My Atty Resurrection Method

[Thyestean]

Thy: Glad I could help out even an old expert

lol ...

I think you actually cursed me with this posting as my 510 "disposable" atty suddenly stopped performing well and was producing almost no vapor today too.

So I did this to that one too and I actually took and gave the atty a few hard shakes over the sink after blowing the water out. Got a bit more water out of it that way. Ended up getting to the orange glow stage a little quicker with that one but that could be because of the better drying or because it hasn't been in use as long as the other one had and therefore possibly not as gunked up.

One thing I did notice while doing this one though is that it was sizzling and gurgling quite a bit while doing the dryburn portion of the cleaning and when i kept the button held down and turned it upside down it drained out some more liquid. Each time i did the dry burn again I would get just a bit of sizzle at first but then more gurgling after about 20 - 30 seconds of burn. Not sure if this is due to something different about these attys or not but each time I was able to tip it upside down and dump more liquid out again that hadn't come out before reheating it even though I had tipped it multiple times.

And now it's working well again

[BanjoMan]

I must be doing something wrong. I popped two 901 attys this afternoon trying this, and I didn't think I was dry burning that long. It was orange, orange, orange, nuttin.

[highping]

I must be doing something wrong. I popped two 901 attys this afternoon trying this, and I didn't think I was dry burning that long. It was orange, orange, orange, nuttin.

Doh!

I did pop a couple attys back when I first started doing this method, but anytime that happened it was because I let them get too bright by holding the button for 2-3 seconds when the atty was already dry. If you just let them get to a soft orange glow, they will not blow.
Once you are past the drying step, you should not hold the button for more than one second. It should really be much shorter than that. More like a button pulse of 2-3 times a second. (I will add this to the OP) I have never blown an atty using the button pulse method.

**again...use this method at your own risk. You may blow a couple figuring out how not to do it, but once you have the technique down it will work every time on any atty that is not "cold" (cold=dead, not cold=just dirty)

BTW: sorry for your loss Banjo
<moment of silence>

[BanjoMan]

Not to worry, they were old enough to need a good cleaning anyway.

I'll try it again and be more gentle.

[Zurd]

How often do you need to clean your atomizer with this method?

[highping]

Zurd. Welcome to the forum!

I usually do it once a week at the most. Sometimes every couple weeks. It just depends. I can tell when the atty isn't hitting up to par, and at this point, I have been doing it long enough to be able to tell if it is because it is dirty. (and not one of the many other reasons that it will stop hitting well like flooded, low batt, too dry, etc.)
Just be careful with this method especially if you don't have lots of extras to fall back on.

[GregH]

I just wanted to add my thanks for this thread, highping.

I'd been throwing my old unusable attys in a zip-lock baggie just in case there came a day I would discover a way to revive them. And then I found your thread.

I took one out that's been in the atty graveyard for about 4 or 5 months and did your procedure. It's working like a new one now. Brilliant!

[highping]

Thanks Greg. It's nice to hear that it's working for you! Glad I could help.
I can't imagine how many of those "bags of old attys" are out there in the vaping world.

[Shortstuff116]

Well I used this dry-burn method with 8 minutes of cleaning in my ultrasonic cleaner several times (clean - burn, clean -burn) and I now have a half dozen attys that are as good as new. This has definately been the best cleaning method I have used so far.

[sjohnson]

The burn nets you a bare coil, without crust build-up. That's key in making an atomizer work efficiently. The crust insulates your coil from the e-juice, giving poor vapor production.