Refurbished atomizer?

[jarvis]

If I could disassemble these more easily, I think it would be possible to wrap some fresh nomex type wick material in some nichrome wire and solder it all back together for reassembly.If I could just get the threaded part off without mangling it. Anyone ever try this? Worth the effort?

I've posted one of these pictures before, but here's another one for people who wonder what's inside of them. This is from a rn4081, a pretty standard super mini model that was producing the familiar nasty burnt taste.
A. Steel wool wrapped metal bridgde that prevents the cartridge from touching the atomizer
B. Atomizer: uncoiled (Nichrome?) wire, the nasty black fibers are the heat resistant aromatic polyamide fiber that the wire was tightly wrapped around.
C. Ceramic pot the atomizer coil sits in. The coil is soldered to the red and green wires coming through two holes in the bottom. The rubber bit to the right of C separated red and green wires.
D. more steel wool that the ceramic pot was wrapped in.
E. Just a steel tube.
F. The threads for the battery, one of the wires is soldered to the side.
G. plug that makes contact with the battery. Some kind of rubber gasket prevents it from making contact from the rest of the atomizer and the other wire is soldered to the middle.

 

[aaa]

Sorry, that I cannot help: you had more success to disassemble the atomiser with less damage than me

Anyway, I suspect it would be always a pain either to replace the nomex or to replace e.g. a broken heating coil.

I wonder if the atomiser could be fully "remastered", to use a commercial, 6V 5W or 10W halogen lamp , instead, that is cheap, and could be easier to replace. It could hopefully provide enough heat to evaporate e-liquid from a steel mash (fully avoiding the nomex, too).
Edit:
I googled a lot, and found some pros and some cons for the would be "halogen lamp mod". After all, only experimentation could show if the "halogen lamp => hot air => steel mesh => plenty of vapour" plan would work.

 

[katink]

Sorry, that I cannot help: you had more success to disassemble the atomiser with less damage than me

Anyway, I suspect it would be always a pain either to replace the nomex or to replace e.g. a broken heating coil.

I wonder if the atomiser could be fully "remastered", to use a commercial, 6V 5W or 10W halogen lamp , instead, that is cheap, and could be easier to replace. It could hopefully provide enough heat to evaporate e-liquid from a steel mash (fully avoiding the nomex, too).
Edit:
I googled a lot, and found some pros and some cons for the would be "halogen lamp mod". After all, only experimentation could show if the "halogen lamp => hot air => steel mesh => plenty of vapour" plan would work.

It works Being made by someone called 37 on a dutch forum. And he uses pieces of (wooden) broomstick plus a small piece of a curtain-rod to mount the different parts into. He hasn't got it the exact way he wants yet; but allready working decently. (Uses a 20W 12V halogen lamp btw).
Here's the link, but you had better use google translate because it's dutch (though the pictures might allready be enough for you, don't know).
International Vaporizer Society • Toon onderwerp - [zelfbouw] bezemsteel

 

[aaa]

I checked the link, and I am happy that it is proven to be a working idea, but I do not like the practical solution there:
- using a 12V 20W halogen lamp sacrifizes compatibility with the e-cig batteries, and
- too much plastics seen on the photos.

I think we should stick with 6V 10W halogen lamps, that have a resistance of about 3.5 ohm, and are thus compatible enough to the 4 ohm resistance of the original heating coil. Beside, we should stick with a more clean and healthy glass/ceramic/metal solution.

When using a 6V 10W lamp, maybe we could compensate for less power by increasing efficiency with some lens to focus at the ceramic pot:
atomiser contact part => G3 lampholder => 6V 10W halogen lamp => lens => ceramic pot => steel mesh => cartridge)

Another way to increase efficiency would be to use medium wave, fast response halogen lamps, or carbon lamps instead of the narrow wave halogen lamp. The spectrum of those lamps is suitable for heating liquids, and are extremely fast to heat up (>1s). The problem is that I could not find such lamps for such a small voltage and size, and, even if such a lamp exists, it could be much more expensive
However, if we use cheap, narrow wave halogen lamp that is not efficient to heat up liquids, we could either focus the optical lens at the ceramic pot, or not use an optical lens, at all, but apply a metal heat reflector, instead.
Anyway, the "halogen lamp atomiser mod" is too long, so it will not fit into the original atomiser housing.
That is not an issue, however, as we could easily double the length of the atomiser by pushing the housing of two atomisers together (and cut them to the right length, if necessary).
It may even come handy:
a) all the electrical components (i.e. the electrical contacts, the lampholder and the lamp) can be placed in one housing part , making the lamp easily accessible for replacement by simply separating the two enclosure parts, and
b) all other parts (ceramic pot, metal mesh) in the other enclosure part, thus regular cleaning of them will not stress electrical parts.

Unfortunately, every "e-cig modder" has at least two bad atomisers in the drawer

 

[aaa]

The halogen lamp halve of the enclosure is ready, and it produced a lot of heat with a 6V 20W halogen lamp during the test.

It was quite easy to make it: just removed everything from a dead atomiser, and connected the lampholder to the contact part of the atomiser by two 10 mm long wires. (Wires are thick to also secure the position of the lampholder). Then pushed the whole thing into its place in the atomiser housing. The lamp projects out by 10 mm.

Now I am trying to create the counterpart that delivers the e-liquid close to the lamp.
I already tried to re-use the particles of the mesh and the ceramic pot that came out of that atomiser for the purpose, but not with much success. I would need plenty of wire mesh in between the lamp and the cartridge. Not knowing so far how to get some.

Some coaxial cables have a braided wire shield, maybe that could convey e-liquid to the lamp...

 

[kinabaloo]

aaa - the heater wire is enamel coated and so could wrap around metal mesh without shorting, but metal mesh is not used for a different reason i would guess - because metal conducts the heat away. This suggests you avoid metal mesh near the lamp. How about porous ceramics? Really like the lamp approach and hope you c an get it to work with a 10W bulb, otherwise battery life would be too short.

 

[kinabaloo]

Also, how about a piezoelectric tranducer (these can be wafer thin and small enough with tiny power consumption) to spray a mist at the lamp? These two technologies tohether might provide the perfect answer.

 

[Roxi]

Wow, Looks like I'll have to do a lot of work to get my nic rewad... and I thought loading my own cigs was hard work... oh well. Seeing as the price of cigs when up so much, I've been saving a lot of $$ by loading my own. I learned how to make my own cigs fast... I'm sure I'll get the hang of this soon enough