Hello Future Fam -
I am looking for a kief tumbler. Looking for something with a relatively large capacity. I am in Oregon. Any leads would be appreciated. Thanks!!
1 Like
Make your own.
4 Likes
2 Likes
What kind of throughput are you looking for? There are a ton of different options for this depending on desired capacity and end product purity.
1 Like
Harbor freight concrete mixer
5 gallon bubble bags (micron of your choosing)
Add biomass and dri ice into mixer
Slip bubble bag over opening on cement mixer
Turn on and spin spin spin spin away, rotate mixer down so the kief tumbles thru the bubble bag and collect kief.
8 Likes
something around 30-50 gallons
Nice. I actually looked at those mixers at one point, but I wouldnt have understood the dry ice part. I was thinking about the sideways barrel that they use for bingo halls to pick a ball. They are made to rotate already, swap wire sides with kief screen. Next step would be a low speed motor, but I am not very mechanically inclined and never got that far.
1 Like
He built a tumbler 4yrs ago iirc. Small motor or cordless/corded drill, storage tub, metal micron screen, wood dowel, wood discs.
4 Likes
Another brother ostensibly, as I actually never got around to building a kief tumbler, but did design a number of tumblers for chemically milling titanium castings, so understand the issues.
Tumblers are essentially drums rotating around their central axis, with an outer skin of about 150 micron mesh. The mesh can be either textile or metal cloth.
Resources for the mesh can be found in this article about building dry sieve frames and harvest boxes.
A plain round drum by its lonesome doesnât work well because the material doesnât follow the drum rotation very far before gravity pulls it back down, so different techniques are used to encourage it to rise further before dropping.
A design that works well is to make octagon or round drum ends from Formica board, separated with stay bolts, and stainless or fabric cloth wrapped around them. The stay bolts help pull the material up and over.
The following link has some examples drums using stay bolts, as well as smooth bottom, easily harvested containers the drums sit in. It also has a link to the last commercial unit.
For rotating the drum, a plethoria of AC gear motors may be found at Graingers, such as:
Designing a tumbler for the site is still on my list, but I did design a Grinning Reaper, which Roger built and worked pretty slick for personal use.
1 Like
Only thing I would change, is the micron screen. We have things today that was not accessible 20 years ago. LOL
If my memory serves me correctly, 1/2 an elbow would fit and spin just right.
5 Likes
Have you seen the Resinator? It has CO2 spray bar for processing fresh material. @graywolf might have an opinion on how much of a waste of money this is compared to building your own though.
1 Like
I looked at their site and it looks like they are using liquid CO2 to freeze the material so as to make it more frangible. Dry ice dry sieving also increases yield by increasing material frangibility, but typically that also includes more non targeted plant material, so not exactly apples and apples.
Anything above about 50% potential yield tumbling typically starts to green out from stray plant material, so I would like to examine the product under 100X before deciding how I feel about it.
Especially at that handsome price!
1 Like
Thatâs pretty much what I was thinking, do you have any experience refining sift from a dry ice or liquid CO2 operation? Does it add a ton of extra work when compared to dry sift that has been tumbled without? Iâve seen pretty good results with dry ice tumbling for full spec rosin but I did notice when I shook for too long or let the material get too cold it would yield more sift but inversely would yield less rosin.
1 Like
How much work depends on what are you shooting for as an end product? A re-sieve at 130 and 70 will take out most of the debris and a check of both the retained and the passed material with a 100X microscope, will give you instant feedback as to how youâre doing.
If you are going to subsequently hot press it for Rosin, there is less concern for debris than if you covet bragging rights full melt.
I ask because there is not a huge market in these parts for hash or dry sieve, but the Rosin folks love it.
If you are seeking full melt, the additional debris would ostensibly add more work and Iâve never seen it done in bulk quantities, but have done small batches electrostatically âghetto fashionâ using parchment paper and a DVD cart.
2 Likes
Tell me about it! Iâm working with hemp and high cbd cultivars and these consumers are some of the least educated in the cannabis industry.
@octoarm what kind of products are you looking to produce with the sift?
Iâve got a small market for hemp kief, mainly being used in âmoon rocksâ. Iâm just a cog in the wheel, with a shipping container full of hemp that needs to be turned into something marketable. I built a kief tumbler many-a-year ago out of two bicycle rims with about 8 thin rods welded between them. Wrapped it in a screen and mounted it inside a big plastic storage trunk. One of the wheels had a little axle that poked through the trunk and we connected it to an electric motor. It worked great. It didât make it through the years and Iâm hoping somebody local has something I could buy / rent / borrow to run a bit of material through. All the comments on this thread are pointing towards a DIY system⌠finding the time to do it is the challenge.
If you just want quick easy kief just shake it with some dry ice in a 5 gal bucket and dump it through a 120 or larger bubble bag like a big salt shaker, you can make hundreds of grams really quick with minimal input and it will be fine quality for hemp moon rocks.
3 Likes
The action of bouncing the material in a bucket with a screen bottom gets a lot more done than any other tumbling or screening i have tried.
Right? Like hundreds of grams from good material in a matter of seconds! I understand itâs not full melt but for moon rocks or to press for rosin its fine.
2 Likes
So you cut off the bottom of the bucket attach screen printing type screen on there and shake with lid on?
Brilliant. I never thought of using one this way. Sometimes I feel dumb as shit. I swear I do.
Thanks for this