Thanks for all the tips! Though I have to say, the concept of going through a pipe a month is pretty horrifying to a traditional pipe smoker like myself. Is this kind of burn-through common with all ecig products, or just the 601? I'm speaking from my perspective as a tobacco pipe smoker, where I can buy a good quality pipe and expect it to last the rest of my life, unless I badly abuse it. I'd like to have the same with an epipe/ecig device - Something I can buy and keep, just occasionally changing out small parts on, instead of something I will be throwing away every month. Don't have the cash for that kind of expense - with a tobacco pipe, my monthly expense is about $15 max for a couple tins of good tobacco, and that's that.
Regarding the 601, it sounds like I'm not changing out the battery soon enough, for one. The green light flashes occasionally, but I had no idea what that meant. Not familiar with the blue foam you mention, though. All the cartridges that came with it have white foam in them. It also sounds like I was overfilling one difficult cart, too - had it topped pretty high. I found that it would barely puff with the cart in, but when I took the cart out, I could smoke it cart-free and get huge vapor, so I guess that's a pretty clear indicator that I was drowning my atty.
I don't see much mention of cleaning these things, which is a ritual in the traditional pipe world, so I tried a couple of things. Used a needle air gun at very low pressure to blow through the stem, which blew out a fair bit of accumulated moisture, and then blew down into the inlet hole in the bowl. Blew a LOT of moisture out the end of the shank, from down around the atty and under it. I wiped it off and looked it over and it seemed clean inside, so I dampened the atty again with a fresh cart and it's doing really well. Maybe if I can keep the accumulated moisture blown out from under the battery chamber, it will last a wee bit longer... Either that or I'll break it and have a new lesson for the "Don't Do" archives!
