Anyone else stressing over wicking material?
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several points.
ZEn was supposedly using a teflon insulator - dont know personally.
Air stone - I looked into the production of this, if it produced the same way, it is silica or reg sand fused together from heat. dont know as i really dont trust a chinese product made for goldfish myself lol.
As i agree about certain perceived health problems i am not going to tress over them as it wasnt a problem for 35+ years to inhale pounds of heavy metals from my cigs, so a few micrograms of some thing in my vapor isnt going to make me stop.
personally i would worry more about what those crazy art colors and flavors are doing to you as
microwave popcorn butter gives people lung cancer, and im supposed to worry about a piece of hot metal or a silica wick noone seems to have been affected by after years of usage.
ZEn was supposedly using a teflon insulator - dont know personally.
Air stone - I looked into the production of this, if it produced the same way, it is silica or reg sand fused together from heat. dont know as i really dont trust a chinese product made for goldfish myself lol.
As i agree about certain perceived health problems i am not going to tress over them as it wasnt a problem for 35+ years to inhale pounds of heavy metals from my cigs, so a few micrograms of some thing in my vapor isnt going to make me stop.
personally i would worry more about what those crazy art colors and flavors are doing to you as
microwave popcorn butter gives people lung cancer, and im supposed to worry about a piece of hot metal or a silica wick noone seems to have been affected by after years of usage.
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Agreed Thrasher.
People suck up CO2 on a day to day basis from polutution, use microwaves, eat s h i t processed foods, tan in booths, eat pesticides on farm grown food, farmers hormonally alter meat and milk cows chemically, use fertilizers, etc.
Oh, my point, I'm not worried about clean hot mesh.
GL OP
People suck up CO2 on a day to day basis from polutution, use microwaves, eat s h i t processed foods, tan in booths, eat pesticides on farm grown food, farmers hormonally alter meat and milk cows chemically, use fertilizers, etc.
Oh, my point, I'm not worried about clean hot mesh.
GL OP
I took the dive into the ceramic wick with the aga-t. Yes, I am making my own from topfin bubble stone that I shape to size, wash under hot water and torch to a glow. It has been the cleanest vape with the best flavor I have found yet compared to silica or ss wicks. As this is what looks to be nothing more than porous stone to me (realizing the limitations from just visual observation), and giving the full torching I apply to it, I really have no safety concerns. Works very well for me.
I have no problems with my SS but was actually curious about this, what do you do wrap a ss wick and put it inside the sleeve? Don't have any problems with shorts or anything but wondering if it improves flavor?
This is exactly what I had running throughout my mind as I first started reading all these threads, but eventually I started thinking, with SS Mesh oxidization, we're inhaling more particles than say a welder because we're delivering it directly to our lungs versus a welder who is a foot or two from his target and only getting what can get past the welding mask. Moreover, we're vaping throughout every single day, wheres as a welder welds several hours at most throughout a day and a few times a week.
So it made me start to wonder. I will probably try the whole "non-oxidized wick" since the only visible and majority of oxidization is juice gunk.
`as a former welder i have to disagree. lol, many times your standing directly over your work and the smoke is so thick you cant help but suck it up all day. i remember days when after i got home i could taste burning metal almost all weekend. and it covered everything i ate or drank. so in that respect. welders in general day after day week after week. suck more harmful smoke then we can ever get off an atty.
and it really depends on the type of welding, i used to weld straight about 25-35 hours a week sometimes, how about a pipefitter, boilermaker or beem welder. welding 8 hrs a day non stop. there is no way we can get the same amount of chromuim from a single piece of charred mesh as someone who makes restaurant equipment (SS) all day every day.
and in fact after you empty the tank a time or two (usually i used to drain the brown sludge and refill clean, and i would assume everone else does also) you just removed the bulk of the charred metal, who keeps refilling on top of the brown juice all day every day? the tiny spot the coil is on only has so much chromium in it to give before it stabilizes i would think.
like the chromium thread i was in contact with him before he posted (matter of fact i got him to actually post it)and i kept telling him dont make a wick and just analyze the first tank take that same wick a week from now with a clean tank and sample it as well or the results are not accurate. but from what im seeing its all about that first brown tank.
and it really depends on the type of welding, i used to weld straight about 25-35 hours a week sometimes, how about a pipefitter, boilermaker or beem welder. welding 8 hrs a day non stop. there is no way we can get the same amount of chromuim from a single piece of charred mesh as someone who makes restaurant equipment (SS) all day every day.
and in fact after you empty the tank a time or two (usually i used to drain the brown sludge and refill clean, and i would assume everone else does also) you just removed the bulk of the charred metal, who keeps refilling on top of the brown juice all day every day? the tiny spot the coil is on only has so much chromium in it to give before it stabilizes i would think.
like the chromium thread i was in contact with him before he posted (matter of fact i got him to actually post it)and i kept telling him dont make a wick and just analyze the first tank take that same wick a week from now with a clean tank and sample it as well or the results are not accurate. but from what im seeing its all about that first brown tank.
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Shiyro, What I'm doing for the unoxidized wick is, I wash in soapy water the mesh, roll tight, make sure the height of the wick is a tad (2 ~ 3 mm) short of the height of the atomizer.
Then I 'oxidize' just the top portion of the wick on a stove to a red point for 3 to 5 seconds (much lower temp compared to a torch, I GUESS and makes sense that it would not degrade the mesh nearly as much). This is JUST in the portion that I know will be ' in contact ' with the coil, meaning above the wick hole.
Then at the very top of the wick, where the roll of mesh end I bend that a tiny bit, 1 mm maybe, so that when I insert it on my coil (I use the drill bit method), the which does not fall completely into the atomizer.
