Maxx Fusion Cartomizer Autopsy and Parts Explenation
- Thread starter Rift
- Start date
- th_trl_thread_readers 0
- Status
Rift & Darrigaaz are exactly correct: all silicones are definitely not safe. I've built aquariums. I currently have a 90g with a homemade 75g sump in the basement, so I know a thing or two about silicone. I have confidence Leaford will try to figure it out, but his current knowledge of silicone appears rudimentary at best. That's by no means an insult, and I could be wrong.
I do know that if you don't use 100% pure silicone in an aquarium, the fish will die. Silicone is very gas permeable. Silicone will leech and outgas anything into and out of it, much more so as it heats up. I suppose that means that even though removing the silicone adhesive removes the nasty taste, maybe the silicone is absorbing something else nasty in there and re-releasing it when heated.
The silicone in the carto is neither crystal clear like pure silicone, nor does it have the flexibility of pure silicon. Does it have anti-bacterial/fungal/mildew/etc additives? Are there other chemicals in it? What solvents were used? This is important because even food-grade silicone can be toxic because it's intended for temporary contact with food, not inhalation into the bloodstream.
People have described some of their cartos as tasting like ammonia/urine. That's most likely the silicone solvent known as acetic acid. Luckily it's just an irritant w/o long lasting effects, but who knows if it's the only solvent? This tells me the silicone in some cartos isn't completely cured. Even when silicone appears fully cured, even if heat cured, it typically takes a few more days to complete. Solvents like acetic acid react to and are released by moisture because curing requires moisture. vaping is going to release the remaining solvents if the carto isn't fully cured before the condoms are put on it and it's hermetically sealed in the pack. vaping is going to slowly release anything else in it too...
I know silicone oxidizes and produces formaldehyde at ~300F, but I'm not enough of a chemist to know if nicotine can accelerate that oxidation process. Industrial silicone can contain lots of nasty stuff like vinyl, so pure speculation is that could explain the slowly developing nasty taste in other cartos. Not to be mean or bombastic, but China doesn't have a great track record for using safe materials. Who knows what cheaply sourced silicone the factory might (I said -might-) be putting in these cartos?
I quit smoking so I wouldn't have to worry about what is going into my lungs and bloodstream. For our safety we really need to know what's in these things, and if it's silicone, it should be 100% silicone that is properly cured. Not to sound scary, but if silicone additives would kill my fish, why would I want to inhale those same toxins straight into my bloodstream?
I'm not here to trash a great, and I do mean great, product. I just want to know it's a reasonably safe product, and I'm willing to pay a few more bucks for safety.
I do know that if you don't use 100% pure silicone in an aquarium, the fish will die. Silicone is very gas permeable. Silicone will leech and outgas anything into and out of it, much more so as it heats up. I suppose that means that even though removing the silicone adhesive removes the nasty taste, maybe the silicone is absorbing something else nasty in there and re-releasing it when heated.
The silicone in the carto is neither crystal clear like pure silicone, nor does it have the flexibility of pure silicon. Does it have anti-bacterial/fungal/mildew/etc additives? Are there other chemicals in it? What solvents were used? This is important because even food-grade silicone can be toxic because it's intended for temporary contact with food, not inhalation into the bloodstream.
People have described some of their cartos as tasting like ammonia/urine. That's most likely the silicone solvent known as acetic acid. Luckily it's just an irritant w/o long lasting effects, but who knows if it's the only solvent? This tells me the silicone in some cartos isn't completely cured. Even when silicone appears fully cured, even if heat cured, it typically takes a few more days to complete. Solvents like acetic acid react to and are released by moisture because curing requires moisture. vaping is going to release the remaining solvents if the carto isn't fully cured before the condoms are put on it and it's hermetically sealed in the pack. vaping is going to slowly release anything else in it too...
I know silicone oxidizes and produces formaldehyde at ~300F, but I'm not enough of a chemist to know if nicotine can accelerate that oxidation process. Industrial silicone can contain lots of nasty stuff like vinyl, so pure speculation is that could explain the slowly developing nasty taste in other cartos. Not to be mean or bombastic, but China doesn't have a great track record for using safe materials. Who knows what cheaply sourced silicone the factory might (I said -might-) be putting in these cartos?
I quit smoking so I wouldn't have to worry about what is going into my lungs and bloodstream. For our safety we really need to know what's in these things, and if it's silicone, it should be 100% silicone that is properly cured. Not to sound scary, but if silicone additives would kill my fish, why would I want to inhale those same toxins straight into my bloodstream?
