capnstemz said:

ah ha!
found 'em

Sorry agar.

http://www.tissuequickplantlabs.com/amdpg5c.htm

Looked for night and day for these things.

---

I an familiar with that patch, as well as about every other made.
(side note - orchid propagation is another hobby of mine)

Trouble is their cost.

Same thing goes for those in the link a few posts down.


This is a picture of about $150 worth of different types 3 micron filter material. You can get very significant price breaks, buying it in MUCH larger amounts. But, this stuff is still very expensive, no matter how you buy it.

Any of these will autoclave & function perfectly as a filter for this purpose.

The next issue is that an adhesive that will also withstand autoclaveing must be applied to the material.

Which is no simple feat, as it must be applied as a very fine mist. Otherwise, it will degrade the porosity of the filter material.

Then you have another issue.
If the adhesive is applied to the area that is exposed to grain spawn, or substrate & the jar/bag is shaken - to speed colonization.

Grain spawn or substrate can/will often adhere to the exposed adhesive. Which can degrade filtration & cause contamination by a wicking effect.

That aspect can be overcome by applying another small piece of filtration material upside down to the center of the downward facing patch.

OKAY.....bingo ....bango.... I made a 20 by hand.

Then.....tested them repeatedly, to insure functionality.

Hey, guess what? They worked perfectly.

Gee..... you think you could put them together at about $0.03 cents each total cost. Some quick number crunching & you figure you could sell rolls of 100 for $7, plus S/H. S/H would be about $3 in the continental USA.

So, in the customers hands, the cost would be $10 per hundred.

Which is a fair price & would give you a healthy profit margin.

Next step is MASS PRODUCTION.

Right there is the hang/up.

Equipment would run about $80K (usd).

Then there is the space required, as well as all else involved in a start up small scale manufacturing enterprise.

Then, you do a few calculations on investment return, given the very narrow specific market arena the product would sell in.

SURPRISE SURPISE.......

Lets just give it a best guess, if you sold $10,000 worth a year.

Figuring $5000 of that is hard costs.

Now YOU do the numbers on your investment return.

That is just the investment return.

How long would it be - before you ACTUALLY ...MAKE A PROFIT.

To long.