I see other's have already answered this but I'll chime in too. I show the inside guts of the cartomizer in my Volt video review. It's a horizontal coil that is seated near the battery connector end. What you popped out was indeed the heating, vaporizing coil, a teeny-tiny piece of coiled wire that looks like a miniature ball-point pen spring. Once that is broken, your cartomizer is permanently dead. It's also the thing that eventually gets crusted up with vaporized
e-liquid residue to where your cartomizer is no longer
vaping good enough to continue using, that's the end-of-life for a cartomizer or atomizer.
Yes, you watched videos for the old nasty-style of cartomizers, with the vertical coil. They not only had the problem of tasting simply awful, but the air hole down the center, being made only of polyfill, would fall in on itself and close up. Now, some vendors still sell this type of cartomizer but they don't have any idea what they are selling!!
I use an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner to clean my Volt cartos. Got it for like 5 bucks at a thrift shop. I put a 50-50 mix of pg (propylene glycol) and Everclear or Vodka in the trays and let it buzz-clean my cartos overnight. Next day I rinse them off really well and put them on a tray on a dishtowel to bake in the sun all day long, battery connector side down.
Oh yeah, welcome!!!!!!! Always great to see another Voltie face around the thread!!!