DIY Ultrasonic Dry Sifter

Last night, I was puffing on one of my more creative strains (Acapulco Gold x Tenderheart) x Jungle Spice and I went down the rabbit hole of trying to build a simpler dry sifter.

I’ve been eyeing ultrasonic transducers for some number of years, and I’m ready for a new project. So this seemed like a good time to jump in and try it.

The idea is simple – rather than using a stationary screen and rubbing the bud on it, clamp the screen to an ultrasonic transducer and vibrate the screen itself. Ultrasonic mechanical vibration seems like it has potential to do all of the hard work efficiently.

If you’ve ever had to remove hash from parchment paper, I highly recommend trying putting your Sonicare toothbrush to the back of the paper. All of the hash slides right off.

Here are my list of parts so far:
60W Ultrasonic transducer and generator
120 mesh Zooplankton sieve screen
2-inch Truss Clamp

That’s most of the critical parts. The idea is that I’ll screw the clamp to the transducer. Might need to make some modifications to adapt the screw size. Then I’ll clamp the sieve in the truss clamp. I’ll need to build a heavy stand or something, since I think the backside of the transducer needs to be screwed down to something reasonably stiff and heavy.

After I get it setup, I’ll be ready to experiment. My little USB microscope should do a good job at analyzing the end products. I’ll test out sieving off of wet or dry whole buds, ground herbs and trim.

If all goes according to plan, the next step would be to scale it up a bit. A 2" screen will only take about a grinder worth of material, so ideally I’d like to get up to at least 4". If it’s fast and effortless enough, that should be fine for home use. I’ll just need to source a bigger clamp and screen.

Stay tuned for pictures – this one will probably go a couple months in development. I’ll upload pictures as I receive parts and get them setup.

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I like the idea, check out these articles to see if they inspire you!

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It’s interesting in that article that they did some testing with these transducers. It’s weird that 60W was underpowered in their setup. I think it’s a rigidity thing, and not power. Hopefully I can get the transducer to work… Might take me a few design changes, but I think it’s going to be fine.

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Cymatic dry ice keif sounds legit!

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A “Amplifier Horn” might be needed here. Here it would most likely be a solid cone shaped piece of metal. It attaches to the transducer and directs the sound to the contact point, the tip, intensifying said oscillation. One might find out that 60w is more power then one needs in this case. “For every action, there is a equal or greater reaction

But again wouldn’t just a small dc motor with a offset flywheel do the same with about 1/3 the power consumption. Now I’ve never seen it used as above, but vibrating motors are still a industrial standard in material screen sizing equipment, a least to my knowledge anyways. The smallest shaker table I’ve ever built was a 10 ft long screen conveyor that was used for hand culling walnut halves before packaging.

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