Tek Home Rosin Presses under $750 - School Me

[turk]

...mine are the square ones...circular I believe were available when I ordered...I went with the more expensive ones...cheers.

 

[The Beagle]

Hi everyone,
I decided to quit doing QWET with my trim and to press it. I did some experiment with the ghetto hair straightener method with obviously low yelds. Is there a consensus on the best home solution for small scale pressing? I'm fine with a solution that includes some diy. Thank you guys!

 

[OldOyler]

Hi everyone,
I decided to quit doing QWET with my trim and to press it. I did some experiment with the ghetto hair straightener method with obviously low yelds. Is there a consensus on the best home solution for small scale pressing? I'm fine with a solution that includes some diy. Thank you guys!

Peace beagle!

Well, several on this thread already own the High5 manual rosin press, runs $338 with a built-in enail controller, they sell enails as well but I am putting a dnail slim series SIC HALO on mine. (That's an extra $180 from dnail)

So, I am ordering one in about 2 weeks.

That's the best I can give you on this thread's buying recommendation *so far* for a "turnkey rosin press for non-techs like OldOyler".

Check earlier in this thread for @Caelar900 's awesome setup with *mild* DIY needed.

And there is a "full on diy press" thread going as well in the Concentrates forum here: http://fuckcombustion.com/threads/rosin-technique-easy-diy-solventless.17470/

(That points to page 1 of well over 100 pages, so...she's a doozy...)

Peace and good things to you!

 

[The Beagle]

Yep I was looking at the diy thread but it really grew too big to be easily browsed. My problem with something like the High5 is that living in Europe shipping fares and import taxes would add too much to the final price. I think I'll better ask in the other thread and settle on getting my hands dirty.
Thanks for your answer!

 

[Hogni]

Hi, thx for this nice thread!

up to now I'm working with dry sift and bubble bags. Love full melt. But its just a part of total hash yield. Want to process the lower ones to rosin.
Got a Tarik as a gift but experiences with this piece of plastic shit were very disappointed.

Now I intend to build - or better let build - a larger DIY-rosinpress for high pressure low temp pressing. Dont want to squish weed, maybe just a few flowers for fun and personal head stache, I would prefer to squish larger amounts of no melt hash. Seems to me much less effort. Making sense? First I want to work up sugar leave trim and pocpcorn nugs to bubble or dry sift then making rosin out of them.
If it should work well I would like to process larger amounts of maroccan hash too

Want to work with a 20t or 30t hydraulic press. Plates as large as reasonable.
Plates made of combination of a thicker aluminium plate for better heat conductivity and a thinner SS plate as pressure surface for better resistance.

What would be the best size of plates regarding to the called pressure power?

Whats best for heating? Coil heaters or heater cartridges? Last option seems to me more sympathically.

One or two heating elements per plate?

If there are two heaters per plate do I need a controller for each heating element or can I use one controller per plate for two parallel in one plate working heaters?

How much watt per heater/plate?

Another question about pressing filter bags. Whats your experience? Whats better, ss mesh, nylon, silk or cotton? So far as I know for processing hashg I have to use 25µ for flowers 90µ?

I'm very sorry for so much questions. For sure they are already answered anywhere on FC I guess. But the main thread about rosin tech is sooo long and perhaps anybody of you guys knows the answers at once and would tell me them please?

 

[OldOyler]

I'm very sorry for so much questions. For sure they are already answered anywhere on FC I guess. But the main thread about rosin tech is sooo long and perhaps anybody of you guys knows the answers at once and would tell me them please?

Hogni,

Well we are cool about those questions here - as long as we are talking about a $750 build or less.

Someone like @Caelar900 or @herbivore21 could probably take a quick look at that size.

But to be clear - this isn't a restart of the "diy rosin press" thread, only for small-to-mid range setups under $750. Cool beans on that?

The size and breadth of that original thread is why we started this one - to break off a section of rosin press interest without getting into every possible setup at every possible price.

Hope no hard feelings about my saying that - and hey, those two I just tagged may easily bang this home for the $ we are covering. (They're a couple of our local FC geniuses and stuff...)

(I tagged them given the specific question about pressing rosin from bubble, etc.)

Peace hogni!

 

[Hogni]

Hi Oyler, thanks. But Limit of 750 € is no prob with my DIY set up.
- 2 x PID controller from China ~ max. 100 $
- 2-4 cartridge heater/coils from China ~ 50-100 $
- Hydraulic press ~ 200-300 $
- DIY plates ~ 100-200 $ (friendship price )
-----------------------------------------
final price: 450-700$

When I watch prices of linked DIY-set ups here, there are some much more expansive than mine configuration.

