Question: At the end of a Cartomizercleaninator cleaning process, do the cartos still have to be air dried overnight before refilling them? ... [company] ... claimed they don't need further drying other than just blasting them out ... Also, they were using purified or distilled water........what's up with that? How is that kind of water beneficial? Wouldn't rubbing alcohol work as good,...or even better than water?
This may have been answered already (still catching up on the thread) but will give my thoughts, bullet-style:
- No syringe method (whether
Cartomizercleaninator V2 or anything else) will really clean a carto in just a flush or two of water unless it wasn't really dirty in the first place.
- No syringe method will completely dry a cleaned carto in just a couple of pumps, no matter how big the syringe is.
-- That said, if you get it
mostly dry and then flush fresh niquid completely through the carto a couple of times, it may displace enough water to be vapable. But I still prefer to get them completely dry first.
(I'll have a video on actual cleaning effectiveness soon as I can "dirty up" about 10 see-through cartos of various sizes, which is hard because they're not my favorite vapes.
)
- If you use clean/clear/light nicquids and don't vape cartos dry much, hot water should be enough to clean if you do it
before it starts tasting bad. But you will still need more water than some videos imply.
- Nicquids with suspended solids (extracted tobaccos, some coffees, etc.) will leave more crud in the filler and on the heating coil. Alcohol works better for these cases.
- Personally I use only alcohols intended for consumption. Others will work but avoid anything with ingredients like lanolin.
My deep-clean method for truly carped-up cartos:
- Flush with hot water a few times first to get excess nicquid out and reduce contamination during alcohol soak later
- Pump a few times to get most of the water out
- Flush gently 2 or 3 times with high-proof alcohol to ensure carto is internally soaked
- Leave carto(s) soaking in alcohol for at least 15 minutes (in an ultrasonic cleaner if possible)
- Flush with alcohol several times (should remove sediment)
- Pump to remove most of the alcohol
- Taryn spin, mouthpiece side out (if I've got time)
- Air dry for at least 24h (or low-temp oven bake for a couple of hours)
- For less dirty cartos, I just flush with fresh hot water a few times (dumping dirty water to sink or another container) until it passes a "sniff test", pump with air a few times, maybe a Taryn spin and let air dry.
- If cleaning with alcohol you wouldn't normally keep around, don't forget to factor that cost toward whether you're actually saving money over just buying new cartos. (750ml of PGA is about $17 where I live.)
