So you thought your 510 atty was dead

[attymiser]

It's dead anyway, right? Try this.

Soak your atty in very hot water. Not boiling water and not running water.
Just set the atty in a cup of very hot water and soak. The longer the better but the water must be hot.

Remove it once or twice and very gently blow through the battery end and soak in fresh hot water again.

Remove from water and gently blow through battery end again to remove water. Gently shake out water.

Place the atty cart side facing a blow dryer on low with high heat. The longer the better. 10 minutes minimum.

let the atty cool a little bit and attach battery. Do not add any fluid. Do not attach a cart.

Turn on the manual battery switch for 5 to seven seconds. You should see a tiny bit of smoke (the remaining moisture on the coil) or hear a little sizzle. Continue to turn on the switch for up to seven seconds while looking inside to see if the coil is glowing red hot. If after doing this seven to 10 times you do not feel heat or see it glowing your atty may very well be dead. (Best to be somewhere not to bright to see the glow)

If you did see it glow that's a really good sign. Switch to fresh battery and do it a couple more times. Do not add fluid. Soak gently again in hot water to remove ash from coil. Repeat drying procedure. Repeat dry burn procedure until you see glow again. Prime with 2 drops of fluid add damp cart, not wet and take small primer puffs to get going.

Do not flood the atty. While you may need to top off with a couple more drops of fluid, if you hear gurgling it's flooded and you should shake out the excess. Once you get it going it's good to put it down for a while to let the fluid equalize throughout the wick rather than continuing to add more fluid and flooding it.

I have been vaping for 2 months now and was going through an atty a week. I have restored every one of the originals except the one that I ripped apart to see how it was made. I hope this works for you as it has for me, but hey, it was dead anyway right?

PS - Dry burns do not work very well if the atty has not been washed of all fluid because the fluid keeps the coil cooler.

 

[DWB]

nice find man!

 

[attymiser]

This really works! Always let the atty cool before placing in water.
I use this as my regular cleaning method now.

I took the coil out of the atty that i ripped apart and soaked it in every solution mentioned on this forum and none had done anything to get the build up off the coil. I soaked it for days at a time. CLR did seem to work a little but not something i would want in my lungs.

Then I started messing with the coil by hooking up different batteries to it. I noticed that the coil started to glow after continued attempts and the build up started to ash.

I have also used a sewing needle to lightly scrape the coil, in the direction that the coil is wound, after the dry burn. I am careful not touch any of the wick or bridge when I do this. If you lightly tap the atty, cart side down, on a white surface you will see lots of ash paticles come out.

Obviously you can burn out a coil doing this, but I have done it to several for weeks and have not lost one yet.

 

[PlanetScribbles]

I'll try it. Thx

 

[attymiser]

Let me know how it works for you.

 

[ebonyknight]

good info, bookmarked

 

[World_Groove]

I use a similar method to great effect, however I do use water at about 207 from a hot water dispenser to soak in, with no ill effects.

 

[thepelican]

two dead attys on hand, use this method successfully brought one back to life. i actually didnt see a red glow, but i did hear the hiss that was missing before and dropped some liquid on and, like magic, it's been vaping, not like it was at its peak, but enough to tide me over until i get some new ones.

i'm curious as to the thought behind the process -- collected ash enough to put an atty out of commission? is the ash just from burnt juices? also, would you recommend this method to clean new attys of the gross shipping juice?

 

[River]

I've been doing the overnight cola soak then a hot water rinse then the hairdryer thing to remove the crud.

The atty will taste bad for awhile then come right back and work fine.

I'm assuming the acids in the cola are dissolving the stuff on the heating coil.

 

[Nevets]

will this work with non 510, automatic atomizers? ive got one very similar in style and my atties seem to go out every 3 days.

 

[Kent C]

I've been doing the overnight cola soak then a hot water rinse then the hairdryer thing to remove the crud.

The atty will taste bad for awhile then come right back and work fine.

I'm assuming the acids in the cola are dissolving the stuff on the heating coil.

I don't recommend cola, but if you must do something without sugar which will really kill an atty by collecting in the wicking and around the coil.

The soaking and soaking, imo, is not good for the wicking which can end up in a bunch either above or below the pot so before committing all your attys to this treatment read up on some other threads where people haven't had complete success and some failures.

 

[Sun Vaporer]

Moved to experiments section,


Sun

 

[terrie1]

I just used this method with my only 10 day old, burnt tasting atty. It WORKED! Thanks so much! I will be using this method for cleaning from now on. Nice to learn what really works so quickly as I am noobie with a 510 run amuck!

