Anyone have experience with short path distillation?

[hdrsolutions]

Well I’m about 2 months away from harvesting, and I’m thinking about what equipment I need to buy to turn my harvest into the products I like consuming. Wax is a no brainer. I live on 4 acres and can either blast outdoors until I can invest in a closed loop system or use I can just use hexane (which I should mostly be able to reclaim in a distillation apparatus anyway).

I found a decent short path distillation setup on eBay for under $400, and even though it’s simple, it has a good digital stirring mantle, a good Vigreux column for fractional distillation, and it’s plenty big for how much material I’ll be processing. It looks like the only thing not included is a vacuum pump, and I’ll have to probably rig up some sort of ghetto chiller for the water in the condenser.

So who here has actually done it? I’m sick of getting ripped off by the dispensaries and am going to make my own distillate. I’m committed to buying the equipment before I harvest, but I’m just wondering if anyone here has any experience with it and what advice they can give me. I’m specifically interested about chilling the water for the condenser. Should I do something fancy, or something simple like a tub of water with dry ice and a pond pump? Should I run the fraction with the goodies in it a second time for higher purity or is one run enough? What about terpenes? Should I buy pure terpenes or just add some of the terpene fraction back into the THC? Or better yet, can I further isolate the terpenes by running a fractional distillation of the terpene fraction?

 

[shredder]

Well I’m about 2 months away from harvesting, and I’m thinking about what equipment I need to buy to turn my harvest into the products I like consuming. Wax is a no brainer. I live on 4 acres and can either blast outdoors until I can invest in a closed loop system or use I can just use hexane (which I should mostly be able to reclaim in a distillation apparatus anyway).

I found a decent short path distillation setup on eBay for under $400, and even though it’s simple, it has a good digital stirring mantle, a good Vigreux column for fractional distillation, and it’s plenty big for how much material I’ll be processing. It looks like the only thing not included is a vacuum pump, and I’ll have to probably rig up some sort of ghetto chiller for the water in the condenser.

So who here has actually done it? I’m sick of getting ripped off by the dispensaries and am going to make my own distillate. I’m committed to buying the equipment before I harvest, but I’m just wondering if anyone here has any experience with it and what advice they can give me. I’m specifically interested about chilling the water for the condenser. Should I do something fancy, or something simple like a tub of water with dry ice and a pond pump? Should I run the fraction with the goodies in it a second time for higher purity or is one run enough? What about terpenes? Should I buy pure terpenes or just add some of the terpene fraction back into the THC? Or better yet, can I further isolate the terpenes by running a fractional distillation of the terpene fraction?

Keep it simple, get a press and squeeze your own rosin. It's probably the most popular concentrate, and it's easy, but most importantly it's safe.

 

[hdrsolutions]

Keep it simple, get a press and squeeze your own rosin. It's probably the most popular concentrate, and it's easy, but most importantly it's safe.

True. Solventless stuff is really good, but even if you winterize it for a whole week you’re looking at 80% purity max, and you’ll have to winterize it for a week to get it to the point where it will vape in a cartridge nicely. So if I’ve gotta winterize it to get it in a cartridge that defeats the purpose of going solventless in the first place. I’d love to get a rosin press for dabs, or hell even make distillate from rosin, but for the time being a hexane extraction into a cheap short path setup is the quickest route to making my own distillate IMO.

 

[shredder]

True. Solventless stuff is really good, but even if you winterize it for a whole week you’re looking at 80% purity max, and you’ll have to winterize it for a week to get it to the point where it will vape in a cartridge nicely. So if I’ve gotta winterize it to get it in a cartridge that defeats the purpose of going solventless in the first place. I’d love to get a rosin press for dabs, or hell even make distillate from rosin, but for the time being a hexane extraction into a cheap short path setup is the quickest route to making my own distillate IMO.

A cart vape is not the only option. I vape terpy rosin all day with a saionara. Bulletproof little vape on a 75w box mod. Puff it up, humbolt vape tech and planet of the vapes all have them, alone and in kits. Tons of coil options, from dragon breath to gentle clouds. And there are more options, like divine tribe'vapes.