But if you think its not the right place for it here...

 

[OldOyler]

Hi Oyler, thanks. But Limit of 750 € is no prob with my DIY set up.
- 2 x PID controller from China ~ max. 100 $
- 2-4 cartridge heater/coils from China ~ 50-100 $
- Hydraulic press ~ 200-300 $
- DIY plates ~ 100-200 $ (friendship price )
-----------------------------------------
final price: 450-700$

When I watch prices of linked DIY-set ups here, there are some much more expansive than mine configuration.

But if you think its not the right place for it here...

That is *exactly* the kind of setups we are looking for here.

Sorry, I thought you were starting cold. Well honestly if I were you? I would go back in this thread and look at caelar900's setup in this thread, if I had *just* a touch more comfort with even the mildest things mechanical? I would have followed his specs.

And I am sure folks will hop on to talk to you specifically about needs for pressing bubble/kief. My knowledge there is zero.

Peace and good things hogni!

 

[Hogni]

No OOYler, have spend already some time on thinking about general questions of this project.
It would be built by a friend, who is a mechanical engineer and developer and producer of ss brew equipment. May be, if construction for me would be sucessfully, he will produce it in larger amounts on demand as a "Hop Rosin Press" for the german/european market

 

[OldOyler]

"Hop Rosin Press" for the german/european market

Exactly the kind of breadth we could use here, hogni!

We have some folks from the UK - they have their own specific set of problems, some folks from Italy, etc.

Your "international presence" here is awesome.



Peace and good things!

 

[herbivore21]

Hi, thx for this nice thread!

up to now I'm working with dry sift and bubble bags. Love full melt. But its just a part of total hash yield. Want to process the lower ones to rosin.
Got a Tarik as a gift but experiences with this piece of plastic shit were very disappointed.

Now I intend to build - or better let build - a larger DIY-rosinpress for high pressure low temp pressing. Dont want to squish weed, maybe just a few flowers for fun and personal head stache, I would prefer to squish larger amounts of no melt hash. Seems to me much less effort. Making sense? First I want to work up sugar leave trim and pocpcorn nugs to bubble or dry sift then making rosin out of them.
If it should work well I would like to process larger amounts of maroccan hash too

Want to work with a 20t or 30t hydraulic press. Plates as large as reasonable.
Plates made of combination of a thicker aluminium plate for better heat conductivity and a thinner SS plate as pressure surface for better resistance.

What would be the best size of plates regarding to the called pressure power?

Whats best for heating? Coil heaters or heater cartridges? Last option seems to me more sympathically.

One or two heating elements per plate?

If there are two heaters per plate do I need a controller for each heating element or can I use one controller per plate for two parallel in one plate working heaters?

How much watt per heater/plate?

Another question about pressing filter bags. Whats your experience? Whats better, ss mesh, nylon, silk or cotton? So far as I know for processing hashg I have to use 25µ for flowers 90µ?

I'm very sorry for so much questions. For sure they are already answered anywhere on FC I guess. But the main thread about rosin tech is sooo long and perhaps anybody of you guys knows the answers at once and would tell me them please?

Filter bags for flower IME are very, very difficult. You should consider pressing without screens when squishing flowers and if you find that there is contaminant in your final product, place your rosin slab in a screen and clean it up that way

For hash, 25u screen bags work well.

Now as to squishing hash - if you are buying retail hash cheaply, this is a good idea! Very cost efficient dabs can be had in some places! You want your hash to be as melty as possible. Truly no-melt hash is going to give you returns similar to flower, not what we usually hear about people pressing from hash.

Further to this, squishing dry sift is very difficult without efforts to re-hydrate it. It is too dry to squish a lot of the time IME. Bubble hash of any kind lends itself more easily to squishing IME, it is very, very easy to squish.

With all of this being said, I would not squish a 4 star or better bubble hash into rosin. 4 star is very melty hash, and you may or may not find any of it being retailed in your neighborhood anyway. There is a part of the flavor that is lost in rosin made from melty bubble. This happens to be the best part of the flavor IME. Just vape any 4 star as is if you find it

You could easily make large plates, 6"-8" or larger diameter round plates would have no problem with the pressure you've got there. You might even be able to justify larger than this!