I'm not here to trash a great, and I do mean great, product. I just want to know it's a reasonably safe product, and I'm willing to pay a few more bucks for safety.
I don't think leaford has really said enough one way or another to judge his knowledge of silicon, your basing your assumption off of two sentences of a rather short post on a internet forum?
Its a good thing I don't vape underwater...and that I am not a fish.
Hey you know what else kills fish? Nicotine.
The Moral of this story is don't let your fish vape.
In all honesty, I am not convinced removing the addhesive will cure the burnt taste, burnt tasting cartomizers are not limited to bloog maxxfusion cartomizers and exist in cartomizers with no silicone at all.
I think in that short post from leaford he mentioned an English MSDS, an MSDS which would answer these questions. Again you are presuming inhalation without proving inhalation.
It could very well be the adhesive, or not. Some people have described Wyatt Earp as tasting like urine as well, it is silicone free or so I am told.
Now you are jumping, completely without basis into saying it is not cured...based off another assumption of the specific type of silicone being used, could you at least wait for that information to be furnished before you go down the chain of assumptions
Do you know the temperature that these cartomizers are functioning at?
well of course. We are already speculating on the type of silicone being used, the amount of time it is allowed to dry, the cause of the offputting taste....why not do some more speculating...
Its funny you keep calling this a great product, when you have literally trashed it...as in you stated you threw it into the trash.
Trust me if I buy something I don't call it a great product if it ends up in my trash bin. I call it trash.
You know when you first came on and said this is my burnt cartomizer, and some people said that wasn't a bloog, I defended the fact that it was indeed a bloog. However you make statements like the burning caused a yellowing of the core and "ring" when if you look at your picture EVERYTHING was yellow, the fibre the inner core both layers of poly fill...obviously you were vaping yellow #5 or some other yellow fluid...that may help explain the urine taste anyway.
You also stated the burnt taste went away when you disassembled your unit and removed the silicone, you state you did nothing else but this...however obviously you did do at least one more thing...you disassembled your unit. This leaves many variables unaccounted for...most importantly the fact that you would have fluffed out your pollyfill when you took it apart. This is a known fix for several cartomizers if the material is overly tight it hinders capillary action.
Also, this very thread rules out a few points from your thread, mainly that "chunks" of your oring were missing or as you said "vaped", as it was never a ring at all but simply applied adhesive, adhesive that is apparently not applied uniformly. No chunks were vaped it is likely they did not exist, the only burnt marks on your pictures that remain is a single hard to view singed mark on your inner core and some tail marks on the oring sleeve that forms the base of the unit, not good signs to be sure but a far cry from your original statements that you vaped chunks of plastic and it sickened your entire family.
Lets be cautious without being dramatic here, the silicone gasket in my espresso machine reaches temperatures of over 190F and has yet to evaporate into thin air. Is it the same type of silicone that is being used here? I doubt it, mainly because it is not an adhesive, but I can't assume anything until we get more information. Then, once we have it, we can say with a bit more clarity if the sky is in fact falling or not.
And to add: I haven't yet seen an image where that adhesive appears burnt, or melted.
Have you ever smelled uncured silicone? It's plain nasty. Apply pure silicone caulk to the edges of your tub, and it'll stink up the whole house. Acetic acid smells like vinegar, not urine, but there are many other molecules released by curing silicone. I've owned old stainless-steel-edged aquariums that need regular sealing with aquarium-grade silicone. That stuff stinks as it cures, but it's done curing in a matter of hours.
I need concrete data that will verify or refute my findings thus far. Is anyone willing to send me their foul tasting cartos from the 2nd batch? If the wrappings are burned, or the ohms are way too low, I can't fix that. However, I might be able to remedy an acidic or foul taste by removing the adhesive. What do you have to lose? Answer: the cost of a stamp. Maybe, just maybe, you'll thank me for returning a nice tasty carto.
Any takers?
Any takers?
I do not need to have the adhesive removed as when I wet burn the atty and clean it off it fixes the problem.
silicone is not done curing in a matter of hours, especially if sealed up. I made a silicone gasket for a still one time that took 3 days before the smell dissipated, and let it sit for a week more before I trusted it to be cured enough to be put to use. But that was the silicone (and amount I used) which is only possibly relevant here. There are a variety of solvents in silicone sealants, acid cure being only one type. Lets all remember that we are just guessing, sharing ideas, and not take ourselves or each other too seriously. Worst case scenario, I say "PROPYLENE GLYCOL ETHER ACETATE" and Leaford goes, "bingo there's the problem!" and everybody lives happily ever after.