Of course they hit harder than a cart vape, so it's tough to continually hit it, unless your aiming to get extreamly high, not that there's anything wrong with that, lol.

It just seems your going through a lot to keep your cart filled. And it can be dangerous as well. While pressing and dabbing is relatively easy, and somewhat safe.

 

[hdrsolutions]

Okay that thing is fuckin dope and I’m getting one! You’ve still gotta carry your wax with you and dab it on the coils though, and my favorite thing about distillate carts is that I don’t have to mess with it. I just push a button and get stoned. I can’t imagine you could load more than like 3-4 hits at a time on that thing. Sure beats the hell out rigging up an RDA for wax though. You don’t have to sell me on any of this other stuff. I love wax and all things dab related, but I also love being able to pack almost 1000mgs of medication into a vape the size of a pen that I can hit totally discreetly.

I also don’t think of this as “going through a lot” or inconveniencing myself in any way. I see this as the potential start of an awesome new hobby. I know there’s a big movement of people that strongly advocate for solventless products, and I don’t disagree with them, but I also don’t think that working with solvents is dangerous as long as you don’t do anything stupid like blast a bunch of BHO indoors or try to evaporate a pan of hexane oil in a gas oven. I do all my evaporating on an electric hot plate stirrer, outdoors. For this project I’ll do all my blasting, purging, and everything but processing the final purged wax into distillate outdoors as well. I’m not terribly worried about trace hexane and butane when I’m gonna wash everything in ethanol and winterize it anyway.

Admittedly I also want to undermine the local dispensaries that charge 40 bucks plus tax for a .5ml cart with a mandatory 70% purity cap. Making my own, superior shit and never paying for it again will make me really happy.

 

[invertedisdead]

So if I’ve gotta winterize it to get it in a cartridge that defeats the purpose of going solventless in the first place.

I’m not terribly worried about trace hexane and butane when I’m gonna wash everything in ethanol and winterize it anyway.

Like you said, you're going to winterize everything anyways - what do you gain with distillate over winterized rosin or hydrocarbon extract? All of them are going to need good cannabis derived terpenes to have any real efficacy.

Although if you research enough you'll find that some people are successfully doing live rosin in a cartridge with zero solvents, just a little bit of post-processing. Very high quality hash is needed to pull that off though.

 

[MegaMan2k]

Invertedisdead is def onto something,

But i guess its a different route: getting a freeze drier instead of that spd and use water and ice for your extraction instead of hexane.
Pressing select grades of the bubble (depnding on strain and grow method) will yield some super pure oil, And there is the jar tech, i suppose this is the kind of rosin oil that would be perfect for that?

 

[hdrsolutions]

This is cool. I’m really enjoying this info. A rosin press is definitely on my wish list, and maybe if I press bubble hash and winterize it I can get something approaching the potency of lower grade distillate.

 

[Hackerman]

Be very careful with what you chose to dilute the distillate with. Right now, True Terpenes is under the gun for putting mineral oil in their dilutant. And, other companies are doing the same, I'm sure.

Fucking shotgun old West out there right now so be careful.

Just out of curiosity, what were you planning to use to dilute the distillate?

Do you have a link to the distillation setup you saw on eBay?

 

[invertedisdead]

This is cool. I’m really enjoying this info. A rosin press is definitely on my wish list, and maybe if I press bubble hash and winterize it I can get something approaching the potency of lower grade distillate.

The rosin pros making solventless cartridges don't winterize, they just use extremely high quality starting material, but I realize obtaining that skill level in hash making is a whole world unto itself. Done properly, it should be far more potent than any distillate, which in my opinion, is not that potent by itself as it is almost entirely THC. IMO the natural terpene profile in the rosin is going to be extremely hard to come close to replicating with any type of reintroduced terpenes, even terpenes distilled from the source material. Distillate with distilled cannabis terpenes can be quite good though.