If you are mostly squishing hash though man, let me point out that you are gonna have way more pressure than you need here and blow-outs will be a major risk. Hash requires much less pressure than flower to squish - like 1/3 of the pressure that it takes with flower can do the job for bubble squishing IME. More can risk damaging screens. Nylon screens are very, very easy to blow-out until you learn the upper limits of pressure. Muslin (unbleached cotton) sheet presses better and has less blow-outs at higher pressure, but loses a little more material in the cotton. I have not used SS screens yet, but I'd imagine they'd be great for lower temp pressing at the expense of too much heat at higher temps (SS retains heat) and possible damage to the parchment at higher pressures. This may mean that SS is great for hash pressing, which requires lower pressure than flower.

The Tarik presses are complete garbage btw, they can't get enough pressure to be useful for much as you learned.

However, if you are never squishing much/any flower, then you really should consider that you will only require 1 ton of pressure or so to get the results you need and even then you will have enough pressure to blow-out and break your screens. Larger hydraulic/pneumatic presses are very likely to be overkill for your intended purpose. To determine this, how much hash are you looking to press at a time? Please include a picture of an example of the quality if possible. Does it bubble at all when heated or is it truly completely no-melt?

Also I have to correct you brother, all of my bubble washes in all of my bags except for the contaminant bag are full melt almost every time - the rare exceptions where I don't get all-full-melt returns, I might get a very small amount of 4 star (maybe 1/20th of the total return)

If you are getting low/no yields for full melt when you make bubble, there is a problem with your technique or your starting material is lacking quality.

Now some people get offended and argumentative when I tell them that their flower isn't worth making full melt out of. However, I know that you can make any kind of extract from immature flowers (QWET/rosin/QWISO/BHO/less grade hashes). Being the exception, full melt is best made from the most high quality flowers with the most mature resin - otherwise you get a lot of lesser melting hash.

This is because immature flowers have much less resin in each trichome gland, which has not had a chance to develop. As a result, a higher % of the resin glands is made up of inactive material (membrane, secretory cells, terp precursors etc).

A requirement of reliable full-melt production is developing the ability to understand which flowers/trim will make full melt in abundance, and which will not. This took me a long time myself, coming from solvent extracts and rosin before that and being able to get oil out of most material, regardless of the quality.

If you are making the hash (not buying it), I suggest working on your technique or finding better starting material with which to make full melt, or doing flower rosin - since you'll get a hell of a lot more dabbable medicine back from the same starting material and if your hash really is low-melt, minimal difference in quality. If you are buying, then back to my above question and let's find out how much you want to press at once before deciding on an appropriate sized press

 

[Hogni]

Hi Herb,

thank you for your detailled reply!

I'm making my own full melt (~40 gr. from Buds) and around 200 gr. half/no-melt longer sieved or less bubble. Nearly 1 kg good sugar leaf trim and popcorn as starting material which I could use too. Cant take more flowers. So much people love them.
Sorry, dont have pics. Documenting my own deeds?
You are right. Could work on my techniques of hashmaking.
But would like to process the lower grade stuff or to upgrade maroccan resin starting material.

 

[herbivore21]

Hi Herb,

thank you for your detailled reply!

I'm making my own full melt (~40 gr. from Buds) and around 200 gr. half/no-melt longer sieved or less bubble. Nearly 1 kg good sugar leaf trim and popcorn as starting material which I could use too. Cant take more flowers. So much people love them.
Sorry, dont have pics. Documenting my own deeds?
You are right. Could work on my techniques of hashmaking.
But would like to process the lower grade stuff or to upgrade maroccan resin starting material.

I am glad to help my friend

For upgrading your Morrocan hash and lower grade no-melt yields that you already have, rosin will help you. The question of how much you want to press at a time is very important for these. Also don't expect great yields from your no-melt hash (it isn't impossible to get good yields, but low expectations mean we don't get disappointed ). Still, obviously there's no problem at all for you getting large amounts of material to process so I am assuming that low yields probably won't be a concern so long as you get as much dabbable product as possible?

The Morrocan could actually give you quite a good return, depending on the quality. I have definitely heard of good returns from Morrocan in the past. Some of our OG Euro members would know better about this question. Maybe one of them will see this and help us out?

To squish 200g of the half/no-melt material, you could put this into screens and press. For that sort of quantity, I would suggest you start of squishing small amounts at a time, whatever you do. If something goes wrong, you do not want to mince up your screens in with your hash with too much pressure! I think you would find you won't need more than a 10t press. I would definitely recommend rectangular plates of similar dimensions to the size of pressing screens you want to use. The plates should be slightly larger in surface area than the screens to ensure that the entire load is pressed and none of it slips outside of the plates.

