Have Mod producers developed their own type of battery that you can only buy from them, or can you just use regular AA batteries? Like Duracell or Energizer, for example?
And why are those nice wood mods so expensive? Are the cartos made by NASA? Seriously, it looks like a fine piece of exotic hardwood, but come on. $150???
Thank you.
Sure, but not all AA's, depends also at what wattage you want to vape, I noticed that most vapers want to vape at around 7W, some get there with good devices, some get there because they think they're vaping at 10Watts but really, the crap quality batteries they bought have such a humongous voltage drop (because of a high internal resistance) that they end up at between 6 and 8 watts.
For reference current (I) = voltage (V) / resistance (R), and power (P)=current*voltage
Lets say you vape at 5volt regulated, you have a 3.5ohm atom, 5V/3.5ohm= 1.42A; 1.42A*5V=~7W of power.
For these powers most configurations need around 1.5 A of current, thats very much within the scope of good quality AA's.
I myself am still torn wether to make a 5xAA mod regulated with a stepdown and 3A fuse, or a AAA based one, simply because the five AA mod is fairly big (still smaller than most mods you see here), and will weight around 200grams, which may be uncomfortable to carry.
The biggest "deal" of li ions is that they are very energy dense, so you need few of them, and they last a while, AA's last a while too, you just need a lot more of them.
I also don't really want lithium batteries near my mouth anymore, but thats not to say that NiMh's don't vent and that you can cheap out, that means also a good charger, single channel and charged singularly, meaning you don't make a battery pack out of them.
See this thread
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/battery-mods/290016-some-nimh-battery-configurations.html notice the voltage drop these batteries have under a 1.5A load, and notice the effective mAh under such a continuous load, they can hold a 2A load very well too, but thats specific to the eneloops, for the performance of other AA's you will have to take a stroll in the candlepowerforums, theres all sorts of graphs for a wide array of brands.
Also, if you want to free yourself completely from overpriced china its time to make your own / buy a repairable atomizer, also hand crafted mods are expensive because they're not mass produced, frankly, they are one of the few justifiable prices among the vaping hardware world because great work and care goes into them.
But yeah long story short, you can make a good PV that runs on four nimh AA's, the problem is it'll always be heavier and bigger than a li-ion mod.
For example my 5xAA regulated mod with touchswitch would be 6cm tallx 5cm wide x 3cm thick, and 200grams. Thats fairly sizeable.
Long post, but I really think we could just migrate to NiMh with no problems, and almost everyone would be satisfied with the performance.