For what its worth the cutting edge brands making the highest quality cartridges here in California aren't really using distillate or winterization anymore as there are more streamlined methods in a commercial production scenario without going through all that.

 

[hdrsolutions]

very cool. I don’t smoke flower so I have no problem turning my entire harvest into concentrate. I’m not very sentimental about big pretty buds.

 

[MegaMan2k]

What you should be sentimental about is the glands on that big pretty bud, so ur on the right track my friend! :-D

If u dare giving it a try, i can promise u later on you wont regret it, when it comes to water extraction.
Sure its an "art" but the art is pretty much being total ocd about every little step in the process,
If you havnt already i would recommend watching some bubbleman videoes theres quite a few water extraction related videos on his youtube channel, also step by step instructions etc

 

[hdrsolutions]

I’m definitely glad I posted here, because I’m getting some good new info here. My state is not on the cutting edge when it comes to weed. We don’t have recreational here, and we medical patients have to get a special license to grow our own. Basically you pay a fee and have to get a signed form from whoever owns the real estate where you’ll be growing. Our last recreational bill (that failed) tried to set up state run dispensaries, keep possession as a crime if you can’t show a medical card or a receipt from a state run rec dispensary, and would have kept growing your own illegal. Thank goodness it didn’t pass.

I have a medical card and all that but I still think our laws suck.

70% pure distillate is the purest shit you can get from a dispensary here. They call solventless wax “live resin” and it’s expensive as fuck. Even BHO is like $25 for a half gram. I try to get my concentrates on the black market because I get really clean shatter for $25 a gram and 97.8% pure distillate for $40 but it isn’t always available and my dude might be going to prison soon.

I’m growing my own so I can circumvent all the dispensary bullshit and produce my own medicine of equal or higher quality. I’ve always really liked distillate but I’ve never tried any of these cutting edge solventless preparations you guys are talking about. Last time I was in Colorado their recreational stuff was weak and I haven’t been out to California or Nevada since they legalized it. I wouldn’t be able to get access to their medical stuff with my New Mexico card anyway. I’m going to be making my concentrates out of top shelf bud, not trim. I want my cartridges to blow away anything you could get at the dispensary. I’m really interested to know how you can get solventless concentrate into a cartridge without winterizing it, since the heat brings along all the waxes and lipids that will wreck your cartridge that you need to winterize to filter out properly.

 

[Hackerman]

I saw one example where the person pressed some very nice dry sift and got some very golden rosin. It was pretty runny but still too thick for a cart. After he decrb'd it he said it was thin enough for a cart without ANY dilutant.

I have tried several times but I can never get it runny enough to use in a cart without some kind of dilutant.

 

[mephisto]

Glad to hear of another person who found Colorado's rec. herb to be weak. How about pressed rosin, dissolved in ethanol, filtered with a syringe filter while in liquid form?. Final product will not have the waxes and fats to kill a coil, but will still need a small amount of dilutant for using in a cart. It has been working for me, please feel free to pm for further details.

 

[shredder]

Okay that thing is fuckin dope and I’m getting one! You’ve still gotta carry your wax with you and dab it on the coils though, and my favorite thing about distillate carts is that I don’t have to mess with it. I just push a button and get stoned. I can’t imagine you could load more than like 3-4 hits at a time on that thing.

I load a pea size glob of rosin at a time. I use a ceramic donut coil and I can hit off it all day on one load.

I get it, you like your carts. I won't bother you any more. Good luck.

 

[PPN]

I load a pea size glob of rosin at a time. I use a ceramic donut coil and I can hit off it all day on one load.

Me too, the one I use the more is the Cerum by yocan, I got some tanks (but no distillate though...) I use with wax/shatter diluted with some drops of terpènes in but the terpenes are not my cup of tea and carts/tanks doesn't taste as good as a clean donut except maybe for half of the first fill.

I was amazed when I initially filled my Trinity tanks but they failed quickly in several departments, taste, functionnality and even clouds production.

