Nextel XC-116 Ceramic Sleeving for Wicking

[curt9733]

I prefer Nextel xc-116 in my rba because of its ease of use compared to Stainless steel mesh (no hot spots), as well as its wicking ability . But before I began to use it, I needed to know how safe it was, and compare that information to what we know about silica, cotton, bamboo, hemp, SS, and, of course Camels.

I found this info on the Nextel 312 family of products, of which xc-116 is made. This is from the Nextel 312 Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS):

"EYE CONTACT:
Mechanical eye irritation: signs/symptoms can include irritation,
redness, scratching of the cornea and tearing.

SKIN CONTACT:
Mechanical skin irritation: signs/symptoms can include itching and
redness.

INHALATION:
Irritation (upper respiratory): signs/symptoms can include soreness
of the nose and throat, coughing and sneezing.

Vapors of heated material may cause respiratory system irritation.

IF SWALLOWED:
Ingestion is not a likely route of exposure to this product.

Irritation of Gastrointestinal Tissues: signs/symptoms can include
pain, vomiting, abdominal tenderness, nausea, blood in vomitus, and
blood in feces.

OTHER HEALTH HAZARD INFORMATION:
Due to their large size (7-13 microns in diameter), these Nextel (TM)
Ceramic Fibers are considered non-respirable and therefore are not
expected to pose a cancer risk. Fibers are defined as respirable by
WHO convention if the length is larger than 5 microns and the
diameter is less than 3 microns with a length to diameter ratio
greater than 3:1."

So it looks like (and do not mistake me as an expert on this!) it may cause upper respiratory irritation (personally I haven't had any), possible skin/eye irritation. Cancer is not a risk, as these fibers are too large to get into the lungs (7-13 microns), nor is silicosis (which comes from silica particles 5 microns and less).

In addition, I found an MSDS for general aluminoborosilicate, which is what Nextel 312 is made of, and this part was particularly important:

"Due to their large size (7-13 microns in diameter), fibers of this product are considered
non-respirable and would be expected to cause only minor nose and throat irritation if inhaled.
Initial heating, characterized by smoke, causes decomposition of the sizing with the generation of
small amounts of carbon monoxide, and trace amounts of hydrogen cyanide, acrylonitrile and dimethyl
formamide. These decomposition products ate not expected to exceed exposure limits during
recommended use procedures."

So, if you plan to use Nextel xc-116 for vaping, research it first. Although there are are no studies for this application, it appears to be safe. However, when you do your initial torching to remove the sizing chemicals, which you MUST do, do it thoroughly, and in a well-ventilated area. Finally, I reiterate: I am not an expert, nor is Google.

 

[Lance_Wallen]

FYI, it's an oldish thread with no replies but I've been doing a lot of research on nextel stuff and you need to read the tech docs on it before you use it.

"Cleaning" the material requires 700C for 4-5 minutes. That will remove the bad stuff that's gonna come off while it is heated.

"Treating" it requires 900C for 4 hours, that will change the structure of the fibers making them more rigid and less likely to break down under mechanical stresses.

Please do not use this stuff with just a quick torch, you're askin for trouble.

 

[Paulette]

FYI, it's an oldish thread with no replies but I've been doing a lot of research on nextel stuff and you need to read the tech docs on it before you use it.

"Cleaning" the material requires 700C for 4-5 minutes. That will remove the bad stuff that's gonna come off while it is heated.

"Treating" it requires 900C for 4 hours, that will change the structure of the fibers making them more rigid and less likely to break down under mechanical stresses.

Please do not use this stuff with just a quick torch, you're askin for trouble.

Lance, are you saying that I should torch it for 4-5 minutes; because I only torched it until it turned red?

 

[curt9733]

FYI, it's an oldish thread with no replies but I've been doing a lot of research on nextel stuff and you need to read the tech docs on it before you use it.

"Cleaning" the material requires 700C for 4-5 minutes. That will remove the bad stuff that's gonna come off while it is heated.

"Treating" it requires 900C for 4 hours, that will change the structure of the fibers making them more rigid and less likely to break down under mechanical stresses.

Please do not use this stuff with just a quick torch, you're askin for trouble.

I have been doing the cleaning since I first got the Nextel and read the data sheet they provide. However, I'm not sure about the treating step, since we are dealing with a low mechanical stress situation here. I am going to fire some in a kiln for 4 hours @900 degrees and see what happens. I'm also not sure whether treating would make it easier or harder for those who use it over a ss wick, since they spread out the sleeve to fit the wick in. I don't see that it would make too much difference for me, because I use it as a U wick. I have an aga t+ which has the silica post removed and both the wick hole and silica hole drilled out. The Nextel goes into both holes (it's a tight fit, and I have to wrap the ends of the Nextel in 34 AWG Kanthal to get it through, but it works well). All the same I'll give it a shot.

 

[Paulette]

Thanks Curt!

 

[curt9733]

The Nextel needs to be torched for 4-5 minutes @ 1300F (700C). it will turn red initially, but will eventually turn white. Even then, that only takes about a minute to do on a short section. So even after it turns white, it needs to be torched for at least another 4 minutes or so. Generally, a common chef's torch generates temperatures of around 2000º-3000º F. Despite that, Nextel still needs 4-5 minutes regardless of temperature. Always err on the side of caution. If you are working on a longer section of Nextel, you'll probably need to do small sections at a time so that you can let your torch cool off.

 

[madstabber]

Sng vapor sells this stuff heat treated and ready to be coiled. They do all the work, it's 7 bucks a foot.