This way you are just VERY lightly oxidizing the mesh, BARELY I'd say. Not doing so is a pain in the .... for me as otherwise I'd shorts
I guess it's the best balance between convenience / ease of setup and minimizing any potential risk with a fully oxidized material
Then I 'oxidize' just the top portion of the wick on a stove to a red point for 3 to 5 seconds (much lower temp compared to a torch, I GUESS and makes sense that it would not degrade the mesh nearly as much). This is JUST in the portion that I know will be ' in contact ' with the coil, meaning above the wick hole.
Then at the very top of the wick, where the roll of mesh end I bend that a tiny bit, 1 mm maybe, so that when I insert it on my coil (I use the drill bit method), the which does not fall completely into the atomizer.
This way you are just VERY lightly oxidizing the mesh, BARELY I'd say. Not doing so is a pain in the .... for me as otherwise I'd shorts
I guess it's the best balance between convenience / ease of setup and minimizing any potential risk with a fully oxidized material
Sounds like the method I had plan and what i'll be using, except thinking of folding the top end of the wick before I roll it just a mm or so to make it a bit bigger, then inserting into coil, should sit a few mm above the posts as well and prevent the wick from falling through. Only difference is the wick maintains a circle and not a bend at the end (I have OCD...)
as long as the area under the coil is oxidized enough there is no need to worry about it touching the bottom of the tank
I was a pipefitter welder for over 35 years; much of that time welding stainless. In my career, I've been exposed to enough toxic fumes, chemicals, and materials, to last 3 lifetimes. I'm not too worried about a tiny rolled up piece of stainless mesh.
So to close this up... For the most part.
Oxidized SS Mesh (and obviously partially oxidized) is nothing to really worry about, I mean the affects are still there, but not to the point where it's even considered life threatening.
Therefore, i'll stick to my 400 SS Mesh with a partial oxidization and forget about ceramic wick and whatever else is in the works. The ceramic sounds nice, but not going to spend money on a wick that lasts me a week, especially at the price of ceramic. Probably wait till the Chinese mass produce it, but then i'd be skeptical on a China ceramic wick, probably packed with lead and asbestos.
Oxidized SS Mesh (and obviously partially oxidized) is nothing to really worry about, I mean the affects are still there, but not to the point where it's even considered life threatening.
Therefore, i'll stick to my 400 SS Mesh with a partial oxidization and forget about ceramic wick and whatever else is in the works. The ceramic sounds nice, but not going to spend money on a wick that lasts me a week, especially at the price of ceramic. Probably wait till the Chinese mass produce it, but then i'd be skeptical on a China ceramic wick, probably packed with lead and asbestos.
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I've followed the threads about the ceramic wicks; and for those who are pleased with it, that's good. For me, personally, from what I've read, the cons outweigh the pros. Too expensive, too fragile, too long to break in, poor availability, longevity isn't yet known.
Yeah, I fell for the Ceramic Atomizer scheme before (AVA Atomizer), while it did vape very well, it wasn't really what I was looking for, even though it had a warranty on it and a cute serial number... I don't really like the performance of ceramic.
With all respect Shiryo, you are comparing apples and oranges here. The porous ceramic wick that is being used in a genesis is not in any way related to what you are talking about. I am talking about a rigid piece of ceramic material shaped like a wick, not a ready built atomizer unit with a coil somehow sealed in a ceramic base of some sort. No one is asking you to "fall for" anything either, my take on ceramics is merely comparing experience with stainless mesh vs my experience with ceramic. Do ceramics have some weaknesses? You bet. They are brittle, they take a while to break in and at the moment they are expensive and hard to purchase. There are positives that for me outweigh the negatives however. The vapor production easily matches (some would say exceeds) what you get with mesh. The flavor quality is amazing and the general comment is that those who have experienced the taste from ceramic wicks will not return to stainless. That is how good these things can be. You can coil and fire a ceramic wick in around a minute because they are completely non conductive and they do not decompose or distort under extreme temperature (we are talking white hot here: 2000 degrees). I certainly have no stress about inhaling anything nasty from a wick that is prepared in this way.
True, they may be completely different, if the price drops to about $1 a wick or less, I wouldn't mind trying it out. My only gripe is that they are preset size, so it would be a waste have to snap some off (and super carefully) and in the end after using a few, have the equivalent of one wick sitting there but in pieces because they are pieces that had to be snapped off to fit a setup for the user. Then again, i'm sure those tiny pieces can be held together with one layer of a SS Mesh wrapped around them to hold them together, given the pieces are at-least 1cm+...
I also haven't seen anything regarding how long one wick will generally last with a 50/50-100% VG juice.
Not knocking the use of ceramic wick at all. Just the price and lack of usage information stops me from trying it out.
I also haven't seen anything regarding how long one wick will generally last with a 50/50-100% VG juice.
Not knocking the use of ceramic wick at all. Just the price and lack of usage information stops me from trying it out.
I would like to see a pic if that if you haven't already been asked. I have a friend who is electrician and I am not talented at all about it but he's been helping a little and I think he'd kow about this.
I'm really surprised not to see people using Imeo's (I believe Imeo originally came up with the idea, SO sorry if i'm wrong!) idea of using unoxidized mesh and no resistance wire, with the mesh itself being the coil. LongHaul and Bishopeals seemed to have good luck with the methods.
Compared to the nasties & stuff I used to inhale at various jobs over the last 40 years, I can't get stressed over the SS wick drama. I lightly torch (orange glow) the unrolled mesh, roll it up, burn the coil end with a bic type lighter, wrap, adjust & vape. (Anymore, I only drill bit my 28ga wire.)
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