Finally got back to my beloved Hercule SR-74, donuts attys and quartz coil. I never tested the bucket coils except the Quartz quest which is nice but not easy on the go, i use it exclusively at home.

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

I also don’t think of this as “going through a lot” or inconveniencing myself in any way. I see this as the potential start of an awesome new hobby.

There's just not much interest in extraction on FC. Everyone seems to be overlooking that for a chemist, the process can be almost as enjoyable as the product. Would love to try fractional distillation, but the starting volume has always seemed prohibitive. Very interested to hear of your progress with this - good luck!

 

[hdrsolutions]

I think I found an even cheaper alternative to short path distillation. I can get a used rotovap in good condition for a lot cheaper than a short path and with a rosin press and a rotovap I can make THCA diamonds. Hell, I can just precipitate them straight out of a winterized acetone extraction and go straight from nugs to diamonds. Once you have the diamonds you can go pretty much anywhere. Decarb that shit, add some terpenes, and that’s gonna be pretty much as pure as you can get and just as good in a cart as distillate. I wasn’t aware of diamonds until I bought some at the dispensary today and naturally I had to learn how they’re made. The rotovap process is pretty cool. You just make an acetone solution, evaporate it under vacuum until it’s nice and thick, and then just create the proper conditions for crystal formation. You can probably wash the crystals with more acetone just like with mescaline and get something insanely clean. Plus acetone is super easy to purge unlike alkanes.

And I’m no chemist, just a chef, lol. You have to be good at math to call yourself a chemist and I just have a basic grasp of how everything interacts.

Me too, the one I use the more is the Cerum by yocan, I got some tanks (but no distillate though...) I use with wax/shatter diluted with some drops of terpènes in but the terpenes are not my cup of tea and carts/tanks doesn't taste as good as a clean donut except maybe for half of the first fill.

I was amazed when I initially filled my Trinity tanks but they failed quickly in several departments, taste, functionnality and even clouds production.

Finally got back to my beloved Hercule SR-74, donuts attys and quartz coil. I never tested the bucket coils except the Quartz quest which is nice but not easy on the go, i use it exclusively at home.

You can put BHO in an oil tank but don’t just heat it up and add terpenes. You’ve gotta really thoroughly decarb and winterize it first or else it will wreck the coils. I do it like this. I dissolve the BHO in ethanol on a magnetic stir hot plate and evaporate it down to almost nothing. This purges any remaining butane and decarbs it. Then I add more ethanol and put it in the freezer for a few days, along with another beaker with a small funnel and a double coffee filter set up inside. After a few days I pour the solution through the filter, doing this inside the freezer, and then close the door to let it filter. Once that’s done you can evaporate it once more and once you’ve gotten all the ethanol out it’s ready to go. If it’s too thick add a couple drops of MCT oil or your favorite terpene solution.

Like Accept said though, this is only really worthwhile to do if this is something you enjoy doing.

 

[invertedisdead]

I think I found an even cheaper alternative to short path distillation. I can get a used rotovap in good condition for a lot cheaper than a short path and with a rosin press and a rotovap I can make THCA diamonds. Hell, I can just precipitate them straight out of a winterized acetone extraction and go straight from nugs to diamonds. Once you have the diamonds you can go pretty much anywhere. Decarb that shit, add some terpenes, and that’s gonna be pretty much as pure as you can get and just as good in a cart as distillate. I wasn’t aware of diamonds until I bought some at the dispensary today and naturally I had to learn how they’re made. The rotovap process is pretty cool. You just make an acetone solution, evaporate it under vacuum until it’s nice and thick, and then just create the proper conditions for crystal formation. You can probably wash the crystals with more acetone just like with mescaline and get something insanely clean. Plus acetone is super easy to purge unlike alkanes.

You can make diamonds just with rosin techniques.

But diamonds are essentially pure THC, so the effects won't feel super complete. Winterized extract would likely produce a better effect as it will retain some of the plants other minor cannabinoids and natural terpenes. It's still gonna need terpenes added though, and sourcing great cannabis terpenes would be essential in my opinion to make it taste and feel proper. That's the hardest part about these carts - it's super simple in theory, it's just getting great cannabis terpenes that is tricky. Going through all of that work just to add in vegetable terps would be a major deal killer for me.

