Hey DGC! Lets talk rosin!
French Roast from Raw Genetics. mmm… Kushy…
I spent several months researching the various rosin press options on the market, and eventually decided to build my own press. I learned a lot in the process so I thought I’d share what I’ve learned and hopefully help you get started if you are looking to build a press of your own!
Special shout out to our supporters over at New Vape for helping me with my press!
Use coupon code “DUDE” at www.NEWVAPE.com to save 10% and to help support the DGC!
NewVape has all kinds of rosin plates, e-nails, vaporizers and other cool products! They make awesome high quality stuff at their shop in Florida, but they also offer great deals on imported products. They have great customer service and were super friendly when we met at the High Times Cup last year. Big thanks to Edwyn, Lori and the rest of the New Vape Team! The DGC and I appreciate your support!
NOW LETS GET SQUISHING!
Rosin is a dabbable concentrate made by applying HEAT and PRESSURE to cannabis flower, hash or dry sift. There are many different press designs out there, but they are all just applying HEAT and PRESSURE in a controlled way. When looking at any rosin press design, consider how it applies these forces, and how well it is able to control them.
For making your own rosin press, you need two components, A PRESS to provide the pressure, and A PLATE KIT with heaters and a controller to provide a flat, heated pressing surface.
For the PRESS, there seems to be two popular options:
1) The Cheap Pick– Harbor Freight 12 Ton Press about $130 (pick it up at a local harbor freight store)
The infamous Harbor Freight press
2) The Quality Pick– Dake B-10 Press about $350 (with free shipping and a 15% off coupon from “zoro.com“)
The Dake 10 ton press. Small but mighty. Built like a tank.
I haven’t used the Harbor Freight press, but it sounds likes it is typical harbor freight quality. (aka its kinda shitty and flimsy but gets the job done, at least for a while).
The Dake press costs a lot more but seems MUCH better built and has a pressure gauge and a few other nice features. Personally, I think the much nicer Dake press is worth the investment. It costs more, but you get what you pay for.
Many people would probably do just fine with the less sturdy Harbor Freight press. There are tons of folks out there rocking Harbor Freight rosin presses and getting great results. However, I also see many of those same people saying they wish they had spent a little more and bought the nicer Dake press instead.
For my own press, I saved up a little extra and bought the Dake. I really wanted a sturdy press with a pressure gauge. I also like that the Dake press is a bench top design so it fits nicely on the rolling workbench I built. I wasn’t sure the fancier press would be worth spending the extra money, but in the end I’m very happy with the decision. The Dake B-10 Press has been rock solid and should last me a lifetime. Definitely a good investment if you plan on using your press for the long term.
For the PLATE KIT, there are several options and things to consider.
Considerations:
SIZE– For best quality you actually want the SMALLEST plates that make sense for the scale you are operating at. Bigger plates are only better if you are trying to press a lot of product at a time. Squishing small amounts of bud with oversized plates means the rosin spends more time sitting on the hot plates before it can escape out the side, this can overheat the rosin and degrade the quality. For most home users smaller plates would probably be the way to go.
I’ve been using a set of 4” round plates from New Vape, and they’ve been great for squishing 5-12 grams of bud at a time. This typically yields around 1-2.5 grams of rosin per squish. Which is great for a home user like me! 🙂
The round plates also work really well for pressing “bottle tech style”, because they allow the rosin to flow out from the plates from the sides and back, not just out the front. This makes the 4″ round plates a great choice for a personal sized press.
MATERIAL- Aluminum heats up faster and more evenly, but stainless steel is more durable and resistant to pitting or warping. “Anodized” plates are usually aluminum plates with an extra coating for added durability.
New Vape also has some awesome “BI-Metal plates” that are aluminum with a stainless steel pressing surface. This is supposed to offer the best of both worlds but also costs a little more. Personally I like the added durability of the Bi-Metal or Anodized style plates, but I’m not sure its necessary for most home users.
The 4” round plates I’m using from New Vape are stainless steel and seem very durable.
Mounting- With most rosin plates, the bottom plate sits on the pressing deck, and the top plate is attached to the ram of the press. The plates have to be lined up before you press and the top plate has to be very securely mounted to the end of the ram or you risk breaking something under pressure.
Recently plate makers have started coming out with “CAGED” style plate kits where the top and bottom plates are connected in a cage structure with metal bars and springs. Caged designs eliminate the need to attach and align the plates to the press, so you can just put the whole cage assembly in the press and roughly line it up with the ram. This eliminates any worries about aligning the plates or attaching them to the press. This is a nice feature, but caged plates are usually much more expensive and probably aren’t necessary for most home users.
