diy vacuum pruge station

Glab120 · Feb 9, 2013

orbad said:
I crushed my pot. I mean vacuum chamber. Talk about loud. View attachment 288674

Oil came out good though. That last hard purge was just too much for it. View attachment 288675

wow thats crazy... I'm sure that scared the hell out of you.

orbad · Feb 10, 2013

Yeah I had my face real close watching for it to completely mellow out. Then POP! It was crushed in 4 times ad much as it is in the picture because it still held a vacuum. And it splashed water from my low temp double boiler. Good thing it was an implosion not an explosion. It just jumped when it collapsed and the stainless made a sharp popping sound that was pretty loud. I pushed the dents back out and it will make a fine stock pot again.

I'm going to have to find a better chamber.

Aaronimoe · Feb 10, 2013

update: switched out to the single stage pump from harbor and got the same results. (couldnt get past 26 in..) I then switched out all my tubing with stronger reinforced tubing from lowes. at first i wanted to bump up the diameter but couldnt find all the copper fittings i needed. but once i swapped out with the stronger black tubes my guage hit 29 with no problem :) the clear 1/4" tubes are too weak and will collapse

Dan Adabidoo · Feb 12, 2013

On the subject of collapsing chambers, Glab could you specify the brand and model of the stainless steel pot you are using. SInce yours seems to have not collapsed. I would also be interested in hearing your initial water purge method because your results are incredible and I want to try and duplicate your process as good as possible. Thanks

Dabdunkdankdab · Mar 3, 2013

So I have essentially the exact same set up, pump to a ss vac chamber and I love it.great results. After I run the vac at room temp, I'm having trouble keeping my oil at a consistent temp with heat. Could you further explain how you are adding heat to the vac chamber?

The first run I set the chamber directly on a electric griddle an was super worried about the heat displacement. Maybe do a hot water bath next time? Any ideas would be swell. Thanks

orbad · Mar 3, 2013

I did a hot water bath. Small pot, chamber, in a large pot of hot water.

Dabdunkdankdab · Mar 3, 2013

orbad said:
I did a hot water bath. Small pot, chamber, in a large pot of hot water.

Frick I have a 3 gallon vac chamber. I'll need a witches caldron for this hot water bath lmao! Should I keep the water at about 140 or just under boiling?

orbad · Mar 3, 2013

I'm no expert. But I just used hot tap water. But it was my first run with that method.

You could probably find a galvanized tub at casa de pot.

ftwendy · Mar 4, 2013

You could throw it in the bathtub.

TheWiseGamji · Mar 6, 2013

So i made a vacuum purge station after i ran this killer stuff through and the product was good, but i didnt get to vacuum pump it! Is it possible to vacuum pump products that are already cooled?

Dabdunkdankdab · Mar 7, 2013

i was thinking about investing in heating pads to put under the vac chamber and a reptile light on top. i found a pot that is big enough to run a water bath while under vac. The only problem is im still only able to get to 100-115; and only achieved 115 for a brief period of time. Basically i need to have a much better handle on my temp. always looking for ways to improve.

PhMe · Mar 8, 2013

Just to let the people who still hasn't gotten their vac. Pump, the same pump from harbor freight that glab is using is on sale for $89.99. The sale will end march 31st

kanehbosm · Mar 12, 2013

Dabdunkdankdab said:
So I have essentially the exact same set up, pump to a ss vac chamber and I love it.great results. After I run the vac at room temp, I'm having trouble keeping my oil at a consistent temp with heat. Could you further explain how you are adding heat to the vac chamber? griddle an was super worried about the heat displacement. Maybe do a hot water bath next time? Any ideas would be swe

I just use a presto griddle with 3 wet kitchen hand towels on the griddle surface and the pot on that. The wet hand towels have a similar gentle way of heating as a water bath but the temp control on the griddle makes it way easier to controlled the temp. I use a instant read thermometer that I set between the pot and griddle and an infrared thermometer to test spots around the pot. Although my set up just has one thick layer of very clear plastic, my thermometer won't read through the lid to the oil. It just gives me the temp of the lid. To be sure the oil was being heated properly I would take the temp of the oil in the pot,on the heating element, before putting the lid on. There was about a 20°f difference between the thermometer between the pot and griddle and the infrared thermometer. Meaning when the one between the hot plate and pot said 140° the direct laser on the oil read 120°. Take great focus on making sure you keep track of the oil temp not just the heating element!

Dabdunkdankdab · Mar 12, 2013

Great info thanks!! I'm actually going to try the towel trick right now. Do you have any info on how often you change/ apply moisture to the towel?
Also I too have a presto grill and the temp reads are always sporadic. When I turn the grill on should I set it at 150 so the oils are 130? It takes for ever to heat up the pot an I'm afraid I might be adding too much heat due to the same problem of reading temp through a clear lid.

Anyway, I really appreciate the reply!

Dab easy

kanehbosm · Mar 12, 2013

Dabdunkdankdab said:
Great info thanks!! I'm actually going to try the towel trick right now. Do you have any info on how often you change/ apply moisture to the towel?
Also I too have a presto grill and the temp reads are always sporadic. When I turn the grill on should I set it at 150 so the oils are 130? It takes for ever to heat up the pot an I'm afraid I might be adding too much heat due to the same problem of reading temp through a clear lid.

