I always de-wick my atomizers. The fibers of the wick burn very fast if not throughly soaked (esp LR ones), which is nearly impossible if you're dripping. You'll get a much longer life out of a dewicked atomizer, IMO. There are plenty of vids about this,
Interesting. Naturally I did find some answers after having posted my question
- but yours wasn't common among them.
That being said, after 2-3 trial runs, I never debridge my atomizers. I have no scientific proof to back this up, but I found ZERO performance difference in a debridged atty, and MUCH more leaking/pull through. I feel as though the bridge sort-of "diffuses" the airflow coming through the atty and lets vapor build up/ allows a tighter pull without juice in your mouth.
Interesting, because from finally hitting on some good keywords to search for, this seemed almost more common than de-wicking, and the reasons given seemed to be that when dripping it is nicer/easier if the bridge isn't there, so you hit either the wick directly, or, if de-wicked, the coil itself directly.
As for trying 1 drop of a new flavor to try it, that's kinda hard to do. I would commit a good 3-4 drops (5-6 vapes for me) to each flavor MINIMUM, then blow out the atty. I usually pick a new flavor and give it a trial day. I know it's hard (and I definitely didn't do this on day one) but there will always be a little bit of that previous flavor in the atty when switching. I wouldn't reccomend a water/vinegar clean after each trial, as that's a fast way to kill an atty.
Vinegar and water is probably not a good idea - too many minerals that can build up. Strong ethanol/alcohol is probably the easiest. I've used 95%, but I think 80% would be enough. Vodka in a pinch. The good thing about alcohol is that it dries rather quickly. I haven't tried boiling (either cartos or atomizers) yet, but if/when I do, I will most probably follow it up with a quick ethanol rinse.
Hmm, thinking about boiling for cleaning (which seems to be the preferred method for cleaning cartomizers), wouldn't mineral build-up be an even bigger problem than with soaking?
This could probably be avoided by boiling in distilled water. But if your gear is really dirty and requires 3-4 boils before the water is clear, that could use up quite a lot of DW.
I'm thinking adding some dishwasher powder to the (tapwater) water might help, or it might not. Or it might do something horrible, but probably not.
Tona just opened my eyes a bit when they suggested flavorless pg/vg when switching flavors, that's a really good idea.
Thanks, glad to be of help and not just "the impatient newbie"
I actually just hit on it by mistake: among the many bottles with my first experiments I also have a bottle with no flavour nic-juice (at about 13mg/ml). So when I was trying things, and being very new to dripping, I just thought I'd drop a bit of that.
I'm sure plain PG (or a PG/VG mix) would also work well, but when I discovered that after several vapes of the old flavour, fainter and fainter to completely flavourless, I could start discerning the subtle taste of my nic (classic "wet dog" or "fishy", very faint but it is there), I got rather excited: that nic-taste is *very* subtle, so if that comes through there should be almost no chance at all of the previous flavour corrupting the next one.