And yes, cryx does seem to find something poisonous in his lungs at every turn, but lets not forget that this subject has shed a lot of light on these products for us as consumers, and hopefully for bloog as well as they continue improving them.
The real moral of the story is that yesterday was my birthday.
I was hoping for a bloog re-stock.
Instead my cat died.
So I replaced her with bourbon.
Woodfords reserve... mmm Sure would go well with some ry4silicone, where's the stock at?
And yes, cryx does seem to find something poisonous in his lungs at every turn, but lets not forget that this subject has shed a lot of light on these products for us as consumers, and hopefully for bloog as well as they continue improving them.
HA!
The real moral of the story is that yesterday was my birthday.
I was hoping for a bloog re-stock.
Instead my cat died.
So I replaced her with bourbon.
Woodfords reserve... mmm Sure would go well with some ry4silicone, where's the stock at?
Hmmm, wet burn. More spitballin' here, but heat + moisture would help uncurred silicone to cure.... I'm not doubting that the wetburn is working for you, but that the mechanism is "cleaning it off" is an assumption.
Analog,
It may well be an assumption. Or it could help cure the silicone. But, if I am using a carto for a week and it is not yet cured, then I think I need to go back to analogs as this is just plane too dangerous for me.
It may well be an assumption. Or it could help cure the silicone. But, if I am using a carto for a week and it is not yet cured, then I think I need to go back to analogs as this is just plane too dangerous for me.
Vaping would definitely have cured it by now. Uncured silicone would only explain the fresh out of the pack nasties.
But that would be an assumption that it is actually curing the silicone. If there is a wicking problem and not enough juice is on the wick, this could also make for a nasty burning taste.
I think at this point we have sort of exhausted the topic. I can come up with another half a dozen theorys on the matter but it wont do anyone any good. I think its time for a time out! and maybe a drink or two? 
Its pretty clear though that the white silicone adhesive being used is being applied in varying quantities. The few cartomizers I have taken apart have had very little and all located on the inside of the center casing. Others have shown big white rings of it on the outside. Thats not to say that they should all have exactly the same amount, but the differences in volume shown througout the pictures that have been provided are pretty substantial.
How long these cartomizers sit around for before being packaged along with the amount of silicone applied, is a HUGE factor on what is happening with that freshly applied silicone adhesive. I'm not going to ramble on about the details of silicone and what is and isn't in it I will just reiterate that not all silicone is the same and that wikipedia is not the be all end all of information, and until we can get an MSDS on the one being used we can all theorize as much as we want.
Personally I think there is more then one variable at play here and no one thing is responsible for everything.
Its pretty clear though that the white silicone adhesive being used is being applied in varying quantities. The few cartomizers I have taken apart have had very little and all located on the inside of the center casing. Others have shown big white rings of it on the outside. Thats not to say that they should all have exactly the same amount, but the differences in volume shown througout the pictures that have been provided are pretty substantial.
How long these cartomizers sit around for before being packaged along with the amount of silicone applied, is a HUGE factor on what is happening with that freshly applied silicone adhesive. I'm not going to ramble on about the details of silicone and what is and isn't in it I will just reiterate that not all silicone is the same and that wikipedia is not the be all end all of information, and until we can get an MSDS on the one being used we can all theorize as much as we want.
Personally I think there is more then one variable at play here and no one thing is responsible for everything.
Last edited:
At this point there is a question about the adhesive used. Leaford has told us that the silicone adhesive is "high temperature" and does not out gas.
Until we know more, this discussion is at best speculative. No one can make a definite claim about anything.
Bringing up concerns is good for us all, jumping to conclusions erroneously helps no one.
Donna
Well, as long as you don't insult Leaford.
cryx, you know I have defended your right to bring up your concerns, and have asked others not to question your motives or intentions. I would just ask you to please be as careful as Rift is about stating that what you are saying is speculation or your theory. I know you do that at times, but you also say things like:
“Actually, I'm happy to report it is indisputably a fact. I've proven the nasty crap is definitely the problem and has no business being in a carto...”
A sample size of 2 may be enough for you to feel you have solved your carto problems, but that probably won't be enough for Leaford, nor should it be. Now, please, "don’t go green on me", as Michelle would put it.
As Rift has suggested it's probably time for a time out. At the very least, this could be a time for us to tone down instead of doubling down. We all want this resolved, and I for one am confident Leaford can take what everyone has discovered and come to a good resolution. Better than that, I trust him.
Last edited:
- Status
