smoktek cartomizer...

[Baditude]

I'm still curious about the anatomy of a carto and how this can relate to a carto flooding.

View attachment 165574

In the above image, the center airhole tube is a firm tube from what I have been able to determine. Does this tube go the entire length of the carto and make connection with the connecting pin of the carto? If it does, how does vapor enter the tube after changing form from a liquid to gas? There must be a hole or partition in the tube to allow for this to happen.

I'm thinking that this heating coil "sock" normally has a liquid barrier property to it, allowing vapor thru but not liquid. But should it become damaged (progressive collection of burnt juice from the heating coils) it no longer has this liquid barrier protection and allows excess liquid to enter into the air hole chamber, resulting in flooding and leaking.

Am I any where close?

I can see how the darker juice flavors would clog the pollyfill faster, and likely does the same to this sock covering the heating coil, too. If my fuzzy logic described above is accurate, darker juices used in cartomizers would increase the chances of flooding a cartomizer.

Does any of this make sense?

 

[ruff]

its not a solid tube tho, its just the NR wire holding the shape that its in with the 2 coils wrapped in the sock with insulators between each coil and the next bit of exposed NR wire, the only cartos ive seen that have solid center tubing are ce2 styles

 

[Marvin & Sennie]

this is extremely interesting!! If I find after soaking the used one's in everclear that they can't be re-used I am going to tear 1 apart to check out the guts.

 

[OCD]

Sennie, blow them out good and let them dry a day or more and they should be fine. When they get a burned taste then they are pretty much toast. Take some good pictures when you do the autopsy

Baditude, my understand of the inner workings is that the tube is some sort of heat resistant silica tube. Liquid can soak through this but not so much that it can flow, just enough that it stays wet from the liquid behind it in the polyfill. Being wet with the coil on the inside of the tube when power is applied it vaporizes (inside of the center tube and in the air path). I dont know that darker liquid will flood easier but I have read much that darker will clog faster causing a tight draw.

Like I said before I have not torn one down, barely have time to scratch most times so I could be dead wrong on this but this is how I understand what I have read.

I am interested in learning more on this so I am following you on this quest of yours because it will surely be enlightening.

 

[ruff]

The dual coil clipping is something that i found out when i received my persei, at the time the cartos i had were too high of an ohm for my liking at 3.7v but too low for the 7.4v configuration, and i had no way of going to the comfortable middle ground at that time so i ended up researching and experimenting with clipping the coils and it worked well until i got my next order of lower ohm cartos.

Ocd i think you are right about the silica, that's the sock i keep talking about, but it is only around the coil and at the top where it comes out of the filter by the drip tip

Sent from my SGH-I897 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Baditude]

I did a search on Google Images for "anatomy of a cartomizer" and came up with this ECF thread that has some nice pics of a carto disected (happens to be a Smoktech dual coil). Pretty amazing how much burning of the carto material goes on...especially the sock that surrounds the heating coils, in particular the top coil which doesn't get as much juice as the bottom coil. Makes me glad that I switched from dual coils to single coils after seeing this.

Anyway, this sort of porous, elongated bag/tube that runs the length of the carto underneath the polyfill is what I suspect is the culprit in allowing a carto to flood. Under normal circumstances I bet this creates a liquid barrier for the center air tube, yet something sometimes happens which allows e-liquid to pass through it. I'm theorizing that once this bag becomes saturated, it can no longer contain the e-juice and the carto begins flooding.

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/ego-type-models/242243-anatomy-dual-coil-cartomizer-pics-inside.html

Next question: what circumstances would cause this part of the carto to stop being liquid-tight? Obviously trauma from self-punching the carto. Also over-saturation from too much pressure from within the tank itself. Any other ideas?

 

[GrannyM]

Here are some pictures for your edification, lol.


This is a basic drawing of a single coil carto.


This one is an actual vertical single coil carto dissected. Note that the "diaper" wraps around the coil before the polyfill is wrapped around that.

In the ones I've taken apart the coil is wrapped around a very small silica (I think) wick. The "diaper" is a different material, not sure what.

ETA: Baditude (I love that name, btw) posted while I was getting this ready, and I would agree that trauma (either by bad punching or burning) to the "diaper" will cause some flooding issues. I've found with some cartos too that the inner air channel can "collapse", basically rendering it unusable because of lack of airflow.

 

[zapped]

With these Smoktek tanks on a couple of occasions Ive had the batting become so saturated with the juice thats its actually swelled enough to break the battery connector away from where it press fits into the stainless steel tube.

Carto still worked and even seemed to wick better because it was getting more air. It caused the tank to sit crooked on my pv.

Im guessing that when that batting is supersaturated the pores shrink up or the liquid fills the spaces and wont let more juice through without a super hard draw.

This pulls more juice than needed into the carto and also causes the juice in between the pores to "pop" and flood it further? If thats happening to people then more air is needed. I think Sennie is using an adapter to make the carto tanks work on her Zmax and it might also be a part of the problem if its restricting air flow.

These are just educated guesses from a long time carto tank user and may or may not be the problem but its worth a shot anyway.

 

[OCD]

Zapped thats good thinking, the airflow to the carto is one I had not thought of. Restriction there would cause a tighter draw and in turn put more vacuum on the tank each draw.