squiggly said:

You wouldn't use a buchner for this, these are for collecting solids (or removing them), not necessary for this process. A vac flask is usually used with a buchner to collect a solid of some type.

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The idea was to chill the buchner and use it to filter clumps of lipids after extraction (single solvent dewaxing)... and this would need to be done at subzero f for it to work properly. I think. Please bounce that idea around you noggin :)

squiggly said:

Also, I'm shocked to hear there are hairs coming through--it looks like the thing has a fritted disk separating the plant material from the evacuation end. Nothing should get through that shit.

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You are correct. The fritted disc catches EVERYTHING and the resins emerge pristine... so I'm not trying to rinse the extract reservoir/bottom/clean side of the disc, the trouble is on the plant side of the disc...the dirty side on top where you pack in the material to be extracted. The fritted disc makes the system imo

ftwendy said:

Gotta be on your shit to use this thing. True. But that's the case for any butane extraction system. Nevertheless, I hear ya @shawnskush ... this is dangerous in the wrong hands.

Congratulations on the new toys @donmekka ... I tried freezing material and gas with dry ice and the outcome was the same somehow... lipids and all. I must have fucked up something tho, so I'll have to give it another shot when time permits. It was extremely slow to fill when the gas was so cold, and I think the butane warmed during that process. Maybe cutting open the frozen can?? Seems risky so any thoughts on it are appreciated.

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Best results would be cold material AND cold solvent. If you throw cold material in and then hit it with room temperature-ish solvent--what happens?
Recommend focusing on using the cold solvent as it's going to stay pretty damn cold even adding it to RT material. This is the standard for extractions, focus on the solvent and its properties first--then adjust the material if needs be.

Far as cutting open the can. It is risky, but I've done it and it can be done. Do I recommend it? Nope. Sparking liquid butane doesn't really get you anywhere though, you need the gas to make it go boom. The colder u get the stuff the lower its flash point goes (generally speaking). For instance, sparking frozen methane isn't going to do shit for you. Getting the stuff in the gas phase (where it's comingling with dust and oxygen) is when it gets dangerous.

If you have a sharp plastic knife you can literally stab a frozen butane can open and laugh at it. I still don't recommend it, though. Don't do that.

Soak time is about a minute of gentle agitation after filling the unit with butane (use a needle type nozzle adapter from the top of the can for best results).. fwiw, the lucienne I use has a hard time creating enough pressure to fill the tube once it is more than half full, so I suggest shaking the butane occasionally. Even with that it takes 3 or so minutes to fill the waxtractor. I tried soaking for 10 minutes out of curiosity and the yield was within the average so I just do the quick soak now.

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If you're having issues with pressure simply save your half spent cans to fill the first half--and use a fresh can to fill the 2nd.

Alternatively you can gently warm the can. Not put fire on, not burn, not get red hot. Warm. It will cause the butane to expand and will increase your pressure in the can.

ftwendy said:

The idea was to chill the buchner and use it to filter clumps of lipids after extraction (single solvent dewaxing)... and this would need to be done at subzero f for it to work properly. I think. Please bounce that idea around you noggin :)

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Seems like too much hassle to me. If you get the stuff cold enough then the fritted disk in your apparatus should exclude most lipids you'd remove this way anyway. A fritted disk is like a filtered buchner funnel on crack.

ftwendy said:

You are correct. The fritted disc catches EVERYTHING and the resins emerge pristine... so I'm not trying to rinse the extract reservoir/bottom/clean side of the disc, the trouble is on the plant side of the disc...the dirty side on top where you pack in the material to be extracted. The fritted disc makes the system imo

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Dilute sulfuric acid. NEVER a base. NEVER a concentrated acid. Dilute acid, peroxide, and hot ethanol.

Also, since I'm too lazy to look at the thing again--it is possible for you to run these solvents through backwards? An RBF might be your friend here.

While rinsing I poured the drugstore h202 (3%??) through from the bottom. It was a mess b/c I had no funnel and it takes some time for the solution to work its way through the fritted disc....after foaming up a bit the unit was rinsed from top and bottom with warm water and dried in the sunshine. The small hairs were still there but significantly reduced. I think a bit more water volume and pressure would do the trick..thus the bottle wand idea.. but then again maybe just a hose with a finger over it would suffice.

I will try chilling things again and let you guys know how it worked out.

ftwendy said:

While rinsing I poured the drugstore h202 (3%??) through from the bottom. It was a mess b/c I had no funnel and it takes some time for the solution to work its way through the fritted disc....after foaming up a bit the unit was rinsed from top and bottom with warm water and dried in the sunshine. The small hairs were still there but significantly reduced. I think a bit more water volume and pressure would do the trick..thus the bottle wand idea.. but then again maybe just a hose with a finger over it would suffice.

