anyone using 6" diameter material spools?

Was thinking of doing this upgrade in the future. Wanted to get some feed back from anyone using spools that wide. I've heard rumors about friction and heat on a micro level but I don't believe it. More volume with less height is what's attractive to me.

I also feel like it'd be easier to get in there and clean them out. I like the idea of not having to clamp multiple 4" spools together as well.

Obviously a bottom flood would be most efficient with that diameter. I want someone to make a bowl shaped triclamp to npt end cap that has a diffuser inside it to spray the liquid around evenly for a top wash setup. Any importers care to hop on it? The design would have to be able to flow both ways for the bottom flood to work. The bowl shape will make use of more surface area of your screen gasket than a simple end cap reducer would.

I believe the worry at larger diameters is channelling, where you have a reduction in efficiency due to the solvent not permeating to the outer diameter of larger tubes and thus losing yield. I am sure he will come in and clarify if I am misrepresenting the phenomena but I believe GW has talked about this as the reasoning behind using three rather than four inch diameter spools on there larger machines.

Bottom flood first to evenly wet the material, then too wash. I just bottom flood the whole way through. A good even pack with a snug fitting tamper helps too.

This is why I want some to make the end cap I just described.

are you dewaxing or no? I dont think id go over 3" unless I were dewaxing. Soak time will get it off the walls id say.

No, not dewaxing. This upgrade will happen next year once the cmepol bugs are worked out, and I go subzero.

Two cmepol on sub zero coils, and a sub zero pre chiller with sub zero frozen spools!!! That should help with wax yes?

I don't do a soak, just a wash. Takes about 6 minutes until noticeable color change, 8 minutes until clear with 6 feet of 4" spool.

I've been doing a second wash, yields about 30% more but is darker and waxier. I just ordered parts to day to vac the spool seperately. I'm going to just do a single wash but scrape out the pot after 2 spools sets which will fill 5 parchments nicely for the oven.

hmmm 6 feet? she isnt short is she. but all that coils and subz spools are the way im going as we speak so ill be able to chime in on that soon. im also going to try to double dewax and see how much i get and if its worth it in the long run.

Double dewax? You mean like a seperate dewaxing column? I never want to look at di and alcohol, f that. If you are extracting at -20F I don't imagine another dewaxing column will be efficient in time and energy.

Oh by the way!!! Look at glaciertanks specialty spools section. They sell dewaxing columns now!!!

you will be sacrificing more butane...it becomes harder to recover the butane at the center. Just like you loose more on 4" compared to 3". A heating jacket would help, but I prefer 4" or smaller.

Permacultuure said:

you will be sacrificing more butane...it becomes harder to recover the butane at the center. Just like you loose more on 4" compared to 3". A heating jacket would help, but I prefer 4" or smaller.

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I'm with you Perma. I think for pre-freezing and butane recovery, 3" is ideal. 4" is pushin it.

I would also consider how long it will take to freeze a column of material that large. I agree that if you flooded from the bottom perhaps you could negate the losses at the edge but I have never done it with a column so large so I cant say for sure. However, if you are not soaking and just forcing from the bottom I still believe you can create channels. Perhaps someone wiser than myself could comment on that but this.

In a nutshell, I would say we are all poking at the question of whether or not the amount of material you could potentially fit into a larger column would be worth the loss in solvent, time, and preparation of material as compared to running several smaller columns in tandem?

Time is no biggie to me, I've got a great tamper and extruder, works great.

As far getting the butane out isnconcerned. When I do this next round of upgrades I have a plan for that...I'm going to make a bypass line that goes from the pump outlet into the top of the material spool. This way the warm vapor from the pump will push the cold liquid down and warm up the spool as well. I will have to add another sight glass to see how long to do that for. I ran that idea by gw a week or two ago and he said it has already been done and the people reported back they were happy with it.

Will you guys please educate me on the soak thing? I feel like I have a good bit of knowledge but little actual experience. What are the pros and cons of a soak. How long do you guys like to soak? I'm just scared a soak will cause darker and waxier product? Am I wrong? A subzero soak doesn't sound good either because everything will warm as it sits yes?

