So, for the past 6 months ive been chasing issue after issue with my turnkey wipe film unit from USALAB. Im running CBD crude through at less than half the advertised speed rate because the majority of the wiper blades surface arent making contact with the glass. its basically half wiped film, half falling film, because the oil just runs down the side instead of being schmeared across the entire surface area.
Has anyone had issue with this machine or anthing like it???
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Are the wipers adjustable, I can’t really tell from the picture on their site…
What speed are you wiping at? I stick to ~300 RPM usually, it’ll wipe pretty well at that speed without slinging oil onto the condenser
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ive got it set to 400, any slower and it just falls down the side into the res flask.
The wiper blade ( 3 total) is 18’ long but only the top 2 inches and bottom 4’ are making contact at temp.
they arent adjustable like roller assemblies ive used in the past I tried putting stiffer and longer springs inside the middle portion, but that changed nothing.
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The housing is clearly not totally straight and true – i’ve had this happen after doing glass repairs on a broken one. There’s not much you can really do about it unfortunately except try and get them to comp you a new one.
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The yhchem “engineer” that “fixed” the paperweight we bought took out or loosed screws on the side opposite the wobble where the lid contacts the body. This helped a lot but we still had raffinate breach into body.
Agreed with magister it’s a glass defect and you can try to mitigate it but you won’t fix it.
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this is my FOURTH piece of glass and it does make contact while heating up at around 110C but then by 150 it starts to come off contact again
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Well that’s just further proof of what I’m saying – because the glass is out of true even a small amount of heating expansion makes it’s behavior different.
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Come on now @MagisterChemist we all know the solution is to circumvent the thermal expansion issue by replacing the vacuum pump with a setup that can pull down so low that cannabinoids will distill at 110C.
Problem solved!
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How low is that exactly?
HOW LOW?
lowest ive had it up and running, at higher temp, is 7.9E-01
That’s terp strip pressure
I’ve gone as low as 145 at 8e-4
110 would be absurdly low lol
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Well I would say that by itself is a problem… I would never consider distilling at such a high pressure as that.
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Sorry guys I was being a bit facetious with that response. I didn’t mean to derail this thread. Getting new glass that has been proven to remain even upon thermal expansion or moving to stainless steel would be the best options.
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seems like @ 0.790 torr you’d in the neighborhood of 200F to get it to distill…
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with uneven column walls, rollers will probably work better for you than wipers. Still, you paid for working equipment and they should have delivered working equipment.
On a related note, I build 6" glass WFE columns to fit into Chinese systems, including the one you own. LMK if you need a replacement. If this thread prohibits my promotion, apologies and admins- please remove.
Zachary Love
Principal, Stillworks Scientific Glassware
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Great place for said promotion…now point us at the pretty pictures you showed earlier.
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