Pollen Extractors / Dry Sift Tumblers

[Sebring]

I looked at a bunch of DIY tumblers, but I’m not a carpenter and I don’t have the vast amount of tools needed to craft a well done tumbler, so I’ve had to buy one. I think I found one that costs about as much as building one would cost though!

I’ve been leaning heavily towards buying this tumbler. It’s within my price range at $118.64 (including shipping) and the independent reviews I found raved about it’s quality build and ease of use. Unlike some other brands I didn’t find endless complaints about the motor going out (I’m looking at you Bubble Magic & RosinTech).

It appears to be the right size for doing manageable batches and it’s just small enough I can put the whole thing inside the chest freezer I have access to which would make it a “set an alarm & do other stuff” operation.

They offer a 150 micron OR a 180 micron screen with each order. I went with the 180 micron screen, which will increase the chances of “green” getting into the kief, but it should also allow the largest 160 micron trichomes to get through too. If the 180 turns out to have too much “green” in it I’ll order one of their 150 micron screens, which are also pretty affordable.

The product should arrive shortly and I’ll document it’s use and quarks in this thread, including videos and photos. In the coming months I’ll also be running seeded materials through it to see how well it separates those out as well!!!

I’ve also contacted the manufacturer to see if we can get a discount code for Overgrow members, because why not, right?

If you have experience with this, or any other dry sift tumblers including DIY versions, this is definitely the place to voice those experiences.

Pollen Extractor Best Practices

a.k.a. What not to do!

Undried or fresh frozen flowers should never be used in the dry sift cylinder.
A couple of issues will occur: the flower will freeze to the entire inside of the cylinder and not tumble, and the added moisture from the flower will cause a thin frost layer to form on the outside of the cylinder which prevents the rubber drive wheel from gaining the needed friction to turn the cylinder.

Update: after a dozen or so runs the plastic container cracked, a plastic spindle rest shattered, and the motor burned out.

[Fuel]

Very interested by your feedback on it. Bored to do it traditionnally/manually (with triple 160, on a bowl).

[Sebring]

@Fuel

Bored to do it traditionnally/manually

My thoughts exactly! I’ve run dry sift before using dry ice and bubble bags, but it was not a good method as I’m not young and full of energy. The fact that I can get easy dry sift and it will probably deseed the buds for me makes it an investment I’m willing to make!

[WMoon518]

This may be a dumb question, but, why is it called a pollen extractor when you are extracting/collecting keif, not pollen?

[Sebring]

@WMoon518

why is it called a pollen extractor when you are extracting/collecting keif, not pollen?

Not a dumb question at all and the answer is quite pertinent. It was always called a ‘Pollen Extractor/Collector’, because the design was originally intended for easily collecting pollen from non-cannabis plants so that female plants could be hand pollinated in agricultural applications. The cannabis community re-purposed the machinery for collecting trichomes.

Many merchants for ‘Pollen Extractors’ have said that they’d love to call them ‘Dry Sift’ machines, but because of the United States led, worldwide war on drug users, they can’t call them anything that even hints of use in the cannabis industry. The merchants that have admitted that their product ‘might be used’ by the cannabis industry have had the U.S. government shut them down, fined them millions of dollars, took away every single thing they’ve ever owned and tossed them in jail for a very long time. <-NONE of this is in anyway an exaggeration, but we’re slowly changing these laws.

In the last couple of years, with so many states passing marijuana legalization laws, the U.S. government has finally started to be more lenient, but merchants are being appropriately cautious.

(I’ll be using the machine to collect pollen from half a dozen Sunshine Daydream cannabis plants in order to create F2 seeds for the Bodhi preservation project, and then I’ll be using it to remove the trichomes & deseed the female plants I’ve pollinated!)

[99PerCent]

If you were a carpenter, you could make a Recipro Sifter

[Sebring]

^THIS^ scares me a lot and excites me a little.

[99PerCent]

All the teeth are covered. Freeze the jars with the product in it and 15 seconds later, at the lowest possible speed, it is separated.

[PanchoVilla]

I have a rock tumbler from Harbor Freight that I am looking at making into a trichome extractor. All I need are the roller cans and center sieve to make it work.

[Sebring]

Sounds interesting, curious how you’re configuring it. Got a drawing we can admire?

[WMoon518]

@PanchoVilla

I have a rock tumbler from Harbor Freight that I am looking at making into a trichome extractor. All I need are the roller cans and center sieve to make it work.

