How to create an evaporation chamber for extract making.

Building a self contained Evaporator setup.

Introduction
   If you're extracting the Savinorin A out of any Salvia Divinorum product, you'll undoubtedly run into the use of quick-evaporating solvents. These are wonderful for extracting or purifying your mixture, and have the added benefit of evaporating at fairly low temperatures. In this guide, I will teach you how to make an evaporating chamber which can greatly accelerate evaporation times, without resorting to (potentially dangerous) heat. Please note that I'm writing this guide for the newest of electronics users... I'm assuming you know absolutely nothing about how batteries or fans work, what positive and negative are, or how to operate a soldering iron. If it's below you, I'm sorry, but I want this to be as extensive and inclusive as possible!

   First, you'll need to procure a few different materials. I'm drawing almost all the parts required from my extensive computer and technology background, some of you might even be able to salvage these parts from your home equipment. If not, I expect the entire cost of either setup to run at around 10$ if you can supply your own batteries. If you are buying batteries (I suggest rechargeable batteries, cheaper in the long-run) then you can expect this cost to rise accordingly. I've accompanied this list with a few links of where to get the parts required. You can use your own for sure, but the sites I list are probably the best in terms of shipping/prices and product reliability. You can select "No" or the cheapest option for any of the Options for any of the products listed below, we'll be modifying them ourselves.

1. 1 80mm or 92mm computer fan. I suggest an 80mm fan for this as they can be used with a wider variety of containers, but will trigger evaporation slower than the 92mm fan... Make sure to get 4 fan screws with your purchase. They're listed as an option for the links below.
- 80mm fan of choice
- 92mm fan of choice

2. 120mm computer wire fan guard.
- Fan guard of choice.

3. A battery pack with 4 AA battery slots... OR... A 5-9v AC adaptor wall plug.
- Battery pack of choice
- In Store Only, and a great product really... lets you balance between 4-12v controlling fan speed and therefore evaporation speed.

4. You need some Heatshrink or Electrical tape. Solder and a soldering iron are optional (but nice) to have.

5. A tall glass chamber (A cheap coffee bodum works wonders...) These can be had at any house-wares store, and range from 4-15$. You can also use a large (500ml or larger) glass beaker, decanter, small glass or stainless steel bowl (with a diameter of less than 110mm) etc. NOTHING plastic/wood, due to the nature of the solvents you'll be using. You want it to be at least 4" in diameter, up to about 6".

Battery? Rechargeable or Alkaline? Wall plug? What!
   Yes, I've given you the option to use either a battery pack (with rechargeable or non-rechargeable batteries) or a wall plug type setup. Obviously, a wall plug setup will run forever, and be cheaper in the long run... It will also let you control the speed of the fan (generally around 6v is desirable, very fast fans draw in dust, which can contaminate the mixture). Battery packs are portable, don't require a plug, and can often be recharged to save you money over time. All in all, I suggest going with a rechargeable battery pack, or the wall plug. Alkalines just don't cut it for this operation.

Either way, whichever you choose, the rest of the guide is pretty straight forward.

Making the Fan Assembly.
   So, you've got your fan in, and your battery pack or wall adapter. First, you should snip the connectors off either of these pieces, leaving as much wire as you possibly can. For the rest of this guide, I'll be using a 9v battery snap connecter in lieu of a battery pack, since my rechargable battery pack uses this connector.

1. There should be 3 wires in your fan... a Red, Black and Yellow or White wire in the fan. If you salvaged a fan from somewhere in your house, and it has a FOURTH wire, this fan is not suitable for this project... and needs to be replaced... Sorry!

2. Firmly grasp the white/yellow wire, and yank it so it detaches from the fan. This wire reports the fan speed, and is not required for this project. If your fan has any LED's, these should also be clipped and/or removed. Light can damage your extract, so you really don't want them there. You should be left with something like the following. You can see a few pictures of me yanking them off below.

3. Next, strip both ends of your battery pack and fan so you've got between 0.5 and 1" of exposed wire. Your battery pack should have a black and a red wire, and a wall adapter should have two black wires, one with a little white stripe down it. If you're using a wall adapter, the wire with the stripe should generally be the Negative wire, but this is subject to change. You should have something roughly like this:

4. Connect the red fan wire to the red power source wire (Battery pack) or to the wire power source wire without the white strip (Wall adapter). Next, connect the black fan wire to the remaining (solid black). You connect these by soldering (optional) or just by twisting them together.

5. Plug in the adapter, or put the batteries in the holder. Make sure the exposed portions of the wires aren't touching, and see if it starts spinning. If so, move onto the next step. If not, make sure the leads are connected properly, you can switch them around until it does work properly, then move to the next step. Eventually, you should have something that looks like the following:

6. Cover the joints with heatshrink or electrical tape, making sure that they're totally isolated from one-another.

7. Now, that we're done the electrical part, we need to set up the actual evaporator. You'll notice that one side of your fan has 4 supports on it... These hold the middle motor up. The side with the supports is the side that air blows towards... So, place the fan so that these supports are facing UP. You should have something like the following:

8. Next, position the fan guard so it's on top of the fan, so at least one of the fan screw holes is between some of the wire guards. You can see what I mean here:

9. Lastly, screw the fan screws into as many holes as possible. One hole is enough, but 2-3 is ideal. This can be somewhat tough, as the fan screws have to grip into the plastic, so be careful. Verify that the fan still spins. And finally you should have something like this:

Wrapping it up.
Congratulations, your evaporator is complete. You can use the wire guard to balance the fan on dishes up to 6" in diameter. Make it so the air is blowing down into the solution, and make sure there's at least 0.5" on each side of the fan for the evaporated solvent to excape.

Here's a pic of my mini-evaporator (40mm setup, 3" diameter fan-guard) for final reference... Doing it's thing with an ounce of IPA.