Carts are based on a faulty idea, let's fix it

[Robert]

I'm using one cosmetic "facial cleaning buffs" that i found at Ricky's. They are the same consistency of the original one

quote]
facial cleaning buffs?

try a pyramid lypton t bag

 

[warp1900]

Maybe this could work, rough picture hopefully included below. if you could split the cart up the middle having a little more than half of it containing the polyfill stuff, the rest being a reservoir, and some kind of one-way liquid check valve on the side you don't inhale from, you'd have the wicking motion that allows the atty to properly vaporize the liquid, a built in reservoir, the polyfill would stay in contact with the atty having nowhere else to go, and you'd rarely have to remove the cart to refill. just stick whatever bottle/dripper you're using onto the check valve and squirt until full. i'm guessing you could get 1-3mL in there, no leakage because the polyfill holds it w/o gravity drawing it out the breather hole, and you wouldn't have to have some kind of separate reservoir sticking off the side. basically a 2-in-1 thing, i think it would work pretty well. no idea how to construct this without some kind of industrial plastic-forming thing, but if anyone has any ideas i'll definitely give it a go. thoughts?

You are really not understanding how the cartridges work.
There is NEVER a direct path from your mouth to the wick that holds the liquid as on your drawing, because you would be sucking the liquid without vaporizing it, straight to your mouth.
Take the filler out of a cartridge, and you will see that there is no hole connecting the mouthpiece to the juice chamber.

I am not trying to discourage any ideas, but in order to make it better, we need to first make clear how the ones we use now everyday function in detail.

The physics involved in how cartridges work are much more complicated than they appear. There are many factors involved, air flow, gravity, pressure, heat, etc.

In my opinion, the "juice problem", having to re-fill cartridges-dripping-dipping etc., are part of what e-cigs are, just like the annoyances of smoking analogs:
Nicotine stained fingers, stink, ashes, having to worry about burning something or someone, yellow teeth, smoke bothering others, etc.

We didn't double take on those and we kept smoking. How many tried to solve those problems, and yet there was never a real solution to them? And remember, analogs have been on the market for 100s of years.

Some in this forum, have come up with amazingly clever solutions that actually work (tinear is the one i remember the most), but unfortunately their solution obviously does not fit in a regular sized factory e-cig.

Again, i want to remind everyone that it is no coincidence that the Chinese came up with such design that seems so simple everyone thinks it's deficient.

Patience is what they have been world famous for throughout centuries...

If you don't believe me, take a look at just one example of what they have been capable of, specially at the top where there is a ball carved inside a ball inside a ball, and they are not fixed, you can rotate them in any direction.
All carved by hand out of one single piece of ivory, no assembly, no glue, no machined tricks, and no electric tools.

Cool huh?

8-o

 

[leavitodeaver]

You are really not understanding how the cartridges work.
There is NEVER a direct path from your mouth to the wick that holds the liquid as on your drawing, because you would be sucking the liquid without vaporizing it, straight to your mouth.
Take the filler out of a cartridge, and you will see that there is no hole connecting the mouthpiece to the juice chamber.

I am not trying to discourage any ideas, but in order to make it better, we need to first make clear how the ones we use now everyday function in detail.

The physics involved in how cartridges work are much more complicated than they appear. There are many factors involved, air flow, gravity, pressure, heat, etc.

In my opinion, the "juice problem", having to re-fill cartridges-dripping-dipping etc., are part of what e-cigs are, just like the annoyances of smoking analogs:
Nicotine stained fingers, stink, ashes, having to worry about burning something or someone, yellow teeth, smoke bothering others, etc.

We didn't double take on those and we kept smoking. How many tried to solve those problems, and yet there was never a real solution to them? And remember, analogs have been on the market for 100s of years.

Some in this forum, have come up with amazingly clever solutions that actually work (tinear is the one i remember the most), but unfortunately their solution obviously does not fit in a regular sized factory e-cig.

Again, i want to remind everyone that it is no coincidence that the Chinese came up with such design that seems so simple everyone thinks it's deficient.

Patience is what they have been world famous for throughout centuries...