I will try chilling things again and let you guys know how it worked out.

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Get some 30% H2O2 but be CAREFUL with it. Work on a waist high bench, wear long pants and a lab coat or similar, DEFINITELY eye protection (should always be wearing it for doing this stuff, don't take a shortcut here if you take them anywhere else), and wear gloves. This stuff BURNS.

Hi!

This is Tim with Waxtractor. I just wanted to drop a line and thank everyone for the feedback, and address some of the concerns that folks are having. We're aware of some of the valve issues ftwendy had and we've switched to a slightly different style. The original ones we were using just weren't up to snuff and the second valve that ftwendy received will be the style that we use from now on. The original valve supplier must have been cutting corners somewhere, because they just weren't the quality they should have been.

As far as safety goes, we hand coat each unit with a specialty coating designed for glass lab-ware. Like the film on a windshield that allows it to break, but reduces the amount of fragment dispersion. Of the many advantages of going with glass, it can be fragile if miss-used and we take that very seriously. The coating is a labor-intensive add-on that we put on each unit before it ships. The majority of high-quality canned butane on the market is a mixture of butane, iso-butane, and propane (as a propellant). Butane, by itself, becomes a liquid at about 15 psi, hence the need for the propellant. The highest psi in a can we've seen is around 40psi, with the average being around 30-35psi. These pressure ratings are a fraction of what the wall thickness of tubes we've selected can handle. I get the feeling that squiggly has some knowledge about those types of issues and can probably verify the ratios better than I. If you google search "technical information glassware bibby" , the first result will be a .pdf page. The second page of that contains a chart that shows the pressure ratings of different glass tubes.

I also don't feel that chilling your butane will add any benefit in this type of setup. Quite the opposite actually. Butane boils/evaporates at room temperature, so it is only in liquid state in a can due to pressurization. With a Waxtractor, you're taking it from liquid, to gas, and back into liquid with no loss during the initial soak. As long as you purge any oxygen from the chamber properly, you won't have any issues filling. Case in point, the chamber doesn't get cold when filling. Only the tip of the valve gets cold, and that, only when releasing. The butane valves we use are designed for standard butane pressures and temperatures. If you chill the butane you're using for a Waxtractor, you may have problems getting it to fill correctly.

As far as cleaning goes, we're considering supplying some brushes with these in the future, to help dislodge stuck material on the top of the frit/filter. The possibility of some sort of pre-filter is something we are also looking into. When it comes to cleaning solvents, we recommend a number of options. First, you can run an empty chamber with butane and it will loosen up and clean a lot of any debris. Alternatively, you can use denatured alcohol or mineral spirits. With either of these, you should let it soak for an hour or so and then rinse with warm water, leave the cap and valve off and allow to COMPLETELY dry before using again. We don't put that option into print, as we prefer to only suggest it to skilled users who understand the importance of doing things thoroughly. (I.E. rinsing, letting dry, and you know... patience). H202 isn't something we've looked into yet. But as long as whatever you are extracting is solute in H202, then it most likely would work very well.

As far as pricing goes, there is a lot of work that goes into production/manufacturing and sourcing of materials. Actually producing a product for market is quite different than producing something on a torch and selling a few to your friends. In addition purchasing the materials for unit, you also have to pay for shipping to receive all of them and all of the normal overhead incurred with any type of business. With that being said, as a thanks, here's a coupon code for 10% off forum users that will last till the end of the month. 0A8017672836AD0

Thanks for the feeback and let us know if you have any questions!

Tim

Ah so now you offer coupons lol... Thanks for all the info Tim.

You're right. That's kind of bootleg. So I refunded your account 10%. Cheers!

@ftwendy how are you packing 42g's in the farmer? I thought i was pushing it packing 50g's in the mule.

I'm grinding it first but not really packing it very hard. Just tamping really. Are you shooting intact buds? Regardless, I'm surprised you aren't able to fit more... even if the buds are whole

timtractor said:

Hi!

The highest psi in a can we've seen is around 40psi, with the average being around 30-35psi. These pressure ratings are a fraction of what the wall thickness of tubes we've selected can handle. I get the feeling that squiggly has some knowledge about those types of issues and can probably verify the ratios better than I. If you google search "technical information glassware bibby" , the first result will be a .pdf page. The second page of that contains a chart that shows the pressure ratings of different glass tubes.