 

[MaxUT]

i'm curious as to the thought behind the process -- collected ash enough to put an atty out of commission? is the ash just from burnt juices? also, would you recommend this method to clean new attys of the gross shipping juice?

As I see it:
There's two things going on which degrade an atty's performance. One is that the air passages clog with residue, reducing flow. The other is that the coil/wick gets coated with "gunk" (to use the technical term), which reduces heat transfer to the fresh liquid we're trying to vaporize. Little air flow + little heat = little vapor.

Soaking removes the dissolvable residue. Heating removes at least some of the gunk from the coil.

As far as removing primer from a new atty, I like to stand it on the battery end and fill it with thinned glycerine. I let it trickle out slowly, then blow out the atty and wipe off the threads. This gets rid of enough of the bad juice and the atty remains primed and is ready to go.

 

[sjohnson]

On my third month of relatively heavy vaping on a 510 with nicostick mod, 1440 battery.

Every 3-4 days I ultrasound clean the atomizer for 5-10 minutes, dry 1-2 days, do the dry burn, then ultrasound the atomizer again for 5-10 minutes, then dry 1-2 days.

I've yet to lose an atomizer and the vape is always like new (or better!). YMMV.

The only "drawback" is the ultrasound tends to remove the black paint from the atomizer when I forget and leave it in for a long time. Mine are all now tending toward a stainless steel look. Actually kinda of nice looking when I put a 510 OEM kit together!

 

[MaxUT]

On my third month of relatively heavy vaping on a 510 with nicostick mod, 1440 battery.

Every 3-4 days I ultrasound clean the atomizer for 5-10 minutes, dry 1-2 days, do the dry burn, then ultrasound the atomizer again for 5-10 minutes, then dry 1-2 days.

I use pretty much the same procedure, except for the second ultrasound cleaning. Do you notice much carbon in the tank solution? I use the Crest blue mouthwash per Sattech's recommendation.

The only "drawback" is the ultrasound tends to remove the black paint from the atomizer when I forget and leave it in for a long time.

LOL... I turned a friend at work onto vaping, and he used our industrial-strength ultrasonic cleaner for his 510 atomizers. He placed the atomizers inside a 100ml plastic sample bottle filled with deionized water, capped it and dropped it into the cleaner tank. Ran it for 1/2 hour. When he removed the atomizers, all their paint had come loose.

 

[sjohnson]

Mine's an industrial model, as well. Unused for years at my workplace, I asked if I could buy it. The owner told me to just take it.

Sometimes I notice black bits. But since I started cleaning atomizers after 3-4 days use on a regular basis, I rarely notice anything other than a clean taste when I rotate a clean one into use. Makes the 3-4 day "old" atomizer seem murky in contrast.

Wicks turn white, almost like new.

 

[martha1014]

This is one of the best ways to revive an atomizer back to life that I have heard of. I am going to try it right away with all of my dead atomizers. As far as using cola there are several ingredients in coke you may not want to use. I have used Enclear 190 proof just to clean working atomizers. After I cleaned the atomizers 2 out of 4 died. Since then I have only been blowing them out and haven't had any problems since then. But I have never tried to revive an atomizers. This I will try. Thanks

 

[attymiser]

"i'm curious as to the thought behind the process -- collected ash enough to put an atty out of commission? is the ash just from burnt juices? also, would you recommend this method to clean new attys of the gross shipping juice?"

When I ripped apart the atyy there was so much gunk built up on the coil that I could'nt tell it was a coil. So I dug even deeper and pulled the coil right out of the ceramic bowl. The coil became partially unravelled but it was still intact.

I soaked in solution after solution to try to disolve the gunk. Nothing did. So i decided to hook up some batteries to the coil to see if it would still heat. It did heat and I realized the gunk was burning off. Then I tried an intact atty that I thought was dead and had already tried cleaning. It is still working like brand new today.

I would recommend that once you get it to glow red, start to shorten the length of time you will let it glow but do it a few more times. I did lose one atty out of six doing this, I think because I was trying to burn off the residue for too long. I saw the coil spark like a short and it never heated again.

It is very important to soak in hot water for a good length of time and to change the water a few times. You must get the juice out of the atty and it must be dry to get the coil to glow. I do this once a week and I vape heavily!

Keep the wicks in good shape, it's important to maintain even performance and there are lots of cleaning methods posted that can damage the wick (such as rushing hot water).

When all else fails, try this method. Good Vaping!

 

[attymiser]

Oh, and I would not do this to a new atty. Just blow out the juice.