If you don't believe me, take a look at just one example of what they have been capable of, specially at the top where there is a ball carved inside a ball inside a ball, and they are not fixed, you can rotate them in any direction.
All carved by hand out of one single piece of ivory, no assembly, no glue, no machined tricks, and no electric tools.

So what concept am i missing? if i don't understand how they work, please explain. i understand there is no hole going thru from mouthpiece to filler, obviously my ms paint drawing is not to scale or intricate enough to recreate the air flow patterns, it's just a brainstorm. what is the purpose of the little metal circle under the filler on the stock carts? keep the liquid in while allowing air to pass, something along those lines? however it functions, couldn't you just put the same little airflow device in the mouthpiece of what i previously described? i think the general principle still holds. please enlighten me if i'm wrong, i like to learn and i love solving these little problems, so despite what the chinese have come up with, it never hurts to try something new rather than accept what's already been done as the best there is was and will be. no issues with constructive criticism, but please give some detail or fix to the issue, please don't just say "you don't understand, it won't work," it doesn't help anything.

 

[ylleK]

Maybe this could work, rough picture hopefully included below. if you could split the cart up the middle having a little more than half of it containing the polyfill stuff, the rest being a reservoir, and some kind of one-way liquid check valve on the side you don't inhale from, you'd have the wicking motion that allows the atty to properly vaporize the liquid, a built in reservoir, the polyfill would stay in contact with the atty having nowhere else to go, and you'd rarely have to remove the cart to refill. just stick whatever bottle/dripper you're using onto the check valve and squirt until full. i'm guessing you could get 1-3mL in there, no leakage because the polyfill holds it w/o gravity drawing it out the breather hole, and you wouldn't have to have some kind of separate reservoir sticking off the side. basically a 2-in-1 thing, i think it would work pretty well. no idea how to construct this without some kind of industrial plastic-forming thing, but if anyone has any ideas i'll definitely give it a go. thoughts?

I think that'd work and i have the perfect solution. one of the semi translucent disposable lighters. the inside looks almost identical to your "blueprint" and they have a color choice

 

[framitz]

Hi everybody,
since days I'm thinking about the "engineering" inside those stupid carts and I think they are not effective at all.
So far, if I'm not mistaken, they work like this:
we fill the "cotton" inside the cart and when we inhale, the juice is supposed to "lift" to the top of the cart by a wicking process.

I see some problems here:
1) the carts are already small, why are we filling it ALL with the "cotton"? each piece of cotton is a drop less i can put inside and i can vape..
2) more than often, the top of the cart is dry and the bottom is wet (even with the straw mod, which tries to trick the problem but it doesn't solve it).

So I came up with this idea:

(i'm a programmer, not a designer...can you see it? )

What do you think about it?

I just filled an empty pen style cart (no stuffing) with liquid, it held 1.2 ml, then I filled a cart with the normal stuffing and it held 1.1 ml therefore the filler displaced .1 ml. I can live with that. The cart holds a lot of liquid as built and when I use it, all but a tiny bit is consumed, so it is fairly efficient.

What do I think? You should build it, test it, then let us know how it works out.

In the mean time I'll be blissfully vaping away.

 

[autrad]

... if there was a sealed liquid chamber with a tube that dripped to the batting it might prevent the leakage problem. The diameter would need to be precise.

 

[dawghouse]

I believe there is some solid thinking going on here that's worth exploring. Engineering is another matter. Perhaps a more simplistic approach, such as in an old oil lamp. A sealed cartridge, with an orafice to allow a wick to extend from the cartridge and perhaps a rubber refill port. I've included a very basic drawing of an idea. The fillers in the cartridges do not alter the volume of the carts very much, but what they do is they hold on to a fair amount of liquid. How many times have you taken out a cart, thinking it was pretty done, only to find its still filled at least a 3rd? That tells me the material holds the liquid well, but doesn't wick all that great. Lots of surface area makes for great fluid retention, not necessarily great wicking. The capillary action of the material will have a much greater effect on it's ability to move the liquid. The poly material has tremendous surface area, and does have some wicking value, but it seems to either lose that wicking ability quickly from heat damage or it just isn't a great wicking material to begin with. At least that's my observation. I like the resevoir approach, both cause I'm lazy and cause transporting fluids from a storage reservoir to a heat source is not something that hasn't been accomplished many times before. This would be a matter of scale and a matter of finding the right material to act as a wick without introducing anything toxic into the fluid.

