Took me three months, but I finally killed a blu atomizer dead. As far as I can tell, there seem to be two ways that e-cig atomizers die:
1) Residue buildup from e-liquid eventually gets so heavy that either the extra heat or the physical stress breaks the wire in the heating coil, or
2) High temperatures eventually burn all the way through the white internal wick (those white fibers you can see inside the atomizer) that pulls liquid from the steel mesh "bridge" to the coil.
(Note that residue buildup can make an atomizer woefully ineffectual long before it actually breaksremove the residue somehow, and you can bring a lame atty back from the mostly-dead, but once the wire breaks, the atomizer is a goner.)
My atomizer died Death #2. The coil actually wasn't all that gunked up, probably because I had cleaned it fairly regularly. The white fibers had completely blackened and crumbled, however, so now no liquid gets from the bridge to the coil.
The burnt taste you get when your blu isn't wicking liquid fast enough is apparently due to these fibers dry-burning on the coil. So I deduce that the more often you let your atomizer get too dry and hit the burnt taste, the closer and closer you're getting to atomizer failure.
Moral: keep those atomizers wet! Use a good wicking material in your carts, top off those carts often enough to keep the flavor good, and learn to drip/dip just often enough to keep the liquid flowing without flooding the atomizer. And for those of you who use the "cover atomizer holes" method to tighten the draw and boost heat and vapor output, yes, that is probably burning through those fibers more quickly.
Of course, all atomizers will die at some point, and at less than $5 a pop for blu and blu-compatible ones, it's not exactly a tragedy... unless you don't have any extras stocked up.
1) Residue buildup from e-liquid eventually gets so heavy that either the extra heat or the physical stress breaks the wire in the heating coil, or
2) High temperatures eventually burn all the way through the white internal wick (those white fibers you can see inside the atomizer) that pulls liquid from the steel mesh "bridge" to the coil.
(Note that residue buildup can make an atomizer woefully ineffectual long before it actually breaksremove the residue somehow, and you can bring a lame atty back from the mostly-dead, but once the wire breaks, the atomizer is a goner.)
My atomizer died Death #2. The coil actually wasn't all that gunked up, probably because I had cleaned it fairly regularly. The white fibers had completely blackened and crumbled, however, so now no liquid gets from the bridge to the coil.
The burnt taste you get when your blu isn't wicking liquid fast enough is apparently due to these fibers dry-burning on the coil. So I deduce that the more often you let your atomizer get too dry and hit the burnt taste, the closer and closer you're getting to atomizer failure.
Moral: keep those atomizers wet! Use a good wicking material in your carts, top off those carts often enough to keep the flavor good, and learn to drip/dip just often enough to keep the liquid flowing without flooding the atomizer. And for those of you who use the "cover atomizer holes" method to tighten the draw and boost heat and vapor output, yes, that is probably burning through those fibers more quickly.
Of course, all atomizers will die at some point, and at less than $5 a pop for blu and blu-compatible ones, it's not exactly a tragedy... unless you don't have any extras stocked up.