I really need to get my hands on a pressure gauge for my press because I need to document the best pressure levels for squishing hash with screens or my own purposes anyway.

I think it would be prudent to choose bag and plate sizes for your purposes that require that you squish larger amounts of hash at a time, in order to minimize PSI that can be applied to your load and prevent blow-outs by design, rather than just trying to avoid too much cranking down of the ram

I am not actually sure how much hash can be fit into the largest of rosin bags though, having never had occasion to rosin such large amounts of hash! Let's see if I can't find out some of this information over the next day or two so we can continue this discussion in more detail and give you the best possible solution.

 

[Hogni]

Hi Herb,

appreciate your efforts!

I had the same thoughts about design and measures of the plates.

I dont know. Should be 10 - 20gr broken/unpressed material per squish? I dont intend to use the press over days.

I think its not a fault to have more pressure. I can control pressure with the gauge. If I should need more pressure for flowers I still have reserves of power.

When using hash is a yield of 30-60% realistically depending on qualtity of starting material?

Could make our own bags. Eventually we'll buy some square meters of 25µ ss mesh and build our own ones.

Herb, would be very friendly if you would use your contacts for more informations!

 

[herbivore21]

Hi Herb,

appreciate your efforts!

I had the same thoughts about design and measures of the plates.

I dont know. Should be 10 - 20gr broken/unpressed material per squish? I dont intend to use the press over days.

I think its not a fault to have more pressure. I can control pressure with the gauge. If I should need more pressure for flowers I still have reserves of power.

When using hash is a yield of 30-60% realistically depending on qualtity of starting material?

Could make our own bags. Eventually we'll buy some square meters of 25µ ss mesh and build our own ones.

Herb, would be very friendly if you would use your contacts for more informations!

More pressure than you need can be helpful to dial in when you want to squash flowers like you say. Get a gauge. Get some replicable data on how much pressure it takes to damage a screen, then simply don't press that hard again lol

I think the plate size should be chosen on the basis of the size of your screen/pouches that you will squish your hash in. You can still use these plates for flowers too of course, but you'll thank yourself for having plates that get your hash rosin away from the heat as quickly as possible if this is what you are usually doing.

What we need to find out now is what size screens and plates will work for your situation. I'll have a look at this later on, other work to do first.

Also yes, 30-60% returns are quite reasonable expectations from hashes depending on the quality. No melt don't expect more than 20-30% really. 3 star may get you 50% or slightly more. A 4 star can return most of your weight back in rosin easily (but it is really nicer to vape 4 star bubble than dab the rosin you press, some of the flavor is lost in the rosin process). Finally, if you are pressing full melt into rosin, IMHO you are not in a fit mental state to operate a heavy hot press, lol! But you know this

Your Morrocan may get you returns at either end of the 30-60% range. Your no melt bubble or sift is likely to be on the low end of this range, or less still.

 

[Hogni]

After next crop I will test needed area of x gramm unpressed sift.

How thick should be a filled bag max? 1"?

Planned set up atm:

My friend wants to build a ss table frame strong enough to stand 30 t.

A handpumped hydraulic pump with a long arm and a gauge is fine to me. Dont need no motor driven pump.

Two rectangular plates, size unknown up to now, each plate made of a thicker alu plate (for better heat conductivtiy) and a thinner ss plate (for better mechanical resistance) for the pressure surface.

Fired by one or two heating elements (coil?/cartridge?/watt (220v!) per heater/plate?) per plate and controlled by two (four?) PIDs. I dont know but think one controller for two heating elements in the same plate should be good enough?

BTW I need a press to make hop rosin from hop buds for dry hopping (Homebrewer) for real.

Aroma of Hop Rosin is amazing! Terpenes pure! And no hop smut in kegs afterwards anymore! But its slave labor doing this with an hair straightner or this fucking Tarik.

 

[SamuraiSam]

I've used a variety of tools and rosin devices over the last year and a half...I've used hair straighteners, Vice-Grip clamps, t-shirt presses, pnuematic presses, arbor presses, and most recently spent two months in northern California harvesting, hashing, and rosining; most rosin manufacture during that time was in pressing less than full-melt bubble into hash rosin; I also made some flower rosin and sift rosin.

I used a Medisun manual press initially, then purchased a Dake B-10 that I mounted the Medisun pucks onto. I suggested an upgrade to the Timewizard greyfox plates ASAP, since the Medisun plates are drastically undersized for 10 tons of force. For the cost, about $315 delivered, I don't think the Dake B-10 can be beat for North American rosin pressers interested in maximizing their dollars for quality and force, but it's pretty large compared to a Elysian press, or the forthcoming Timewizard press.

