My girl told me they’re tapioca pearls.
I was late to the party
Awesome demo with the pearls man!!
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why not a venturi water pump or a peristaltic pump?
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Great food for thought!
A peristaltic pump would crush trichomes as the tube is squeezed.
A venturi pump is an option or even a fish pump. In the end, it comes down to price and convenience.
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Seems like an impeller would be worse about crushing considering the clearances involved
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A centrifugal pump seem like it would be a better choice since the impellers don’t make contact with the wall. As long as you keep the rotation gentle enough, (maybe a pneumatic one with a controller) it may be better than a diaphragm pump.
Am I overlooking anything?
Shear is proportional to the velocity gradient. Since centrifugal pumps must spin very fast in order to pump, even a slow gpm pump will have a fast moving impeller. The high speed of the blades will either cut the trichomes or trichomes will slam on the blade or pump walls and pop or get damaged. This can be solved by designing an impeller that really reduces shear as much as possible. This type of impeller exists and we are testing this type of impeller on this current test.
Exactly how much any of these pumps damage trichomes is unknown. I have not seen any study or attempt to quantify this. Our efforts are by no means worthy of a research paper, but would prove a point. I would be happy with a 1% reduction of loss as over time that adds up.
Has anyone seen any data supporting pump performance on trichomes one way or another?
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Are you talking rotary lobe?
A good experiment might be to make a batch and split it between all the pumps you want to try. Your control would just be regular style sitting over your mesh screens with vibration if you like. Then test all the different pumps types you want to try and see how it works by comparison and compare the yields in each mesh size. Then obviously dry and see the quality, maybe look at them under a microscope if you like and do counts.
Thanks for the quick crash course on shear (I’m not an engineer so I shoot from the hip most times). It might be interesting to attempt to calculate/measure the surface tension of a trichome at 0C since at small sizes surface tension is a major force in the micrometer scale.
Hear me out…if there was an airtight lid for these bruteless vessels one could use a very low psi of compressed air to transfer slurry from the wash vessel to the filter vessel and then the normal transfer pumps downstream to refill wash vessel.
It’s such a common method of transfer in solvent extraction and intrinsically motor less thus avoiding any of this trichome destruction we all seek to avoid.
Air compression and inline dryer is already a feature in solventless labs as well…for the press and diaphragm transfer pumps
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No. My guess is that lobe or gear would be the same issue as with peristaltic pumps. I’m talking about centrifugal impeller pumps.
We are doing exactly what you suggest. We are washing lots of biomass, homogenizing the hash, splitting it into representative samples, and testing 3 pumps.
Particle distribution tests were not contemplated but they may be enlightening. Perhaps say only large trichomes get damaged in a particular pump and so on. Great idea. Will add this.
We are not looking under a microscope. I don’t have one that is any good and I do not know how to analyze in a scientific manner what I’m looking at. In a microscope, I can only look at a few trichomes at a time. Is that representative of the entire batch? Or did I pick the nicest cherries? Was the damage from the pump or the extraction process? I know a shit ton about taking representative samples (mining thing) to know how difficult this type of observation would be. I could tell you my opinion however and say in a non-scientific way, this lot looks better than the other. Thoughts?
Any ideas on how to calculate surface tension?
Absolutely. There are definitely many ways to do this.
I personally don’t think this is so complicated. My approach is to take the fastest, easiest, and most convenient way to do this and do it at a reasonable cost. Whatever the setup is, the fact that it works does not mean it’s the best option. Workflow and convenience are extremely important. We change designs all the time to account for ergonomics and workflow. Equipment must be easy to use and make the operator’s life easier and more productive. More complex setups may add more time, equipment, and long-term costs. (Not referring to your suggestion, just speaking in general.)
I would not be surprised if the difference in a normal ball and cage pump over our hash pump is under 5%. However, even at 0.5% hash damage, the pump pays itself quickly in a big lab. Savings of 1% may not make sense for a home grower, where you would just opt to purchase the cheapest pump possible. @SubstituteCreature has a system that works for him and many others must have innovative ideas that are cost-effective.
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The microscope stuff is take it or leave it. Sometimes when trying to do counts, there isn’t a great way to do it quickly or even that effective, but its better than nothing and you just have to deal with it and count. There may be some counting software that can help, but because trichome lysis would imply a size change, the particle analysis may yield more compelling results than counting.
As for surface tension, you might be able to ball-park it by pressing your hash into rosin and measuring the surface tension as a bulk oil at 0 C; this may be hard as well because you may be dealing with a glass/solid and not a fluid, so maybe tensile/shear strength may be more appropriate. While the cellular material certainly adds support, the contents themselves certainly add to this.
Altogether, it’s not going to give you any compelling information, THCA+terps don’t have any impressive properties, but as small droplets/particles, these forces are magnified, making them much stronger than you would think.
Many insects have hydrophobic coatings on them because a drop of water to them is like a glob of glue that can suck it in and suffocate them. We don’t think of water like this since we are larger and don’t notice it like this, pretty interesting.
Fantastic reply!
what about a bellows-type pump?
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For reference, I was expecting results more like this:
That’s shredded 
This post has been paid for by Sambo Creeck
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we couldn’t afford to pay.
Great post. I had a hard time doing the test cause my kids kept eating the damn pearls.
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@SamboCreeck.com you ever get anywhere with testing your AODD vs others for data on trichome babying?
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We did. Just did it in another post.
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curious as to what makes this a trichome pump specifically most diaphragm pumps will pass a bobba test its the nature of the pump…