Mech technicians!

[AndrewKennedy 89]

For the mech technicians. What makes a great Mech and what brands have the best?

 

[mimöschen]

Safety:
++ vent holes at the top and/or bottom
++ strong, beefy insulators
++ spring inside the switch doesn't carry any current to prevent hot-button issue. Magnets are fine as well.
+ lockable or recessed or at least flush button to prevent unwanted activation of the device
+ insulation inside the tube and under the top cap may prevent a hard short.
If you keep your batteries in absolutely flawless condition and remember to thread on your atty first, that's not a necessity though

Good for performance:
++ "hybrid" connection. Make sure your atty has a protruding 510-pin. VandyVape RDAs never disappoint in that regard for example
++ beefy copper contact(s) for a good stable connection
+ 21700 compatible. The Samsung 30T hits a lot harder than all the other available cells
+ copper or silver body keeps voltage drop low, but brass is fine as well.

Good for cleaning purposes:
++ constant contact switch
++ beefy contacts
++ if the plastic insulator is threaded, make sure those threads are thick and beefy, so they don't wear out easily
+ nickel plating on the contacts keeps maintenance to a minimum
+ a short throw on the button means less arcing

RussianCustomMods and GodModRussia offer some very good performing mechs, albeit quite pricey.
The GMR Overlord clone is very, very good though and still one of my favorite devices.
If you want to go authentic and cheap, the Serisvape Bathala is a excellent mech tube. It ticks nearly all the boxes above and hits very hard.

 

[Superuser187]

Safety:
++ vent holes at the top and/or bottom
++ strong, beefy insulators
++ spring inside the switch doesn't carry any current to prevent hot-button issue. Magnets are fine as well.
+ lockable or recessed or at least flush button to prevent unwanted activation of the device
+ insulation inside the tube and under the top cap may prevent a hard short.
If you keep your batteries in absolutely flawless condition and remember to thread on your atty first, that's not a necessity though

Good for performance:
++ "hybrid" connection. Make sure your atty has a protruding 510-pin. VandyVape RDAs never disappoint in that regard for example
++ beefy copper contact(s) for a good stable connection
+ 21700 compatible. The Samsung 30T hits a lot harder than all the other available cells
+ copper or silver body keeps voltage drop low, but brass is fine as well.

Good for cleaning purposes:
++ constant contact switch
++ beefy contacts
++ if the plastic insulator is threaded, make sure those threads are thick and beefy, so they don't wear out easily
+ nickel plating on the contacts keeps maintenance to a minimum
+ a short throw on the button means less arcing

RussianCustomMods and GodModRussia offer some very good performing mechs, albeit quite pricey.
The GMR Overlord clone is very, very good though and still one of my favorite devices.
If you want to go authentic and cheap, the Serisvape Bathala is a excellent mech tube. It ticks nearly all the boxes above and hits very hard.

There should be a rating "informative af"

 

[Mooch]

For the mech technicians. What makes a great Mech and what brands have the best?

For me a great mech has all the available safety features, a constant-contact switch (which still arcs, just not on the battery), and no plating where contacts move.

Plating on the contacts can make maintenance easier but provides no performance benefit. But plating will eventually start to come off though and then you have the maintenance issues again. IMHO, no plating should exist where contact is made/broken though gold plating where a constant-contact switch touches the battery is good to have.

Don’t get caught up in the hype surrounding use of different metals. There is a small loss in performance if stainless steel is used but there’s no practical difference between mechs using silver, copper, brass, or aluminum for the contacts or the body of the mech due only to the choice of metal.

There can be a difference of up to a few watts of power lost in different mechs but that performance difference is not due to the choice of metal. It can’t be. All we have to do is run the numbers for the resistances of the metals involved. There’s just too much metal to make much of a difference between them.

What makes the difference between mechs is the threads and how they engage, contact shape, contact smoothness, lack of burrs on the atty’s 510 pin, and how clean the mech is kept. That is, the difference is due to how they are designed and manufactured and maintained.

But IMO the biggest effects on mech performance are our personal biases and expectations. These two things are much, much more important than anything else when it comes to finding a great performing mech. As humans we are truly terrible at comparing things unless we go to extraordinary lengths to identify and control the variables affecting how we perceive mech performance.

For example, the Kennedy Vindicator and Dovpo Clutch both have the same power loss and its about eighteen times higher than the Broadside and Admiral mechs (about 4.4W vs 0.25W for a 105W vape). Yet lots of people say the Vindicator and Clutch are hard hitting mechs. The Vindicator is a SS mech with a copper/SS switch and the Clutch uses a silver contact strip and brass contact.

My personal experience has been that the Clutch was a surprisingly hard hitter but that the Vindicator was not (just average). But both had the same voltage drop in my testing. What’s going on here? My biases. I wasn’t expecting the Clutch to perform as well as it did so it felt like a hard hitter. I felt the Vindicator was going to be a very hard hitter so when it ended up just matching the Clutch it felt like it wasn’t hitting as hard.

Both perform the same though.

IMO, choose a mech based on your budget, its appearance, ease of maintenance, and safety features. Metal choice, as long as it’s not SS, on its own will not affect performance. Even SS only affects power a little and I like the ease of maintenance. I can easily tweak a coil’s resistance to make up that slight increase in power loss.