 

[piomode]

The big trouble with the idea of the OP is that the absorbent media is not designed to be a stopper for the liquid sitting behind it. With the cycles of drying and rewetting, heating and cooling, the material doesn't keep it's seal. Therefore, it's a terrible stopper. They fill up the cart with that crap because it (allegedly) will hold the liquid and wick it to the atomizer. So long as it's "in suspension", it shouldn't leak.

Keep at it, though! I tried a 3ml bottle mounted on a drilled cart and it failed mostly because of the 'stopper' (plus it was just annoying in general)

 

[warp1900]

So what concept am i missing? if i don't understand how they work, please explain. i understand there is no hole going thru from mouthpiece to filler, obviously my ms paint drawing is not to scale or intricate enough to recreate the air flow patterns, it's just a brainstorm. what is the purpose of the little metal circle under the filler on the stock carts? keep the liquid in while allowing air to pass, something along those lines? however it functions, couldn't you just put the same little airflow device in the mouthpiece of what i previously described? i think the general principle still holds. please enlighten me if i'm wrong, i like to learn and i love solving these little problems, so despite what the chinese have come up with, it never hurts to try something new rather than accept what's already been done as the best there is was and will be. no issues with constructive criticism, but please give some detail or fix to the issue, please don't just say "you don't understand, it won't work," it doesn't help anything.

I wish you would be able to read past what bothers you so much from my response to your post here. Because there is much more than just "you don't understand", i even explained what is not true about your "theory"

I don't need to enlighten you, enlighten yourself.

 

[warp1900]

So what concept am i missing? if i don't understand how they work, please explain. i understand there is no hole going thru from mouthpiece to filler, obviously my ms paint drawing is not to scale or intricate enough to recreate the air flow patterns, it's just a brainstorm. what is the purpose of the little metal circle under the filler on the stock carts? keep the liquid in while allowing air to pass, something along those lines? however it functions, couldn't you just put the same little airflow device in the mouthpiece of what i previously described? i think the general principle still holds. please enlighten me if i'm wrong, i like to learn and i love solving these little problems, so despite what the chinese have come up with, it never hurts to try something new rather than accept what's already been done as the best there is was and will be. no issues with constructive criticism, but please give some detail or fix to the issue, please don't just say "you don't understand, it won't work," it doesn't help anything.

You are strange, that is all i can say.

1-I did explain
2-To scale?, who needs a scale drawing anyway, and what does scale have to do with not understanding how a cart works?
3-What you call brainstorm others would call something else.
4-Metal circle?, never seen metal parts inside a cart, , I'm really confused. Neither 901, 801, 510 or 401's have metal parts.
5-There is no "air flow device" in cartridges either.
6-I don't need to enlighten you...,enlighten yourself.
7-You need to start paying attention to what you read.
8-You need to start paying attention to what you read.

 

[Tugger]

More and more people are seeing that this is a solved problem now. The liquid highliter has been around for years and does the exact same thing. The weird little cart that moobyghost reviewed yesterday does the exact same thing. The only question is whether the people who manufacture these things read this site and see that the consumers want an improvement that is really very simple.

The concerns about the "engineering challenges" are silly. Manufacturing challenges in small factories are more significant but it just take a little time and capital to get the right dies and other machinery to do the job. I think if we keep agitating about this here and hassle our retailers a little we'll probably see an improved product offered in the near future.

