stainless steel mesh as cartridge medium

[Bertrand]

Time to buy some real fine Steel Wool and stuff some in there instead.
0000 i think is the finest.
I am not sure about rust, but it shouldnt because of the PG

The .nl post stated that he thought a coarser mesh than the one he used would have worked better. Mind you, it was still a lot finer than the tea strainer. Do you know of anywhere you can get tiny amounts of it at a reasonable price? It would be good to try a variety of gauges.

We should bear in mind, it's the gaps rather than the actual gauge of the metal that defines the eliquid's adsorption characteristics, so how tightly you roll / pack it would be the defining factor once the mesh is fine enough.

[Bertrand]

I figured out why the spring & mesh was too wet - it's squeezing the mesh. Pretty obvious in hindsight.

[MagusSteele]

Any hardwear store would carry steel wool.
I said real fine because it would gove more surface area, and courser would have larger holes and the liquid may not hold IN the wool.
I may have some here to try later.

[Bertrand]

Any hardwear store would carry steel wool.
I said real fine because it would gove more surface area, and courser would have larger holes and the liquid may not hold IN the wool.
I may have some here to try later.

Yeah - that's my understanding of the effect of the gap size. But e-liquid does seem to have a lower surface tension than water, so the gaps may not need to be as small as you think.

By the way, you want mesh - not wool. I had a play with some fine wool and just cleaning it created sharp metal fragments all over the place. I really didn't like the imagery of that stuff in my lungs. :)

The mesh comes either knitted or woven. The common stuff is woven. I think the finer mesh is usually knitted and used for ultrafiltration etc.

(I think the amount of time I have wasted and will continue to waste on this will easily outweigh any time I possibly may save topping up carts... :) )

[Grenage]

Err wouldn't steel wool just combust?

Never put 9v battery terminals across some before?

[MagusSteele]

Will have to try that.
Its not in direct contact with the heating element for one, and its not in a cross circuit. so shouldnt be a problem.
It shouldnt crumble if packed.

[Bertrand]

You can get stainless steel wool, knitted mesh, woven mesh. (Stainless steel wool is sold as "Stainless steelo" for cleaning stainless steel pots; woven mesh as coffee filters or tea filters - I'm trying the tea filter in various configurations.)

The very fine stuff appears to be sold only for specialty purposes, and you need to buy vast quantities (>USD1000, square metres) of it when we don't even know how fine we need or even if it will work any better.

[Grenage]

It doesn't need a direct current or much heat to set the stuff off, a lit match anywhere near it would do the same.

[PeteMcArthur]

Just did a little experiment on a penstyle cart. Using a Sainsbury's stainless steel pan scourer, I cut a little off and filled the cart to just over the half way mark. The stainless steel did not go into the smaller chamber. This was topped with the normal filling.
So far the results have been promising, this particular penstyle has been terrible using carts, but now it seems quite usable. The scourer looks to course at first, it is a spirally cut strip of stainless but it scrunches up well and is easily worked without cutting your fingers. So far I don't have any draining / leaking probs, but I do have the conventional filler on top.

I'll let you know how I get on

[Bertrand]

I've killed all my atomizers for now, so I won't do any more updates for a little while. However, I have used a finer mesh now. Since the atomizer seems to have been on its last legs I didn't really get to test it.

As mentioned earlier I expected to be able to buy a "permanent" drip coffee filter. Since nobody drinks this dreck in Melbourne (the only machines I have seen are at McDonalds), I couldn't find one. Instead I got a coffee plunger, which was slightly amusing as the helpful staff explained how to use it, etc. while I was just checking out the meshes on them. Seems a bit of a waste, but there you go.

The first time I put this in, it didn't work too well - I'd packed it too hard. But when I loosened it up and made a "cap" out of the same stuff, it worked quite well on a dying atomizer.