alt Hacker NewsYour home grow prices are high (even setting aside that you can just buy flower instead of the disposable vape). The right range is hundreds of dollars. And I'm sure making good oil costs somewhat more, but you can make crappy dab sludge (wax?) with some scissors, $10 of isopropyl alcohol, and a baking dish ("QWISO"), and that sludge can be loaded in some kinds of reusable vape.
Im talking about making full melt distillate. Crappy dab sludge can't go in a cart. It requires actual distillation to make what they put in the carts. QWISO is a joke.
I promise you, if it was easy, you would see more people making carts. I tried C02, water wash, sifting, heat press, everything you can think of. Its nowhere near the same. And that's just for the bare minimum distillate. We're not even talking about live resin or anything fancy.
You basically need a small factory to get close to the quality of the carts.
And my home grow prices are low. You cant just grow 2 or 4 plants if you want even a small steady supply of full melt wax. Like, 20 plants minimum is more close. And they have to be good. Living soil, aeroponic, whatever you want.
And that's if you can get actually good yield. I've seen people get such bad yield that they turn 1 pound of flower into less than 3 grams of wax. That's why you need an expert. Even putting together a successful distillation operation is no joke. Besides chemistry knowledge, you need lots of "industrial equipment" knowledge. We're not talking about using a heat press or a curling iron to make "dabs". We're talking about making the real shit.
To be honest 10k is in the range of the cheapest alibaba eqipment. Most commercial outfits, even smaller ones, use much more expensive equipment.
This is why people prefer to just buy it from the store for $20.