Yeah, I'm going to keep doing this for a while before I try the cartos. How do you clean your cartridges? What methods are a fair balance between easiest and best? I see a lot of posts on cleaning attys and cartos, but not carts.
Got my kit today! So far it's been a wonderful experience, only smoked one cigarette all day! I did lose one of my pvs in my center console of my car though, so that's pretty lame... meh...
"Got my kit today!" > Look out! It's ON now : ). As far as cleaning cartridges, the simple answer is I really don't, unless I'm changing over to a new liquid flavor in the same cartridge. I have tried that Highping simple mod for keeping your cartridge filler nice and wet...super simple concept...just cut/trim off a good bit of the original filler, and take the small left over "plug" and stick it in the tip of your cartridge....everything behind it is pure liquid...i've found that works pretty well for me...you can read it here:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/cartridge-mods/79418-highping-cart-mod-simple-gets.html
As to cleaning, I haven't had to clean my atomizer(s) yet...but when switching over to a new liquid flavor using an existing cartridge, i simply
* remove the poly fill (white "cottony" stuff),
* rinse out the black plastic cap under the sink, and blow it out real good (blow very hard, until it makes a loud "whistle" sound, and is completely dry inside)...
* run the poly fill "filler" under the tap and wash out the old liquid (roll it between your fingers)....pat it good and dry with a paper towel until you get all the water out
* add about 12 drops of your new flavor into the cartridge, and pop in the little "plug" of poly fill (see the highping cart mod above)...If you are using the full size poly fill piece, then DON'T add the 12 drops - it will overflow...only do the 12 drop thing if you have trimmed your poly fill down to a small "plug" as described in Highping's article...if you haven't done the Highping mod, then instead just stuff the entire polyfill back into your cartridge, and slowly add one drop at a time until your poly fill is fully saturated (it takes quite a bit longer to do it this way)
* add a few more drops on the poly fill plug to get it nice and saturated on top...and lastly,
* use a little needle/pin/etc.. to fluff up the poly fill, and pull it up so that it's level with the top rim of the cart....that takes care of the cart portion
then,
* remove the atty, and put the "threads" end against a paper towel...then
* blow forcefully into the other open end....it will blow out the residue juice from whatever older flavor you had in there before....do this with as much force as you can to get as much of the "old" flavor out of it as possible...after this you can also
* "dry fire" your atty a few times...to burn out even more of the residual flavor juice that's still in the wick....this is
not a required step, and you can burn up your atty this way, so be careful! don't press the battery button for too long...just "tap" on it enough to get a bit of an orange glow started, and then back off of it...truth be known, i don't even bother with this step much any more...your atty/wick will be filled with the new flavored liquid soon enough regardless...the worst that can happen is you end up with a "transitional" taste (flavor #1 + flavor #2) for your first few vapes : )
* finally, screw your atty back on, add between 1-3 drops of the new liquid directly onto the atty, pop the cart back on, give it a minute or so to "soak in" good, and i fire her up!
note: if you're getting low performance accompanied by a "gurgling" sound (a tiny bit of gurgling is ok....a lot of gurgling and no vapor is
not normal), then you may have flooded your atty....no biggie - just pop out the cartridge, unscrew the atty, and again blow it out into a paper towel, but not as hard this time....just blow lightly enough to get some of the liquid out so your atty can "breathe" again....reassemble and try again
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Another way to drastically reduce the time involved with the steps above is to buy a bunch of blank, empty carts....and keep each one filled with a specific flavor of liquid....and then find a good way to always keep that cart "paired up" with it's proper e-liquid bottle (store them together in pairs)....then, when you want to switch flavors, you follow the same process above, but you completely cut out the part of having to clean the old liquid flavor out of your existing cartridge....big time saver
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i wrote out each step in pretty specific fashion, and I know it looks like a lot, but in practice it literally takes less than a minute, assuming you're using Highping's mod (quickly adding 12 drops and then popping in your "plug" on top is much faster than taking the time to slowly saturate the entire poly filler drop by drop)
.)
