2 stage pre-condenser

[tickle]

may have gotten to the bottom of the bypassing....i left the tubes on the bottom un cut hanging down, some are long, some are short you can see what i mean in the pic; the one that was bypassing was one that was cut tight. i'm thinking that cutting them all tight will fix. seems plausible to me that the vapor would travel up to contact the cold surface, and pool up and pass through the shorter tubes first. not sure if what i'm describing makes sense, hope the pic helps...any way, will cut em all back, see if it improves

[MacStill]

makes perfect sense tickle, vapor will travel the the least restricted path :handgestures-thumbupleft:

[tickle]

cut the tubes back, what a difference! lost the cool factor of it lookiing like a pipe organ, but it works great now, i am tossing huge amounts of heat at it, just trying to see its limits. the 2nd stage is a nice feature, much less of a "flywheel affect" when making adjustments; far more responsive to flow rate changes. overall, i'm happy with it

full reflux flame.JPG

pretty good fire!

[tickle]

Well, all things considered, I am happy with it. I did learn a lot, and dont regret building it this way at all. More often than not, I dont end up needing all of its knock down power, which you tried to tell me...but bieng the first build, it did make me feel better to over build. The builds since have also been two stage, because it is cool, and I do like to have the option to crank shit up! Brutish am very surprised at how little is needed to make it work, and know that if I had made it full sized, without the center drain, running would have been a real balancing act. So, my advice to a rookies? 2stage it to feel good, know it will over perform, but without the drawbacks of a massive flywheels effect. Then, on the next build you can decide how big you want!