Blue Foam cartomizer mod

[patrickmurphy]

I had a cartomizer (hendu) that had just become too hard to draw on, even after repeated cleanings/dryings. So I plucked out the wadding and just for the heck of it, I took some blue foam and cut a little square of it, roughly the same size as the unfolded wadding - just enough to wrap around the tube - and inserted the new 'roll' into the cart.

It works!

It didn't seem to matter that I didn't try to make the heating element be attached. I made sure to push the foam roll down until it stopped. I put a few drops of juice in and after a couple of primer puffs, it started going quite like a champ.

I tried it on another old-but-not-dead cart and it also worked. The draw was better than the first, and since I'd used a litte smaller patch of foam in the second one, I took the first cart and cut off a little of that foam and packed it back in, and it had a better draw too.

When I removed the wet foam from the first to clip a little off, I noticed that the foam collected the juice in spots, but it was still vaping quite well, and it could hold quite a bit.

 

[Landlord]

Will the blue foam burn?

 

[patrickmurphy]

I haven't held a flame to it but so far, after two days of many vape hits, no burnt anything - taste or smell. Initially, I could feel the cart get hot, but after a little while vaping, that stopped and it only gets normally warm.

 

[Landlord]

Did you look at the foam for any kind of burn? Im sure it would burn if you took a flame to it, but with it being in wet foam stuff idk.

 

[patrickmurphy]

Today, I pulled out the blue foam from one of the carts. It had started having no vape production. The blue foam had singed. I didn't like that. I hadn't tasted anything when it was happening, which bothers me a lot. Not that I like that awful taste that comes from the standard wadding, but at least you know when it's happening. So....

I'm not doing this blue foam thing anymore.

 

[Landlord]

It might still work okay if you keep it really wet, but that kinda takes away the point of the carto. Your basically dripping.

 

[patrickmurphy]

Update on this mod: the "other" one that I tried, the one that had not appeared to burn/melt - it has still not changed any. I was tentatively trying a few puffs each day to see if I could detect any foul taste or odor and never did. So I opened it up and it looks fine. I did keep this one wetter, so there might very well be something to what you said about keeping it wet. It produces prodigious vapor, but I was using a near 100% pg flavor in it, and as soon as there was the tiniest vapor drop off, I put a couple more drops in the battery end. It seems to be working.

What made me try this in the first place is that the blue foam mods in the atty style ecigs I have, have all been an improvement over the original stuffing. It made sense to me that the heating elements in attys and carts are similar, as they have to achieve the same heat range to make the vape. That's why I wasn't initially concerned that the Smokestik heating coil was touching the blue foam wherever it touched. I was using blue foam I'd gotten from ModernVapor, which has worked great for me in their old batty/atty models. It seemed dense enough that it would hold the liquid without danger of it leaking into the battery, and I never found evidence of this in the two SS's I tried.

I don't know if cartomizer heating coils get hotter than atomizers... I guess maybe they do, or the blue foam would not have melted. Or else I just maybe got a "hot" cartomizer. It had been acting weird enough for me to set it aside before I tried this; I just didn't want to dissect a new one for my experiment.

 

[Cigarman]

...I don't know if cartomizer heating coils get hotter than atomizers... I guess maybe they do, or the blue foam would not have melted. Or else I just maybe got a "hot" cartomizer. It had been acting weird enough for me to set it aside before I tried this; I just didn't want to dissect a new one for my experiment.

I don't think they get hotter really, but the foam in a carto is going to be much closer to the coil than in an atty/cart, don't you think?

 

[patrickmurphy]

The atty's actually touch the foam in the atty style ecigs I use. It's actually easy to flood an atty. But I'm pretty sure that the atty is always touching the foam in the atty/batty models.

What might be happening in the cartomizer, is that the heating element is concentrating the heat onto one very small spot, moreso than an atomizer does. The atty's are an "A" shaped thing with more of a surface area that dips into the foam/liquid, and the cartomizer coil is a thin thing, like a light bulb filament. I think.

 

[HyOnLyph]

Just happened by and was reading this.... a question.... in a atty/cart configuration, doesn't the material in the cart touch the bridge? It's my understanding that the actual heating element is below the bridge. the bridge is used to collect the juice from the foam and wick it down to the element. So the foam or material doesn't actually touch the element... just the bridge. Am I wrong on that?

 

[lorikay13]

No you are correct. But the bridge itself gets red hot.

Nice to see you btw. .....I've missed you! Was just thinking of you yesterday....

 

[patrickmurphy]

Okay, I've found a new use for blue foam: in the SS cartos, I take out all the gaskets and rings and stoppers and replace them with a single little cube of blue foam. I've been doing this for a couple of months now and it does solve the problem (which I have since I almost always get rid of all the gaskets, et al) of the tube sucking up and out of the wicking material. And it also allows great airflow, as well as being an excellent stopper of fluid creep-up.

 

[lorikay13]

Hey Patrick....thats actually a good idea....but have you tried the SmokeScreens yet? They really help with the liquid issue.

 

[patrickmurphy]

I did. I got a couple with my giant carto sale buy. I've been happily munching on them.

I thought of a new name for them: Stik Teases. LOL.