Re-animating a DSE 901 atomizer

[colandrino]

I read on the instruction manual that a good way to maintain or clean your atomizer is to blow it wich I did and it works ok-ish. But my story goes a longer and stupider way than just this.
I used an atomizer for my DSE 901 ecig for about 2 months cleaning it by blowing every week or so untill I had a great idea. Being a diver I have a compressor wich goes for 250 atm. Well, I didn't used 250 atm, I used it around 10 atm. So I connected the atomizer to a hose, the hose to the compresor and so on, and it worked AWSOME!!! I mean all sorts of stuff started to fly around, old brown e-lequid filled with some some dark spots of some sort, I don't know, but all the parts of the atomizer stayed together. The atomizer itself worked great for about a week, I mean it was like a new born freshly bought one. After another week I used the compresor cleaning technique again, only slowly decreasing the preassure at about 7 atm. And it worked great for about 5 or 6 puffs. Then it died. After a day or so it worked again for another 5 or 6 puffs and then it died.
Now I'm confused. It's obvious the pressure didn't messed up the internal parts becouse the atomizer still works for a few minutes. So what the hell is going on?
Any advice? I could really use some becouse I am, and there's no shame in it, poor, and I could really use to re-animate the old ....... rather than buying a new one.

 

[Kurt]

High pressure air to clean attys is not a good idea, although it may seem the perfect thing. Problem is it can be forceful enough to break the heating coil, which is pretty fine wire. Not sure exactly what happened for you, but I am thinking that the coil actually broke, but the ends are still in contact. Upon getting hot for a few drags, the coil distorts a bit, and the contact is broken. When it cools it goes back to the original contact until it gets hot again for a bit. Perhaps an end of the coil came out of its connection with the battery terminal.

I clean my attys once every couple weeks in polydent followed by much hot water flushing. They last me for several months. In fact I have one that is about 18 months old, and still going strong. That is quite rare, but you should be able to get a couple months from an atty. I blow mine out sometimes, but not too often. It is best to have backups for situations like these...they tend to die at the worst time possible. I rotate about 6 attys at a time. When one gets sluggish I put it aside and put on a fresh one. After I have gone through all of them, its time to do the wash. Attys work best when you do nothing to them or at least be gentle on them, like hot water flushing. High pressure air is a good way to mess them up, if not kill them outright.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

I wouldn't know how to fix it. There have been some people who have performed surgery on them (for example see this here). But being realistic, they are disposable items that have a limited lifespan. There are now a couple of commercial atty's with replaceable elements, for example the Bulli A2 or Nhalers Ato-Miser. These are more expensive than regular atty's up front, but the only thing that will need replacing on them going forward is the heating wire and the wick material. Some modders have even built their own.

If you have, or can borrow, a multimeter you can test the resistance of the atomiser. A standard 901 atty would typically be around 3.2 ohms. If it's significantly higher, it could indicate a bad connection or partial break somewhere. If it measures infinite resistance then the coil is completely broken.