Puffers said: Leaks would be easiest to diagnose by pumping the system full of a dry gas like nitrogen then using micro-leak detecting soap bubbles. Given that some of those refrigerant gas detectors can detect under a .25oz of refrigerant leaking per year (like the one I have) would they be better for judging a full purge? If purging is easier then butane though this would probably overkill. Just thinking out loud there.

So if the co solvent is omitted is the oil basically an absolute, would winterizing be useless? Click to expand...

Leaks can occur while the system is in operation. I found a $20 leak detector on ebay.It is sensitive but the leaks can be pinhole size or smaller. Even the $20 one can detect 14gr/yr leaks. If you are leaking south of the extraction vessel you are losing more than gas so it pays for itself quickly if a leak should develop. Since people here are talking about scaling down and saving money I thought I would suggest this as a way to find leaks before they become a real problem.Nitrogen testing is a good idea but doing that every time adds an extra step to an already tedious process. We did the Nitrogen test once, when the apparatus was first built, to test for leaks before filling it with R134a but we don't do it every time the machine is used. I certainly recommend doing this to test for leaks the first time. If you have good seals and everything holds tight up to around 250Psi, you're good to go.A vacuum pump is used to evacuate the system before introducing gas. This is a common practice in refrigeration applications also. Once the run is completed, it is a simple matter to purge in the heated collection vessel at a gentle temperature of >180F for about 20 minutes. If you don't use a co-solvent, yields will be smaller but when you take the product out and subject it to a wash and second purge it comes out as an absolute. No winterizing required.It is best to start with kind bud. Close trim and shake produce an inferior product IMHO. There are wide variations in color, wax content and aroma from strain to strain. That's what makes it interesting. I have seen cases where the wax was desirable for making whipped concentrates and other cases where it is preferable to remove the wax. To some degree it is a matter of personal taste.Would you call the product pictured earlier in this thread "an absolute"? I think it qualifies. The term comes from the science of fragrances as you know.I was serious when I stated that this is already a scaled down system. I'm not even sure if it would work with a smaller setup. To make it worthwhile some friends of mine made a bigger system that holds 1kg of plant material at one time. It takes so long to do no matter what the size that it just makes sense to do the largest batch you can. Pooling resources and money would be one way to do this.I'm not exactly dirty rich myself, just resourceful. If you live near Silicon City like I do, you would be surprised what you can find as industrial surplus. Maybe this is more of a project for a collective than for an individual. Some NASA trained engineers and a few Aerospace guys helped build the systems I have seen.I want to say again that thisthe small system. While a smaller one might be possible I doubt it would be practical in terms of the value spent vs value recieved. Making an oz of good herb into 2 grams of concentrate and taking hours to do it with a $2000 system? Not my idea of a good investment.The pump and the R134a are fixed in price and you need them no matter how small your set-up is. The same pump can be used to make more extract in each run by just using a larger vessel.If you are looking for a small hobby system you can make and run by yourself it is much better to just make some BHO! I'm sure there is sufficient information on other threads in this forum if you are not already an expert.If you make BHO, make it in a stainless or glass apparatus. You realize that PVC leaches into the butane and is carcinogenic. I can't believe we used to do it in a plastic tube with crappy cans of stinky butane. Well, that was more than 10 years ago. Now we know better.The problem is it's really difficult to get pure butane. None of the stuff you buy for lighters, 8x distilled or not, is pure enough for human consumption. By law, it must have methyl mercaptin added as an odorant to detect leaks if it is shipped on the highways of the USA. DOT rules.If you go down to the local specialty gas store and try to order chemically pure n-butane they have already been warned that people use it to make "drugs". Unless you actually do have a legitimate lab, you're painting a big target on yourself. That puts you in between a hard rock and a place.... so to speak.The desire not to make patients even sicker is a major motivation for using the florasol process.Let's first go over the operation of this small one just to get a basic grasp of the process.