 

[hdrsolutions]

You can make diamonds just with rosin techniques.

But diamonds are essentially pure THC, so the effects won't feel super complete. Winterized extract would likely produce a better effect as it will retain some of the plants other minor cannabinoids and natural terpenes. It's still gonna need terpenes added though, and sourcing great cannabis terpenes would be essential in my opinion to make it taste and feel proper. That's the hardest part about these carts - it's super simple in theory, it's just getting great cannabis terpenes that is tricky. Going through all of that work just to add in vegetable terps would be a major deal killer for me.

How can you make solventless diamonds? I thought the whole process required everything stay cool enough that it doesn’t decarb, and only THCA crystallizes and THC doesn’t. From what I understand this means you need to extract and melt your rosin under vacuum somehow so it doesn’t decarb, and then would you still have to use acetone or something to get the conditions right for crystal formation? I would really like to learn more because if there’s a way to precipitate out pure THCA crystals without any expensive equipment then that’s the most efficient path to a really good concentrate. I would love to go solventless and not have to buy thousands of dollars worth of gear. I still have a month and a half or so before I harvest to figure it out.

I wonder if I could do it without the rotovap. I have a magnetic stir hot plate and I’m sure I could rig something up to evaporate the acetone. I’d still need someway to evaporate the acetone off under vacuum, which at the very least means a vacuum pump, cold trap, and condenser. Still kind of expensive. I’d love to have all this stuff but I don’t have thousands of dollars lying around.

 

[Deleted Member 1643]

I’d still need someway to evaporate the acetone off under vacuum, which at the very least means a vacuum pump, cold trap, and condenser.

Been purging ethanol with a faucet aspirator for a few years at this point. Works fine and only costs ~$20.
https://www.carolina.com/science-lab-filtration/filter-pump-or-aspirator/711936.pr

 

[btka]

How can you make solventless diamonds?

1.) mechanical seperation with different heat and pressure

2.) jar tek (you can compare the process as far as I understood (no chemist) with crystalization of honey), there are different ways to do it heat mates or putting in oven... but I could not find until now a good resource with good informations and step by step showing how to do it...
only could find this but do not like it because oven and higher temps included...

keep us updated with your results ....

as far as I understood it you could use the terp portion for carts... (when terps and thca seperates)...

how does blueriver make their carts mechanical seperation?

 

[hdrsolutions]

Whoa! Thanks! This really is a game changer. I didn’t realize all it was was heat, pressure, and different sized micron screens. You really kind of opened my eyes in a way that nobody else has been able to with those videos. After watching those I am definitely convinced that rosin is the way to go. I can get a nice press on eBay for under $300 and I work in the commercial construction industry and used to grow mushrooms so I’m very familiar with sourcing all the different filter media. Thanks a ton dude. You’ve shown me the light.

My new plan is to get a press, a stick blender, and some bubble bags and just run the plants into full melt and press from there.

So check out this press. It’s like $280 on amazon but I can get it for $250 on eBay. It doesn’t look fancy but it looks like it will do the job. I think the only other thing I might need is a good digital hot plate for curing.

VEVOR 2.4" x 4.7" Heat Press Hand Crank Heat Press Machine 110V 900W Duel Heated Plates https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J55VKP2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_rJa9CbHEEHH4B

I also just had a revelation that all the wax I get from my favorite dispensary that I like so much is made this way. It’s all called like “cured resin”, or “cured diamonds”.

I’m really glad you guys kept on me about learning more about rosin.

Here’s the same press on eBay.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/273867772320

I don’t think I even need the bubble bags. I think I can just get some 400mesh SS screen sheets and use them for both extracting and the initial press, and then get some of those fine mesh bags for the subsequent extractions. The only problem with that press is that there’s no way to tell how much pressure you’re applying, but maybe I could figure out some way to install a gauge.