Heres one of New Vape’s fancier caged rosin plate setups with bi-metal plates. Super well built and durable! Beautiful workmanship!
The 4” round plate kit I’m using from New Vape came with a very sturdy mounting adapter. This does a great job of keeping the top plate connected to the press. The bottom plate sits on the pressing deck and needs to be lined up before I commence pressing. New Vape sells an optional mounting bolt to attach the bottom plate to the press, but I haven’t had any issues with the bottom plate moving so I haven’t felt the need for it.
Here’s the 4″ plates mounted on my press. Very solid and well built.
HEATER QUANTITY AND QUALITY- How many heating elements per plate, the quality of the heating elements and the quality of the electronic controller are all important. You want evenly distributed heat, so the number and shape of the heating elements is important. You also want a controller made with good electronic components that is built to last. Some companies seem to go cheap on the controller and electronics to try to keep the price down, but this seems like it might lead to less reliability.
The 4” round New Vape plates I’m using are heated by 4 flat enail coils (2 coils per plate) and a quad enail controller. The plates heat up very quickly and once they are warmed up, the temp stays rock solid. This e-nail based design does mean that you have to use an external thermometer to set your plate temperature, but I think checking your plate temp with a quality thermometer is a good idea with any rosin setup. NewVape put a nice little slot in the plates so you can slide a temp probe in there and check the real temp at the plates.
Letting the plates warm up. Doesn’t take long and I like the thermometer slot. I’ve been getting my best results around 185 degrees.
OK COOL! LETS BUILD A PRESS!
TOTAL COST to build a decent quality rosin press works out to roughly $500-850 (or more) depending on what you choose. Remember you need both PRESSURE and HEAT and a good way to control each!
Heres what I went with:
PRESSURE:
Dake B-10 press- $350 with free shipping from ZORO.COM (join their email list for a coupon)
HEAT:
4″ Stainless Steel Rosin Press Plates Flat Coil Bundle- $315 from NewVape (with 10% off from coupon code DUDE)
TOTAL ~ $665
Not bad for a super well made personal rosin press!
My rosin press. Cost about $665 for everything. Super solid and built to last. Easy to upgrade if I ever wanna make changes. 🙂
Or you can pair the same plates with the cheaper Harbor Freight press and you’d have a decent rosin press for about $450! Thats a crazy good deal!
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
The Dake press is VERY HEAVY but luckily zoro.com has free shipping. It comes in a box about the size and shape of a big suitcase, but weighing almost 150 lbs! Other than the weight, it was not too hard to assemble. I managed to put it together on my own, but it would definitely be a lot easier with someone to help you.
Opening up the Dake press. Not too many parts to assemble, but they are all HEAVY!
Dake press all assembled and looking good. I built the work bench and put it on wheels so I could have a nifty little rosin pressing workstation I can roll around the shop.
The plates were also easy to assemble. The coil heaters go in the middle of the plates and some hefty allen head screws hold everything together. The mounting collar attaches to the top plate and some more allen head screws securely mount the top plate to the press ram.
Everything that came in the bundle from New Vape. Mounting collar, plates, controller, 4 heater coils, quad e-nail controller and a probe thermometer. All super well made and durable.
Rosin plate assembly. Each plate has 2 heater coils and some insulation material sandwiched between two thick pieces of steel. Held snugly together with allen screws.
OK COOL! NICE PRESS! CAN WE FINALLY SQUISH SOMETHING NOW?
YES! We can!
But rosin pressing technique is a big topic, and something I should probably devote a whole article to. look for that article sometime in the future, but in the meantime, heres some tips, tricks and pics from my first few months of pressing!
IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT PRESSING ROSIN OR BUILDING A PRESS, PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT BELOW! I’LL EITHER ANSWER YOUR QUESTION IN THE COMMENTS OR INCLUDE IT IN MY NEXT ROSIN ARTICLE!
THANKS AND THANKS FOR READING!
Preppin for Emerald Cup got me like…. I squished about a quarter lb of bud into rosin to give away and smoke with my DGC friends. 🙂
I’ve had the best results with 160 micron bags. I load/fold them “bottle tech style”, which is easy to do but hard to explain. Google it and you’ll find some helpful videos on how to do it. Basically you are loading the bags in a column shape and pressing them vertically. This helps max yield and quality while reducing the risk of blowing the bag.
Heres an example of the bud I’ve been squishing. I’m mostly just squishing smalls and leafy larfy nugs but its all nice and frosty. Getting great flavor and 20-25% returns. Nice to be able to squish the stuff I’m too lazy to trim!