 

[leavitodeaver]

I believe there is some solid thinking going on here that's worth exploring. Engineering is another matter. Perhaps a more simplistic approach, such as in an old oil lamp. A sealed cartridge, with an orafice to allow a wick to extend from the cartridge and perhaps a rubber refill port. I've included a very basic drawing of an idea. The fillers in the cartridges do not alter the volume of the carts very much, but what they do is they hold on to a fair amount of liquid. How many times have you taken out a cart, thinking it was pretty done, only to find its still filled at least a 3rd? That tells me the material holds the liquid well, but doesn't wick all that great. Lots of surface area makes for great fluid retention, not necessarily great wicking. The capillary action of the material will have a much greater effect on it's ability to move the liquid. The poly material has tremendous surface area, and does have some wicking value, but it seems to either lose that wicking ability quickly from heat damage or it just isn't a great wicking material to begin with. At least that's my observation. I like the resevoir approach, both cause I'm lazy and cause transporting fluids from a storage reservoir to a heat source is not something that hasn't been accomplished many times before. This would be a matter of scale and a matter of finding the right material to act as a wick without introducing anything toxic into the fluid.

dawg, i love this! if it doesn't work, go back to basics, occam's razor. i think i might even be able to rig up some kind of container that would do, i have a large collection of strange capsules and containers i often find uses for. i'll post again if i can get something to work well. on your drawing, what is the separation between yellow/grey? the yellow is the fluid i assume? i'm worried about how much fluid would actually reach the atomizer in this setup, like you said, the filler has more surface area and thus more storage capacity, so logic follows a thin wick wouldn't hold enough. but a wick on an oil lamp will keep burning without issue, so maybe it won't matter. probably fraying the end or something would do it as well. great thinking!

yllek, that's perfect! i have several empty lighters around, i'll see if there isn't some way to incorporate a mouthpiece on one end and an atomizer connection to at least test the theory. hopefully i can repost with all this information soon, and with another 2 off days it might be possible. thanks so much for the idea!

warp, i'm sorry you don't understand what i'm saying, telling me to enlighten myself and being sarcastic doesn't help anyone, we are adults and there is no reason to flame anyone. i'm only attempting to get new ideas going so we can collaborate thoughts and solve a problem i'm sure everyone is sick of. if you have something constructive to contribute, i'm more than willing to hear it.

 

[dawghouse]

dawg, i love this! if it doesn't work, go back to basics, occam's razor. i think i might even be able to rig up some kind of container that would do, i have a large collection of strange capsules and containers i often find uses for. i'll post again if i can get something to work well. on your drawing, what is the separation between yellow/grey? the yellow is the fluid i assume? i'm worried about how much fluid would actually reach the atomizer in this setup, like you said, the filler has more surface area and thus more storage capacity, so logic follows a thin wick wouldn't hold enough. but a wick on an oil lamp will keep burning without issue, so maybe it won't matter. probably fraying the end or something would do it as well. great thinking!

yllek, that's perfect! i have several empty lighters around, i'll see if there isn't some way to incorporate a mouthpiece on one end and an atomizer connection to at least test the theory. hopefully i can repost with all this information soon, and with another 2 off days it might be possible. thanks so much for the idea!

warp, i'm sorry you don't understand what i'm saying, telling me to enlighten myself and being sarcastic doesn't help anyone, we are adults and there is no reason to flame anyone. i'm only attempting to get new ideas going so we can collaborate thoughts and solve a problem i'm sure everyone is sick of. if you have something constructive to contribute, i'm more than willing to hear it.

Yes the color was to show the remaining fluid in the cart/container. My wick size is probably laughable, was just trying to convey the thought of some wicking mechanism that could carry the liquid up from the bottom. I'm sure someone more engineering minded could probably figure out the dynamics involved. At least I hope so. Would seem you could have significantly more fluid transported to the atomizer if it could be managed. Just some random thoughts, of which I have many...most useless and an occasional pearl. Which this is, I'm not sure.

 

[ylleK]

yllek, that's perfect! i have several empty lighters around, i'll see if there isn't some way to incorporate a mouthpiece on one end and an atomizer connection to at least test the theory. hopefully i can repost with all this information soon, and with another 2 off days it might be possible. thanks so much for the idea!

Awesome, i hope you can get it to work.

 

[emus]

I donno...I just cut the end off and drip straight in.