Couldn’t you use the drum as the collector and make a sleeve to slip inside? Make a top ring and bottom circle out of wood with pieces of wood (3 or 4) to join them and wrap it with silk screen material. You can seal the top with a circular piece of metal attached with a screw, that swings to one side

[PanchoVilla]

@WMoon518

Couldn’t you use the drum as the collector and make a sleeve to slip inside? Make a top ring and bottom circle out of wood with pieces of wood (3 or 4) to join them and wrap it with silk screen material. You can seal the top with a circular piece of metal attached with a screw, that swings to one side

Yes, that is the idea. I was thinking of using two new unused metal quart paint cans, as the HF rock tumbler is a dual tumbler. Tossing aside the paint can lids, using a single threaded a rod down the center and 2 nuts on the ends (through holes drilled into the bottom of the paint cans) and a rubber gasket in the middle, and a ‘cage’ around the rod wrapped in silk screen with round wood ends to make the cage with (using long bolts). Your basic rotisserie cage inside of 2 paint cans. Undo the end nut, pull the paint cans apart, scrape the cans of hash. Or a similar deal with 2 single cans and using the metal lids with rubber gaskets on the ends.

[99PerCent]

This worked too, but was too slow for me

[Sebring]

@99PerCent

This worked too

That’s some really nice DIY engineering @99PerCent!

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I received my package over the weekend and just barely got enough time to open it up and get it going.

This the box ready to be filled and it filled with frozen Sour Diesel that my old buddy Mud gave me over the weekend.

I placed the cap plate back on the tumbler and place it in the freezer with the power cable hooked up.

The final thing to do is adjust the twist dial so that it spins slowly, just fast enough to hear the material tumbling but not clinging to the sides when it spins.

I’ll experiment with different durations as we go. I’m expecting some green in the sift, because the Sour Diesel was in a sealed jar for almost two years.

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Ladies and gentlemen,
The results are in and the used up Sour Diesel has been placed in a jar just in case we missed any tasty trichomes.

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Damn! I’m awestruck by how well it worked. I’ve got tons of blond dry sift. 1 hour in the freezer spinning at medium low produced almost white dry sift and 2 hours produced twice as much, but more blond. No green or brown at all!!! I’m sad now that I’ve spent so much time trimming stuff I could have just dry sifted with almost no work.

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The product design is deceptively simple. The motor in the bottom is little more than a cheap radio shack motor, but hot damn it works perfectly. The micron screen cylinder is very well constructed and appears to be tack welded into place which means it should last for years. I’ve spent a lot of years being disappointed in overpriced cannabis products, but I’m giddy with this sifter. It’s perfect for running about a half ounce of inputs. I filled it to about a third full and broke up the frozen buds with a metal skewer rod I kind of swirled around in the jar before dumping it in the sifter.

[99PerCent]

Yours should work better than the other, more screen surface area.

[ReikoX]

Pro tip for all of you tumblers. If you want to clean up your farmers grade, you can put it in a jar of cold water the resin glands will sink to the bottom and the contaminant will float to the top where it can easily be removed. Decant the water and dry like you would water hash.

[Sebring]

Good thing I’m growing 100% organic with zero sprays!

@ReikoX

put it in a jar of cold water the resin glands will sink to the bottom and the contaminant will float to the top where it can easily be removed. Decant the water and dry like you would water hash.

I’m going to do the ice water test on some of it just to see though!! You’ve got me curious now.

[Jellypowered]

Gonna link to my Dry sift tumbler build (it’s so hard not to type Tumblr lol)
In case anyone searching wants to see a DIY

Jelly's Laboratory - A collection of my Experiments

Figured this was my best topic for the following post: I made a DIY tumbler. I found the original build on Opengrow DIY Ice Cream machine Hash Tumbler and set out to build my own. Not the straightest nibbles, but it works. [image] Added aluminum angle inside with rivets. [image] What the finished product looks like. [image] Ice cream maker - 25$ - Amazon two 6" hose clamps - 4$ - hardware store hvac tape - 8$ for the roll (had on hand) 3 yards 110 mesh silk screen fabric - 15$…

[ReikoX]

Works with dry ice hash nicely I’ve heard.

[Sebring]

@Jellypowered I wish I’d seen your tumbler when I was searching for DIY sifters. That’s a really impressive and professional quality recycling of an ice cream maker.