Anyway, I really appreciate the reply!

Dab easy

I don't really need to change it. I just get it nice and wet but not dripping. Use hot water so it takes less time to heat it. I have mine set to just below the warm setting to have the temp on the instant meat thermometer read about 145. (When I place parchment paper with oil on it in chamber at this temp the oil temp with ir thermometer stayed at about 125- 130.) The first few vacs are at ambient temp so let the griddle and towels warm as you do first few vacs not on the griddle. Let me know how this works for you!

Dabdunkdankdab · Mar 14, 2013

kanehbosm said:
I don't really need to change it. I just get it nice and wet but not dripping. Use hot water so it takes less time to heat it. I have mine set to just below the warm setting to have the temp on the instant meat thermometer read about 145. (When I place parchment paper with oil on it in chamber at this temp the oil temp with ir thermometer stayed at about 125- 130.) The first few vacs are at ambient temp so let the griddle and towels warm as you do first few vacs not on the griddle. Let me know how this works for you!

Wow! That was the answer to all my problems. Thank you so much! Works perfectly. Honeycomb urvery day. You are the man

Hiceratops · Apr 11, 2013

First off, let me say thanks to Glab120. Without your help there's no way I'd be sucking nearly as hard. In all seriousness, this guide has been an awesome jumping off point and encouraged me to spend the money and time to take on such an ambitious project. I had a fair bit of frustration, but mostly an enjoyable weekend project for my roommate and I. Thanks again for your initiative in posting this guide and for your continued prompt and relevant responses. Just wanted to post my results with the pump and vac chamber. Ran our first batch of trim tonight, lets just say looking forward to doing the process with some real green.

Here she is in all her glory

Just doin' what she do.

Thanks again to Glab120 and everyone that posted with questions, solutions, comments and laughs.

-Dankasaurus and Hiceratops

Glab120 · Apr 13, 2013

Hiceratops... thanks for the kind words. Your setup looks very sturdy and well built.

Graywolf · Apr 16, 2013

DIY Vacuum Purging Chamber

To perform some of the desirable alchemy with cannabis essential oils, requires some sort of vacuum chamber that you can control the heat and vacuum levels in, as well as see what you are doing.

These are readily available as vacuum desiccators and vacuum ovens, but all are pricey, so how about just building your own?
We already have a glass desiccator with a hot plate inside, and picked up a new used vacuum oven, but alas the temperature controls are ineffective in the low ranges that we operate, so we are in the process of refining its controls.

More on that subject on a separate thread, but this thread is to show how we punted when the vacuum oven capacity that we had counted on, eluded us, with meds to process backlogged.

To that end, we used a old 22 quart Mirror pressure cooker that was gifted to us, and after removing the gasket, we tossed the lid.

I then drilled a 1/4" pilot hole through the side wall wrapper, about 2.5" below the top flange, followed by a 3/4" bit, to enlarge the hole to fit a 1/4" NPT brass bulkhead fitting.

I then inserted the bulkhead fitting through the side wall from the inside out, installing a gasket on the inside flange, and tightening the nut and lock washer on the outside of the pot.

To this I added a close nipple, a cross, with two 1/4" ball valves, and two 1/4" MPT to 1/4" flare refrigeration hose fitting. One for the vacuum pump and the other for the vacuum gauge hose.

As it is temporary, and we needed it immediately, we reused the existing gasket, and made a new lid out of a 1" X 16" acrylic plate. At -29.9" Hg gauge, there is about 1/16" lid deflection in the middle, so a thicker plate would be better to reduce high cyclic fatigue.
If it were permanent, we would have a new Viton gasket cut by Paramount, or Gaskets Unlimited and use 1 1/2" polycarbonate, for the lid.

Hee, hee, hee, after telling me that they didn't have any, and after having them cut the 1" acrylic plate, I found a 22" X 29" X 1 1/2" Polycarbonate remnant at Multi Craft Plastics, which I scored for $72. It has one 6" hole in one corner, but that is $2/lb for bullet proof polycarbonate panels, like those used at teller windows. Snicker, snark, snort, more projects to come!
Here are pictures showing how we made and how it turned out. We are able to easily control the temperature with an outside hotplate and reduce the pressure to -29.9 with one of our 6.2 cfm single stage AC vacuum pumps:

Hiceratops · May 2, 2013

Glab120 said:
heres some random oil ive made recently plus a pic of my 4x4 tent View attachment 272775 View attachment 272777 View attachment 272778 View attachment 272779

Hey Glab, what was your process for getting it to stay/cool in that honeycomb shape?

diy vacuum pruge station

diy vacuum pruge station

Glab120

orbad

Aaronimoe

Dan Adabidoo

Dabdunkdankdab

orbad

Dabdunkdankdab

orbad

ftwendy

TheWiseGamji

Dabdunkdankdab

PhMe

kanehbosm

Dabdunkdankdab

kanehbosm

Dabdunkdankdab

Hiceratops

Glab120

Graywolf

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Hiceratops

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