Sunfire said:

Time is no biggie to me, I've got a great tamper and extruder, works great.

As far getting the butane out isnconcerned. When I do this next round of upgrades I have a plan for that...I'm going to make a bypass line that goes from the pump outlet into the top of the material spool. This way the warm vapor from the pump will push the cold liquid down and warm up the spool as well. I will have to add another sight glass to see how long to do that for. I ran that idea by gw a week or two ago and he said it has already been done and the people reported back they were happy with it.

Will you guys please educate me on the soak thing? I feel like I have a good bit of knowledge but little actual experience. What are the pros and cons of a soak. How long do you guys like to soak? I'm just scared a soak will cause darker and waxier product? Am I wrong? A subzero soak doesn't sound good either because everything will warm as it sits yes?

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Wouldnt you want your warm vapor coming from your tank? If you tee off the pumps outlet your going to be dumping hot LIQUID butane into your column wouldnt you? I got the 100# tank with a 1/4" air purge fitting on top of the tank so i can do this same thing.

Also want to look at using nitrogen to purge the column and whole machine and pumps free of butane. GW says the G5 will pump nitrogen no problem. Dont know if nitrogen being cold is going to help with the column but it will sure help with pushing the last bit of butane out of the pumps and coils and back into the 100# tank. I use heat mats on my 4x24 to minimize butane loss. I turn them on after my second pass and usually only loose about .3lb to .5lb per run

A6 Grower said:

Wouldnt you want your warm vapor coming from your tank? If you tee off the pumps outlet your going to be dumping hot LIQUID butane into your column wouldnt you? I got the 100# tank with a 1/4" air purge fitting on top of the tank so i can do this same thing.

Also want to look at using nitrogen to purge the column and whole machine and pumps free of butane. GW says the G5 will pump nitrogen no problem. Dont know if nitrogen being cold is going to help with the column but it will sure help with pushing the last bit of butane out of the pumps and coils and back into the 100# tank. I use heat mats on my 4x24 to minimize butane loss. I turn them on after my second pass and usually only loose about .3lb to .5lb per run

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Shouldn't the pump outlet only have vapor exiting?

with a million things to do today, ill put in .02 c. subz tane coming into a dewaxing column should leave waxes right where they sit with the water freezing over it and such. if you can get your dewaxing column to soak at -50c, in a half hour how much can the temp come up? color change cant be that high, I dont see a color change in a water bath thats 70f and a bath thats 90f so to say youd get a drastic color change (much less a change at all) at subz temps would be a goof of a care IMO. You have to soak when you do a subz extract as your tane doent do squat with a quick wash as you would if you had warmer (closer to room temp) tane. you would get clear ass tane in your bottom spool. I get that if i put my tank in the freezer for longer than an hour before i start my run. I use a freezer so I can use a 3x36 spool and wash it 2x in a 8x12 spool without having hot ass tane coming in on the second run to bunk up my color. Im deleting the freezer to keep pressure up and getting a precooler made.
Im grabbing sorts of funky sized sleeved columns in the next few weeks to have a choice of sized runs i can do. Ill have a Biggins from a peer so i can make quick work of a full bag o trims, a couple 3x36 (or 4x24 if i can find em) to mount on a 10x12 and maybe a little guy (2-3x18) for small nug runs.

my question to yall is, do you see dewaxing the darker amber oils to be worth the time and effort or should it be ran as normal. I dont mean the black shit from last year, but say a grower over grows his shit to be "denser" or whatever hoopla they spew, should I bust a move on the dewaxing or bomb it in the ole sleeveless 3x36's?

My take on double dewaxing is 2 dewxing columns separated by a ball valve. bottom fill the top column with prechilled tane and shoot it into a dewaxing column, let it sit for 30 mins to get the oils to separate from the plant, dump the ball valve into another dewaxing column where she stays as close to -50c as i can get for another hour- hour and a half and dump that into a spool for recovery. I remember reading it takes 2 hours for waxes to separate (idk where i read that) but you wouldnt want to spend 2 hours in plant material incase you accidentally pick up waxes or something else so my plan takes it all into consideration.

mrsmarybrown said:

Shouldn't the pump outlet only have vapor exiting?