I’ve tried lots of different temps, but I’ve found I consistently get the best results around 185 degrees and pressing slowly for about 3 minutes. I apply the pressure gradually, starting at zero and slowly building pressure to about 4 tons on the gauge by the 3 min mark. SLOW AND LOW THAT IS THE TEMPO!
I’ve heard a lot of people like to press closer to 200 degrees and they only press the material for like 30 sec- 1min. in my experience, I’m getting much better results by going with lower temps and doing a slower squish. I’m sure results vary based on your material and the press you are using, but SLOW AND LOW still seems like the way to go in my opinion.
The color and consistency of your rosin can vary a lot from strain to strain. Citrus Farmer rosin has been coming out more runny and sappy. It is FULL of orange terps and it even has an orange color to it. I suspect high levels of orange terps are whats causing the saucier texture too.
French Roast rosin comes out with a totally different texture. Much more like shatter when I first press it, but it gets saucy and starts to butter up after a day or so in a jar.
Citrus Farmer rosin again, this time after a week in a jar. Stays saucy and super terpy. Stays gooey and terpy and will not butter up.
Another different strain, this one starts off like shatter and stays firm and sticky even after a week in the jar. Cell Phone Monk approves!
“Bottle tech style” works really well with these round rosin plates. As the plates squish the bag, the rosin is quickly forced out and away from the hot plates.
Pro Tip- If you get a rosin press, you are probably gonna want to get an enail too! Having a ton of rosin is really nice, but trying to smoke it all with a torch gets old fast! New Vape also makes great E-nails! My SiC dish flat coil enail setup was less than $180 with coupon code DUDE.
Thats all for now! Thanks for reading and please leave any rosin questions in the comments! 🙂
Great walk through Soup! I am currently in the beginning stages of looking into getting a rosin press. The majority of presses seem to have a rectangle plate, I see you are using the round, are you using the regular pressing bags or is there a round version?
Very professional and in-depth!!! Thanks Soup. I can vouch for that French Roast & Citrus Farmer(Ripped through the jar I “allegedly” brought home). Keep up the solid work and thanks for sharing both the knowledge and product with the DGC!!
It’s been confirmed if you admitted it so, there’s no allegedly to it.
You did it and they’re coming for you.
@ SpartanGrown- I am using regular bags, just loading/folding them differently. (google “bottle tech style” and you will find a good tutorial video showing how to do it.) This method of prepping the bag seems to pair really well with the round plates, but you can use it with rectangular plates too.
There was a few 90 micron bags included with the press from new vape and they DID NOT work well for this style of loading . The New Vape bags were a different shape and had seams on one side instead of both sides like most of the other bags I’ve seen. Not sure if it was the bag design or the smaller microns that caused the problem but the bags burst every time I tried to use them bottle tech style. They worked great for loading the normal way though, so I suspect they just weren’t designed to be used for bottle tech pressing.
I’ve been using 160 micron “rosin industries” bags because my local hydro place sells them really cheap. So far I’ve had good luck with them.
@Potsie – glad you enjoyed the rosin buddy! It was a blast hanging out and sharing my harvest with the crew! Looking forward to hanging out at the DGC Cup!
You guys gotta help Scotty get a rosin press for the Bakery!
Thanks for the post! It was featured on Grow Talk EP 760.
This is an amazing post! Thanks so much for taking the time to write this all up!
Thanks for the post Soup. We ended up with very similar set ups. Cheers.
Awesome walkthrough and informative post! I look forward to ordering my equipment and setting it up in the near future.
This exactly what I’m looking for, though I do have the crappier HF 12 ton that I used to press rocket engines with the other components look awesome. Thanks so very much for the article.
Many thanks! This is really an interesting and useful article. 🙂
MC
That’s bull I wanted to get an idea of how to make a press instead it just a ploy to sell a prebuilt kit.
No real concept or design.
As far as using those enails to heat the blocks instead of a set of heat cartridges is crazy.
For what they’re charging the (PID/ Temp controller.) should of come with a Two gauge (Though it is good to check it.).
Yeah, you could save around a hundred dollars if he would of actually bought the material & built a DIY Press instead of a kit.
Definitely an informative and in depth article, a tip of the hat to the legendary “Soup”(fresh memories of you dogging The Dude about King Marijuana [way back] ). You got any hacks for those of us that don’t have $500-$800 just lying about. A good portion of us newer growers are broke and have to use work arounds.
Nice to see people make their own DIY presses. I have made a few but I prefer 3″x5″ plates and lay the bag flat.