Eenie Meenie Minie Moe
I started with an eGo-c tank kit, a knock-off, not because I thought it was the best idea, but because I was bewildered by the array of choices and terms that meant nothing to me. That doesn't mean it wasn't a good choice, just that it was presented as enough of a piece that I could make some sense of it, and had some confidence that when it arrived, it would not be missing some critical component.
This matters in that this industry, manufacturing and selling personal vaporizer components, has not yet matured in the way that other consumer electronics have. Buyers have a larger than usual number of choices they have to make for every section of the vapour delivery system: battery or cable, power unit housing, power unit extras, liquid storage, liquid delivery, atomizer variants -- and then there's ensuring all these disparate pieces will fit together. It's a lot like putting together a PC in the 80's.
And after all that, will this Frankenstein creature you've assembled actually be something you want to use? In public? In front of people of your preferred sex?
What's In The Box, and Who Made It?
Back to my kit. Like most, it came with two batteries, a charger for the batteries, a pair of atomizer bases, several teeny atomizer heads, several empty plastic cartridges, and a pair of cones that mated the bases with the heads with the cartridges, and finally with the batteries. They are pretty important for looking so unassuming, but still, you can (if you want) toss all but the batteries and chargers and use an entirely different liquid-to-vapour delivery system.
I was tired of making choices, so I didn't do that.
But you can do that, because the eGo batteries have two different threadings at the business end: the eGo threads are on the outside, and on the inside are what I believe are referred to as 510 threads. Any component that attaches via a 510 post can be screwed onto an eGo battery. A whole lot of components do in fact attach via 510 posts.
This means that the eGo-c kits are not closed systems, and is one of the reasons why they are not bad choices, even if the user does not want to stay with one for very long.
I did not, at the time I bought it, know my kit was a knock-off. I started having doubts when I undid the padded envelope and got my first look at the box. It looked like a Joyetech box, but the logo embossed on its lid was that of... no company on earth. It is quite fancy, for a generic heraldic emblem, but there's no actual company name given. Just "Electronic Cigarettes" and underneath, "Featuring the revolutionery [sic] tank system". I googled that, and variants on the 'company name', and got a whole lot of nothing except some stuff on a German e-cig forum. The included manual is a wholesale lift of Joyetech's, via scanner in desperate need of an OCR update, with crucial stuff missing such as any hint of real people backing the warranty. Also vowels. Many vowels.
The vendor also sells juice of their own making, and I ordered a bottle of 16mg/ml and one of 12mg/ml of the same flavour, one that sounded like a light, inoffensive tobacco scent. I did this so I could vary the strength via mixing, and that strategy at least worked the way I thought it would.
Back to my kit again. The reason for the multitude of atomizer heads and cartridges is that the eGo-c system considers these to be consumables. Your beginning user is not expected to re-wick or even clean the things, beyond maybe rinsing them a few times. This is both good and bad. Good, in that the things a new user has to worry about mastering are minimized. Bad, in that a new user will shortly run into conditions that could easily be resolved with a bit of hot water, or an alcohol soak, and think instead that their atomizer head or cartridge is 'used up', or spoiled or malformed or mistreated. I threw away a cartridge my second day, because there was a bit of leakage and I thought I'd messed it up somehow. I hadn't, but what did I know? Later on I dug it back out of the trash and and cleaned it up, and it was fine.
The cartridges are themselves made up of three parts: the cap, which is the round bit with a punch-out hole in its centre, the body, and the mouthpiece endcap, which is the oval bit inset at the end you put in your mouth. If you bite down on the mouthpiece you can dislodge the endcap, and get juice in your mouth. I know this only from hearsay; it has never happened to me. *cough* Should this happen to you, cease sucking immediately and put the thing back in the mouthpiece.
Along either side of the body are vents, which channel the vapour from the atomizer to the mouthpiece. When I first filled one, I was worried that the liquid would leak from the mouthpiece, but this really should not happen ordinarily, though it can happen if you draw (suck) too enthusiastically when vaping.
The atomizer heads mate with the bases to receive power from the battery. The bases are not in themselves interesting; all the work is done within the head. Inside the lower cylindrical housing of the head is the coil. It is fed via the wick held in place above it by the spiked cap. While you can take the head apart, and even rewick it, you are not expected to do so and the time and effort involved mean this would, under normal circumstances, be a low-reward project for the trouble. If you want to watch someone rewick one with stainless steel mesh, there's a video here.
Putting It All Together
Hold a new cartridge in one hand, and an atomizer head in the other. Punch out the hole in the cartridge cap with the spike, then pull apart carefully. Where did the punch-out go?
