a pain in the ass to clean properly. The pumps they come with are absolute garbage leaks are very common. Replace immediately with a different brand or expect to replace it every so often depending on usage and storage conditions. Not advised for a licensed and regulated lab.
Low temp: another caged option. Higher quality parts, and the ability to upgrade and add on additional presses via the “medusa” add on.
Caged presses come with a the downside of the 4 posts getting in the way of paper placement. This takes away options of press styles
Pure pressure:
One of the few non-cage presses. The plate sizes can be very beneficial for some press styles. The helix and the helix pro will deliver the most controll. Out of any press ime The pneumatic options are unusable without the newest upgrade.
( take off the outer casing if you want a machine you can actually clean)
Pure pressure plates are also polished. A thermometer gun will not correctly read your plates, there is no easy way to know if your read out on the machine is accurate or calibrated
Rosintek: i will not justify this as a possible purchase for you. That would be incredibly unkind of me.
Triminator: the triple plate system is novel, but imo just doubles your chance of a blow out being a bigger issue than it needs to be. Even if youve got prep down to a science, each bag can often need a little bit of a different press time/pressure gradient. This model takes the ability to account for that away.
This model also sits on a swing: for the ever inadvisable gravity tek.
Ive settled on the upgraded pure pressure pneumatic for my scale personally.
The helix pro is probably your best bet with a higher budget, the dabpress is probably your best bet on a bottom dollar budget
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I’m still using a Sasquach. I noticed it wasn’t on @Lowkeyalchemy list of presses.
Its what I started with many years ago. Its what I have time and time again seen in the award winning facilities.
Their customer service has been pretty amazing for me as well. I once got an original V1 from a storage unit auction (no really! $300 for that unit! full of all kinds of crazy unexpected pumps and chillers and what not). They were able to help me get it up and running again (it had a heat plate that needed to be replaced).
Seems like they are still offering their lifetime warranty which I always appreciate as well. and they have units under $5k.
I’ve used lowtemp (which I really like for at home flower pressing, but not production). I’ve used pure pressure - which are great if you have some random dude running your stuff for you all day…
But if you are planning to do it yourself and more than just pressing flower from your home grow. I think Sasquach does it right - and if I needed to buy a new one for production, I would.
Their new M1 is not quite cheap enough for me to want to replace my LowTemp unit for home use. But its getting there.
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I forgot about sasquatch! Didnt they just come out with a new craft press?
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They do - they have a smaller M1 which is like nugsmasher sized.
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