Besides cost, quality of press is worth considering. The High 5 press is small, inexpensive, and breaks. My friend broke the teeth out of his High 5 pretty quickly.

I've used the manual Medisun press, which doesn't cost that much more, and uses a much higher quality arbor press in its build. The teeth are beefier, and after upgrading the T bar to a 1/2" socket extension, you can put a 4-6' cheater bar on the end and reef on it. (When the press is bolted to a solid work surface.)

The real issue I have with the Medisun press is the use of barrel coils inside giant cavities for its heating press. It's really inefficient and the gradual transfer of heat is a nightmare for accurate temperature control.

The Low temp plates are decent, and social media seems to like them.

From an engineering perspective, the Timewolf Greyfox plates are a superior design that utilize much larger, quality heating elements. https://www.instagram.com/timewizard_greyfox/ His 3"x5" platen + heater + PID setups cost a bit more than Lowtemp's, but if quality of oil output is important, I believe it to be worth going for accuracy and quality.

@Hogni have you tried dabbing your hop rosin yet? I found hop rosin to be pretty offensive tasting, and very sedating. What kind of temperatures did you press out at? I got amazing scents below 160 but the consistency was uncollectable. PS the Elysian Research tutorials may be useful for utilizing directional flow to press larger amounts of hash with stainless steel mesh and paper filtration.

 

[EpicNameGuy]

Ideally, smaller plates that allowed this for the purposes of .5g squishes would be great, but man they dont exist in retail presses/plates ime nor anything ive seen without using a hair straightener. This kind of plate would need to be 1-1.5" and round or something thereabouts! Ime 2 inch round plates aren't small enough to achieve this!

The NugRunner v1 has plates that are 1.5 inches in diameter. In practice, this means .5-.8 grams will squish to the area of the plates depending on flower density. Just thought I'd share for reference.

 

[herbivore21]

The NugRunner v1 has plates that are 1.5 inches in diameter. In practice, this means .5-.8 grams will squish to the area of the plates depending on flower density. Just thought I'd share for reference.

Oh for sure, I didn't mention that because IIRC it is not exactly a retail item that one can simply go to a site and buy yet? If that has changed, it is an option that can be mentioned in this thread

 

[killick]

Found a vid of the High Five that is kinda helpful...

On an unrelated note I still haven't mounted mine... been waffling between selling it before I scratch it, or just mount the darn thing and start pressing... Decisions...

 

[turk]

....not my technique ...but as I've stated earlier...been happily using mine for ...months now.

 

[herbivore21]

Found a vid of the High Five that is kinda helpful...

On an unrelated note I still haven't mounted mine... been waffling between selling it before I scratch it, or just mount the darn thing and start pressing... Decisions...

He is getting some very good results there considering he didn't bolt the press down! That is the amount of flower that IME will work best for a machine with that much pressure.

As I have said time and time again, all presses should be bolted to a heavy workbench IMO.

 

[SamuraiSam]

Please wear safety goggles when using the High Five press. I have seen what happens when force is applied to that arbor press, and for your safety please use proper protection equipment.

 

[herbivore21]

Please wear safety goggles when using the High Five press. I have seen what happens when force is applied to that arbor press, and for your safety please use proper protection equipment.

What happened with the press you mention here brother?

EDIT: Oh shit I just noticed I missed a few posts above in this thread. @Hogni please tag me or quote me in all posts where you ask me questions because there is a very high probability that I will miss your post otherwise

Was there anything your friend who broke the teeth in their High Five did that was unusual? How long did they have the press before this happened? How much were they pressing at a time, what temp/pressure if you know? Were they using it a lot?

@turk could you also share how long you have had your High Five press? Any damage over time or anything that looks like it might wear with time?

We need to find out whether this is an isolated instance of something that has happened quite frequently. @SamuraiSam or anybody else, please do chime in if you know of other examples of this problem since this is important for this thread and no doubt for @OldOyler

It is a shame nobody like @Joel W. is doing plates that are designed to fit common consumer retail vises anymore. My rig is still providing admirable service for what must be a couple years or something now. Those setups can end up cheaper and more manageable in terms of space requirements for this smaller, personal rosin pressing scenario.

 

[turk]

...3-4 months so far...everything looks fine...I'm really enjoying it...no...I don't have it bolted down...yet....and though I'm sure it's better that way...it works fine ...that's my experience...for single usage...this thing rocks... I've found doing a pre-press...really helps yield.