 

[curt9733]

Omega (Nextel Braided Ceramic Very High Temperature Sleeving) sells it at $2.25/ft. You do the treating. The minimum order is 10 ft. ($22.50). The ordering chart where you can select the size is further down the page. I found that more cost effective since I use 3.5" at a time for 'U' wicks.

 

[madstabber]

Has anybody tried heat treating their xc-116 in an oven by putting it on self-clean. From what I understand ovens in clean mode get between 900-1200 degrees F. I'm gonna look into this a little bit more but I would probably torch it with MAPP or propane first to burn off chemicals so they don't get in my oven then put in my oven for 4-5 hours on self-clean. If anyone has tied this let me know how it went.

 

[curt9733]

900C=1652F so that's a little less than they recommend. Worth a try though.

 

[SuperDave68]

have an aga t2 that i orignially setup with the stainless wick, but had intermitant shorting issues on, mostly due to my in experience with ss, so i switched to a silica U wick, which worked great, but after seeing a gunk build up inside the mouth piece, i assumed this was silica fiber, and after reading about the possible hazzards with silica, i decided to switch to the nextel xc-116 stuff. same u-wick config. it wicks great, but i am getting the same upper respratory irritation that i got with the silica, so i decided that perhaps the sng treating hadn't been thouroug enough and torched it for a good 5 min. after handling the wick i noticed on my workbench a lot of silvery flakes had come off the wick, so i rubbed it with my fingers and produced alot more of these flakes.
this is concerning to me and i think i am personallly not going to use the nextel stuff anymore.
for me, the whole pupose of switchig to vaping vs analogs was the saftey factor.

just thought i would throw my findings out there.

 

[curt9733]

have an aga t2 that i orignially setup with the stainless wick, but had intermitant shorting issues on, mostly due to my in experience with ss, so i switched to a silica U wick, which worked great, but after seeing a gunk build up inside the mouth piece, i assumed this was silica fiber, and after reading about the possible hazzards with silica, i decided to switch to the nextel xc-116 stuff. same u-wick config. it wicks great, but i am getting the same upper respratory irritation that i got with the silica, so i decided that perhaps the sng treating hadn't been thouroug enough and torched it for a good 5 min. after handling the wick i noticed on my workbench a lot of silvery flakes had come off the wick, so i rubbed it with my fingers and produced alot more of these flakes.
this is concerning to me and i think i am personallly not going to use the nextel stuff anymore.
for me, the whole pupose of switchig to vaping vs analogs was the saftey factor.

just thought i would throw my findings out there.

This sounds like the possibility that the MSDS refers to. I assumed there were some people out there who had irritation from the Nextel, but you are the first on this and a few other threads out there who I have heard from with this problem. I had no irritation with silica or Nextel. I simply chose the Nextel because of the larger micron size of the aluminoborosilicate fibers vs. that of the silica. I just put a filter inside my mouthpiece (500 ss). I'll see in a few days what gets caught in there. Someone should do a simple study on this
1. Vape for three days yith Nextel, then take a smear from the top cap and put it under a microscope. Take notes on the amount of fibers/mm sq. and the length and width (or diameter) of the fibers.
2. Do the same for silica
3. Do the same for SS. (materials from SS as a wick will probably be some kind of metal or carbon particles, but I don't know.)

This has probably already been done, but the actual studies you come across are often biased by the tobacco company scientists.
There are of course inherent risks to any nicotine replacement therapies (nicotine for example). But the pourpose here is to create a device that
1. Is considerably safer than cigarettes,
2. Has a high success rate for those trying to quit smoking.
There are many methods that I feel don't work: motivational speeches, hypnosis, patches, gum, lozenges, cold turkey, and Chantix, among others. Chantix is a dangerous drug psychologically for many people including myself, but the pushers in Big Pharma sell it like its candy. Most of the others are failures. If you are really that concerned with the health issues, do what my wife did: Quit smoking and start vaping. Slowly decrease the amount of nicotine in your juice until you reach 0mg, then sell your vaping materials in the classifieds.

 

[toolguy420]

Chantix is a dangerous drug psychologically for many people including myself, but the pushers in Big Pharma sell it like its candy.

+1 Couldn't agree more.

 

[Rapture]

I have been doing the cleaning since I first got the Nextel and read the data sheet they provide. However, I'm not sure about the treating step, since we are dealing with a low mechanical stress situation here. I am going to fire some in a kiln for 4 hours @900 degrees and see what happens. I'm also not sure whether treating would make it easier or harder for those who use it over a ss wick, since they spread out the sleeve to fit the wick in. I don't see that it would make too much difference for me, because I use it as a U wick. I have an aga t+ which has the silica post removed and both the wick hole and silica hole drilled out. The Nextel goes into both holes (it's a tight fit, and I have to wrap the ends of the Nextel in 34 AWG Kanthal to get it through, but it works well). All the same I'll give it a shot.

what size nextel for the aga t2 please tell please tell

 

[Koman]

Great explanation, Curt! Thanks!

 

[Texaslimo]

Is 1/8th the correct size for an AGA? Is this wicj=k used by itself or as a sleeve over mesh or another material?

 

[curt9733]

Is 1/8th the correct size for an AGA? Is this wicj=k used by itself or as a sleeve over mesh or another material?

This is not a sleeve over anything, but a U-wick (http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...stems/402821-nextel-xc-116-u-wick-aga-t2.html)

what size nextel for the aga t2 please tell please tell

I used the xc-116 which is 1/16. Xc-118 would be too fat for the wick hole, especially using a u-wick which is detailed in the above link. I am not sure what size people are using for sleeve over mesh.