This is not an idle question as those tiny bits of plastic will migrate to the most inconvenient places. Check the spike tip, the inside of the cartridge cap hole, your table top or counter, the palm of your hand. I found one inside the connector of the battery. It had been working poorly for two days. It got better directly I cleared away the punch-out. So, find it and throw it away before you go any further.
Once you've done that, you can fill the cartridge with juice. If your juice bottle has a pointy tip, you can just insert that into the cap. However, doing that can stretch out the hole, which in turn can lead to leaking. I found it just as easy to take the cap off, fill, and re-cap.
Don't overfill, either. Leave a bit of room. These cartridges do not hold very much at all, but the upside is that it is very easy to sample a series of flavours as they will work as well with a few drops as they do when full.
After assembling the atomizer base and head with the conic section, you fit the cartridge by sliding it into the cone so that the cap is impaled on the spike, then turning the cartridge clockwise in place to create a seal between it and the flange inside the conic section, which will help keep it from leaking.
When in use, draw gently. Sucking hard will only lead to hot liquid on your lips and tongue, and if that stuff were drinkable, we wouldn't need all this gear. When not in use, stand it up so that the liquid is still gravitationally aimed toward the atomizer, so as to keep the wick juiced up.
Because the atomizer and the battery are relatively close together, you may notice that the collar above the button gets pretty warm but the vapour does not, since it has to travel over an inch before it reaches your mouth. That may also be part of why the vapour production isn't as voluminous as that of other atomizer/tank systems. Taste and throat hit are also comparatively muted, but brighter flavours and next-higher nicotine levels will make up for that. On the upside, a milliliter of juice will last longer.
The other thing you may notice is that this is a little bitty wick, stuffed into a little bitty spike, and leading to a little bitty coil. Under these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising how fast and how often the vapour will taste burnt. Bleah. You can mitigate this to a degree by cleaning the atomizer head early and often. I found that dropping them in a shot glass and cover them with either vodka or isopropyl alcohol and leaving them overnight would clean them up pretty well. I don't know why this helps, but my working theory is that it is the wick more than the coil that is at fault, and the alcohol soak cleans it up. This is quite possibly the sort of thing that leads one to rewick the bloody things, despite having to purchase a magnifying glass on a stand to do so.
A far cheaper approach is to put in an order for a Vivi Nova or six. Which is what I did, after about three or four weeks. But the little 650mAH batteries that came with my eGo-c kit do not go forgotten. I use them now to dry-burn the Vivi's coils, so as to spare my new Twists.
I started with an eGo-c tank kit, a knock-off, not because I thought it was the best idea, but because I was bewildered by the array of choices and terms that meant nothing to me. That doesn't mean it wasn't a good choice, just that it was presented as enough of a piece that I could make some sense of it, and had some confidence that when it arrived, it would not be missing some critical component.
This matters in that this industry, manufacturing and selling personal vaporizer components, has not yet matured in the way that other consumer electronics have. Buyers have a larger than usual number of choices they have to make for every section of the vapour delivery system: battery or cable, power unit housing, power unit extras, liquid storage, liquid delivery, atomizer variants -- and then there's ensuring all these disparate pieces will fit together. It's a lot like putting together a PC in the 80's.
And after all that, will this Frankenstein creature you've assembled actually be something you want to use? In public? In front of people of your preferred sex?
What's In The Box, and Who Made It?
Back to my kit. Like most, it came with two batteries, a charger for the batteries, a pair of atomizer bases, several teeny atomizer heads, several empty plastic cartridges, and a pair of cones that mated the bases with the heads with the cartridges, and finally with the batteries. They are pretty important for looking so unassuming, but still, you can (if you want) toss all but the batteries and chargers and use an entirely different liquid-to-vapour delivery system.
I was tired of making choices, so I didn't do that.
But you can do that, because the eGo batteries have two different threadings at the business end: the eGo threads are on the outside, and on the inside are what I believe are referred to as 510 threads. Any component that attaches via a 510 post can be screwed onto an eGo battery. A whole lot of components do in fact attach via 510 posts.This means that the eGo-c kits are not closed systems, and is one of the reasons why they are not bad choices, even if the user does not want to stay with one for very long.
I did not, at the time I bought it, know my kit was a knock-off. I started having doubts when I undid the padded envelope and got my first look at the box. It looked like a Joyetech box, but the logo embossed on its lid was that of... no company on earth. It is quite fancy, for a generic heraldic emblem, but there's no actual company name given. Just "Electronic Cigarettes" and underneath, "Featuring the revolutionery [sic] tank system". I googled that, and variants on the 'company name', and got a whole lot of nothing except some stuff on a German e-cig forum. The included manual is a wholesale lift of Joyetech's, via scanner in desperate need of an OCR update, with crucial stuff missing such as any hint of real people backing the warranty. Also vowels. Many vowels.
