Hey y’all- had some carts crystallize on me much to my chagrin and the guys I made them for, but after heating with a heat gun from harbor freight, they melt. I fully expected them to recrystallize afterward, but it’s been about 84 hours and still liquid…anyone experience this? I’m thanking the cannabis gods because there’s a fix, but would like to understand why. Originally used 500mg of isolate, 50mg FSO (hoping for the CBD-A to be enough for stability), and 45% combination between diluent and terps (10% strain blend)
You decarbed it?
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From my experience if you heat your mix 55% CBD 45% other enough n mix well enough you won’t get recrystal for a period when in a sealed cart because there’s nothing to start the process right away. You need a nucleus point… have tested this many times by mixing even 85-95% CBD and letting set for 5-7 days with no crystals. But if I drop even 2 grains of iso or even sugar into the mix within 12 hours it starts to crystallize.
isolate is already decarbed, hence the crystallized material I started with- it’s why did it liquify and NOT recrystallized after I heated it again inside the cart that I’m trying to figure out
95% CBD isolate?
I have a feeling the movement of it being used might re-initiate crystallization. Though at that low of a CBD percentage, you might get lucky.
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These started crystallizing on the way to deliver them the next day- diluent formula should have allowed for 50% isolate concentration…the only thing I can make of it so far is that I liken it to tempering- like when you used tempered glass or metal the molecular bonds are strengthened by being cycled through cooling at reheating…? Just mixed another 300 last night at the same isolate concentration but with 5x the FSO in the formula and so far liquid af, mixing parameters the same, diluent ratio lower at 25%
Re-Crystallization usually starts in cartridges around 50%CBD+, in my experience. Sounds like you are barely over that mark, hence the slow re-crystallization. Pair that with the little bit of CBDa in there and that’s probably what’s slowing it down.
Like @coppertop said tho, once you start using the cartridges, I would imagine they will start to re-crystallize again over time.
Yeah that was my statement to the client, but they sold a couple at a local event and had 2 out of 3 returned same night lol…so I had to figure something out. The event was local to them, not me, so I took a couple that I had set aside and hit them with the heat gun. Labs showed just under 500mg total potential cbd/1ml, so I know I didn’t go over on the concentration. That’s why I’m leaning toward temperature/time. Could also be the properties of the diluent, and all I know about it was that it’s terpenes- the first one that actually is flavorless/odorless and works well, but I wonder if the solution just needed a little more heat for it to break down the crystal structure?
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They had them returned because of the crystallization??
And then you melted them and now are wondering why they aren’t re-crystallizing?
Yeah, time/temp then, I would say. Give em some more time, smoke em a little bit… they’ll re-crystallize. Never really seen anything over 50% that didn’t re-crystallize unless there were post processed to prevent crystallization
well they’re not over 50%, so it shouldn’t have recrystallized to begin with. The issue is that they are selling cbd carts to people that don’t understand cbd isolate, and that’s common…they just see the crystals and their like “why is it like that?” and they don’t want to have to vape it halfway down before it’s melted- they had a hard time selling them, and they didn’t want crystallized carts to begin with. Now YOU AND I understand that it’s purely aesthetic and that they will be fine, but the customer doesn’t care about our opinions. They even attempted to re-frame it like “it’s max potency” but that was an unsuccessful effort. Some people just plain don’t like carts with crystals…
I’m not upset that they wanted them fixed/replaced, nor am I that once melted it stayed liquified, I just am trying to understand why because no one wants to say “I don’t know” to a client
This is the struggle of Cbd carts every brand faces and why high mg Cbd carts aren’t as common
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Well 500mg isolate + 50mg FSO would be over 50%CBD concentration, unless your FSO has 0% CBD, which would be strange… but I have even seen ones as low as 45-48%CBD crystallize…
Pure CBD is a crystalline structure. So once you concentrate enough of it, the crystals are going to form a lattice on one another. It just takes one seed crystal to start and then they stack on top of another. That’s just what crystals do man. That’s why all this tek about crystal resistance is being talked about on here. Because no one wants to have to dilute the shit out of everything.
Yeah I get ya…50mg of this particular FSO was <LOQ for cbd, it’s mostly cbda, which is why I used it…total potential cbd was under 50%
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I see, I see. Makes sense. 
right? lol you see my confusion now? It’s maddening
yeah man- it’s the why behind it. This situation has some missing variable or factor, and the best educated guess I have made is a time/temp variation in conjunction with that diluent being able to break down the crystal structure…idk I tend to overthink things, so after days im like hmm probably simple like I just didnt heat high enough or long enough
excuse my ignorance but what does FSO stand for?
FSO- Full Spectrum Oil
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What type of post processing techniques can prevent crystallization?