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I thought it was vapor in and liquid out, but i could be wrong. Either way id avoid pumping tane right out of the pump into the column. Thats how bhogart has you run with that dumb manifold.

Heat mats and cooling coils work great im telling you. I dont really see a need to freeze my packed column if im dumping cold enough butane in and then the evaporating butane keeps the column nice and cold. If i was getting low potency results i wouldnt be suggesting this but i regularly get 90%+ THC. Why are we trying to go so cold?? Im having great results in the -10F range. Once your in the 90% range if you want more potent meds just winterize them, thats what i do.

A6 Grower said:

I thought it was vapor in and liquid out, but i could be wrong. Either way id avoid pumping tane right out of the pump into the column. Thats how bhogart has you run with that dumb manifold.

Heat mats and cooling coils work great im telling you. I dont really see a need to freeze my packed column if im dumping cold enough butane in and then the evaporating butane keeps the column nice and cold. If i was getting low potency results i wouldnt be suggesting this but i regularly get 90%+ THC. Why are we trying to go so cold?? Im having great results in the -10F range. Once your in the 90% range if you want more potent meds just winterize them, thats what i do.

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Nope, pumps are meant to pump vapor not liquid.

mrsmarybrown said:

Nope, pumps are meant to pump vapor not liquid.

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But after its sucked up isnt the pump compressing it back into a liquid phase from its vapor phase, thus the creation of heat? I mean if there was no pressure on the out side i could see it pumping out vapor. Have you ever disconnected you out line while its running. Its not vapor that comes out lol.

Also the pumps are meant to pump liquid and vapor but liquid has to be a constant stream with constant pressure or the pump cant handle it.

Idk about column dewaxing bro. I do like the tip though that when I go subzero from just potent ice bath I need to experiment with soaking. So i guess then no soaking when not subzero eh? I'm not double washing spools anymore. I've done the experiments, it's not worth the time and color sacrafice. I hopefully will have the parts tomorrow to vac. Down the spools seperate of the rest of the machine so I can wash two spools sets into the pot before scraping it out to maximize parchment footprint and oven shelf efficiency. Does anyone see an issue is loss of color with doing that?!?!?!?

A6 Grower said:

But after its sucked up isnt the pump compressing it back into a liquid phase from its vapor phase, thus the creation of heat? I mean if there was no pressure on the out side i could see it pumping out vapor. Have you ever disconnected you out line while its running. Its not vapor that comes out lol.

Also the pumps are meant to pump liquid and vapor but liquid has to be a constant stream with constant pressure or the pump cant handle it.

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Whoa bro what recovery pumps are you rocking??? Hot vapor comes out that's why we need chilled condensor coils to cool and condense the hot vapor into liquid. It sound like your using appions correct? They have the ten feet of air cooled tube on them. That's way different than the tr21.

Gw told me a tr21 puts out about 170F, I'm reading 150F with my IR thermometer gun. 150F butane vapor will be pushing into the top of the spool that will push the liquid tane down and heat the column to release more leftover solvents. As I said I ran that idea by gw weeks ago as I thought it was an original idea and he told me it's been done before and the people reported they were pleased with it. Of course I'll need to add a sigh glass at the bottom of the spools to see if any color change happens due to the heat and for how long it's necessary. My ultimate design will have 4 inline glasses, right now it has only 2.

I still need someone to make those tricked out end caps...anyone?

Also, I freeze columns overnight. By morning you can't touch the steel with bare hands. I've done the experiment many times and I see no difference in color or wax content when I freeze the spool using ice bath 32F ish butane. I hate how water condensate on the triclamp lips and gets on and inside the gasket and I hate how water drips down everywhere. I also lose a lot of time clamping on two spools while the spools are just dethawing. Which is why I'd like to go to just one 6x48 spool and use -20F r600.

Look up my noob thread about tanks in freezers. You shouldn't do it, it's not safe. And don't judge me on those old posts I was a total dumb ass noob hehehehe!