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Having not seen the product myself I can't 100% guarantee that--but what I can say is that lab glass can easily handle these pressures and it need not be that thick. I will also say that knowing about the extra coating to prevent shatter makes the price make a lot more sense to me. There's no way I could "undercut" you guys if you're going that extra mile. I retract my previous comment, the price is fair if not a steal given this coating.

It is still very important to do this work in a well ventilated, sparkless, area--and to wear eye protection (I really cannot stress this enough), but these guys have gone as far as you can go to ensure safety. That's clear to me now.

I also don't feel that chilling your butane will add any benefit in this type of setup. Quite the opposite actually. Butane boils/evaporates at room temperature, so it is only in liquid state in a can due to pressurization. With a Waxtractor, you're taking it from liquid, to gas, and back into liquid with no loss during the initial soak. As long as you purge any oxygen from the chamber properly, you won't have any issues filling. Case in point, the chamber doesn't get cold when filling. Only the tip of the valve gets cold, and that, only when releasing. The butane valves we use are designed for standard butane pressures and temperatures. If you chill the butane you're using for a Waxtractor, you may have problems getting it to fill correctly.

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I think you've misunderstood the purpose of chilling the butane here. While it is a nice added benefit in terms of peace of mind for someone who is concerned about safety (lowering chances of ignition if the chamber shatters, lowering total pressure)--the main reason I have suggested this is that it isolates the actives we want to extract while keeping more of the things we don't want out of solution. Bringing the solvent below the freezing point of water helps to exclude some of the things that bring down the quality of our extracts by effectively trapping them inside the water. This yields a higher quality end product (while sacrificing some yield).

Unfortunately most of the things we're extracting are neither strictly polar nor strictly nonpolar. They share characteristics of both, and that makes high quality extraction more difficult. Bringing the temperature of the solvent down tends to exclude the crude extract elements which are more polar (by keeping them locked up in water)--and just by luck these happen to be the compounds we want to avoid extracting. The most nonpolar elements of the plant are what we're really after here.

So while I agree, given your additional information, this isn't necessary as a safety measure--it can still be very beneficial to do a first run with chilled butane if top notch quality is what you're after. This is more a chemistry argument than a process argument. That being said, doing this does make evaporating the butane off much more difficult. You need a way to add heat or it will take you a long time to evaporate it off (due to evaporative cooling).

I personally use a sparkless hotplate, and honestly wouldn't recommend anything else (a hot water bath is insufficient in my view).

Also, Tim, if you haven't I suggest that you include information about your coating on your website. That's a huge selling point in my opinion.

But how? Maybe a dry ice and alcohol bath?

ftwendy said:

But how? Maybe a dry ice and alcohol bath?

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That's going overboard in my opinion. We use this methodology to cool down extremely vigorous exothermic reactions or to maintain a particular temperature for a catalytic process (to avoid thermodynamic products--IE to do reactions under kinetic conditions rather than thermodynamic conditions).

If you wanna do a cold extraction here are my tips:

1. Freeze the material in a dessicated container--so as to avoid the formation of ice. (skip this step if you can't freeze in a dessicator--it's not necessary)

2. Chill the solvent as low as you can get it.

3. Allow a much longer soak time. At least 10 minutes, and you can play with that number till the extract fits the quality you're after up to about 20 minutes or so (after which you've hit diminishing returns on the extraction and a fresh injection of butane will be more efficient).

4. Be prepared to add heat somehow in a SPARKLESS fashion.

Doing it this way there should be zero issues filling as there will be a near zero pressure differential between the chamber and the can. Gravity will do all of the work here.


I would recommend gloves here. Liquid butane will burn like the dickens if you get it on you.

For my purposes I would run two cold extractions and then a room temperature extraction. I would separate the products of each run. Run 1 being highest grade and moving down the line from there.

@timtractor Would you have any tips on purging not sure if i am doing it correctly and it seems like it takes forever to fill.Thanks

Are you shaking the can of butane @donmekka ? I remove the can from the fill valve on the waxtractor and shake it a few times to keep things flowing nicely. It helps a lot

No I haven't tried that yet next time I'll give it a shot

The can will often cool while spraying, ive you just give it some time to warm back up then you shouldn't have that problem.

first off let me say that this thing is ridiculous and just about as unsafe as i can imagine an extraction apparatus becoming, the stuff i have seen happen with glass tubes at much lower temps than this has left me with a bad taste in my mouth with glass. though i will say that if you were to fill this bad boy up and pack it in dry ice after a couple mins you could probalty let it soak and freeze for an hour or more then actually WAXTRACT those waxes out of there