The vendor also sells juice of their own making, and I ordered a bottle of 16mg/ml and one of 12mg/ml of the same flavour, one that sounded like a light, inoffensive tobacco scent. I did this so I could vary the strength via mixing, and that strategy at least worked the way I thought it would.
Back to my kit again. The reason for the multitude of atomizer heads and cartridges is that the eGo-c system considers these to be consumables. Your beginning user is not expected to re-wick or even clean the things, beyond maybe rinsing them a few times. This is both good and bad. Good, in that the things a new user has to worry about mastering are minimized. Bad, in that a new user will shortly run into conditions that could easily be resolved with a bit of hot water, or an alcohol soak, and think instead that their atomizer head or cartridge is 'used up', or spoiled or malformed or mistreated. I threw away a cartridge my second day, because there was a bit of leakage and I thought I'd messed it up somehow. I hadn't, but what did I know? Later on I dug it back out of the trash and and cleaned it up, and it was fine.
The cartridges are themselves made up of three parts: the cap, which is the round bit with a punch-out hole in its centre, the body, and the mouthpiece endcap, which is the oval bit inset at the end you put in your mouth. If you bite down on the mouthpiece you can dislodge the endcap, and get juice in your mouth. I know this only from hearsay; it has never happened to me. *cough* Should this happen to you, cease sucking immediately and put the thing back in the mouthpiece.
Along either side of the body are vents, which channel the vapour from the atomizer to the mouthpiece. When I first filled one, I was worried that the liquid would leak from the mouthpiece, but this really should not happen ordinarily, though it can happen if you draw (suck) too enthusiastically when vaping.
The atomizer heads mate with the bases to receive power from the battery. The bases are not in themselves interesting; all the work is done within the head. Inside the lower cylindrical housing of the head is the coil. It is fed via the wick held in place above it by the spiked cap. While you can take the head apart, and even rewick it, you are not expected to do so and the time and effort involved mean this would, under normal circumstances, be a low-reward project for the trouble. If you want to watch someone rewick one with stainless steel mesh, there's a video here.
Putting It All Together
Hold a new cartridge in one hand, and an atomizer head in the other. Punch out the hole in the cartridge cap with the spike, then pull apart carefully. Where did the punch-out go?
This is not an idle question as those tiny bits of plastic will migrate to the most inconvenient places. Check the spike tip, the inside of the cartridge cap hole, your table top or counter, the palm of your hand. I found one inside the connector of the battery. It had been working poorly for two days. It got better directly I cleared away the punch-out. So, find it and throw it away before you go any further.
Once you've done that, you can fill the cartridge with juice. If your juice bottle has a pointy tip, you can just insert that into the cap. However, doing that can stretch out the hole, which in turn can lead to leaking. I found it just as easy to take the cap off, fill, and re-cap.
Don't overfill, either. Leave a bit of room. These cartridges do not hold very much at all, but the upside is that it is very easy to sample a series of flavours as they will work as well with a few drops as they do when full.
After assembling the atomizer base and head with the conic section, you fit the cartridge by sliding it into the cone so that the cap is impaled on the spike, then turning the cartridge clockwise in place to create a seal between it and the flange inside the conic section, which will help keep it from leaking.
When in use, draw gently. Sucking hard will only lead to hot liquid on your lips and tongue, and if that stuff were drinkable, we wouldn't need all this gear. When not in use, stand it up so that the liquid is still gravitationally aimed toward the atomizer, so as to keep the wick juiced up.
Because the atomizer and the battery are relatively close together, you may notice that the collar above the button gets pretty warm but the vapour does not, since it has to travel over an inch before it reaches your mouth. That may also be part of why the vapour production isn't as voluminous as that of other atomizer/tank systems. Taste and throat hit are also comparatively muted, but brighter flavours and next-higher nicotine levels will make up for that. On the upside, a milliliter of juice will last longer.
The other thing you may notice is that this is a little bitty wick, stuffed into a little bitty spike, and leading to a little bitty coil. Under these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising how fast and how often the vapour will taste burnt. Bleah. You can mitigate this to a degree by cleaning the atomizer head early and often. I found that dropping them in a shot glass and cover them with either vodka or isopropyl alcohol and leaving them overnight would clean them up pretty well. I don't know why this helps, but my working theory is that it is the wick more than the coil that is at fault, and the alcohol soak cleans it up. This is quite possibly the sort of thing that leads one to rewick the bloody things, despite having to purchase a magnifying glass on a stand to do so.
A far cheaper approach is to put in an order for a Vivi Nova or six. Which is what I did, after about three or four weeks. But the little 650mAH batteries that came with my eGo-c kit do not go forgotten. I use them now to dry-burn the Vivi's coils, so as to spare my new Twists.
