Yes, drill the top cap. i believe it's 11/64" drill bit, can't remember.
Square bottles?
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Yes, drill the top cap. i believe it's 11/64" drill bit, can't remember.
That could be a game changer...I can't believe I missed that. .. I've been pouring over little plastic bottle sites for days now and it never occured to me to look at o ringing and drilling flat top caps. .. allowing a taller bottle. .. I also picked up a new 1/4" endmill bit... I'm taking out that step in my 490
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I was just thinking that if you take the o ring out of our current bottles you'd have a bit of a mess
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Okay! I volunteer!
I just ordered 2 of the small 4-4.5 ml bottles from Vapage.
When I get them I'll experiment with my mini and let you know my findings!!
I have the older mini 14500 and my lady has a 18490 woody. I'll check them both out for fit.
Probably won't be until beginning of the week before I get them.
Stay tuned.
I just ordered 2 of the small 4-4.5 ml bottles from Vapage.
When I get them I'll experiment with my mini and let you know my findings!!
I have the older mini 14500 and my lady has a 18490 woody. I'll check them both out for fit.
Probably won't be until beginning of the week before I get them.
Stay tuned.
Glad to plant the seed!
Isn't it fun to fiddle with new things?
Owning REOs with RBAs and xc wicking has taken all the fiddling looking for improvements out of my life!!
The bottles we have now are not snug on the tube. That's why we need O rings. You make your hole slightly smaller than the outer diameter of the tube.
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http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/reos-mods/521257-just-did-bottle-mod.html
The bottle mod thread
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The bottle mod thread
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Quigs- see bottle mod thread above. Pretty much the same procedure with the vapage bottle. No Oring needed. Just drill the top cap and insert the tube thru and then slip on to the REO nipple. I guess my memory was correct with 11/64''.
the one drawback to the vmod bottle over the original reo 6ml is, the 6ml has a nice large opening where the vmod bottle is a bit smaller and def harder to fill. the opening is so small that sometimes it's a little snug sliding over the feed tube and I ream it out a little so it slides over the fill tube easier. still worthwhile though, just pointing this out
So since I opened my big mouth to promptly insert foot, I decided to stop posting peanut gallery comments and google searches, and make a few phone calls myself.
Called Plastic Bottle Corporation, who claimed on their site 5000 pc minimum (pretty low minimum for custom manufacturing): Plastic Bottle Corporation; plastic bottle, plastic bottle manufacturer, plastic bottles, plastic jugs, plastic jars, plastic bottle manufacturers
They said that minimum only applied to higher end plastic bottles, for a 6 ml square custom bottle, the minimum run would be 25,000 units. To try McKernan, maybe they can help because they are a distributor and deal with a lot of different manufacturers.
I called McKernan: McKernan Wholesale Bottles | Surplus Bottles | Wholesale Jars
Spoke with their senior salesperson at length, who had worked for McKernan for 10 years, and in that time, never saw anyone request a tiny square bottle. She checked their entire inventory for me, including overstocks, not even close (they have a HUGE variety of inventory, including some pretty weird bottle shapes). She said that they deal with Chinese plastics manufacturers for lowest pricing on custom orders, and the minimum order would be 100,000 bottles to go that route. She's emailing me a list of manufacturers that may help.
Meanwhile, I called Dynalab Corporation: Contact Dynalab Corp.
Dynalab specializes in lab equipment, for both single and reusable, and they make LDPE and HDPE bottles. Talked to the sales person... they don't make bottles that small. Sent me to Nalge manufacturing.
Nalge Nuc: Nalgene | The original water bottle. Made in the USA. BPA Free.
- paydirt maybe.
Nalgene was purchased by Thermal Scientific recently. I spoke to one of Thermal Scientific's technical support group (the guys who design/test bottles). I explained what we were looking for, tried to get some info on new molds if the current molds do not exist. He said that to create a new mold from scratch, we're looking at up to a million dollars in pre-production. I said we're not trying to design a new car here, this is a teeny plastic bottle, so lets walk back a bit... can an adaptation be made with existing round molds? He said he had to check with engineering to see if there was a structural reason for why there are no square teeny LDPE bottles on the market right now already, smaller than 30 ml.
I explained to him that I am not part of the company making the inquiry, my company however has dealt with plastic bottling before (have an account with Mckernan already, which is why they were forthcoming with info). I also explained that the bottle must be able to hold e-liquid safely over years, food grade, ldpe soft, and containing no chems that can leach out into the fluid over time. That the reason their engineering team would waste their time on this issue is that while it's a very small company, it's one of the most well regarded and popular in ecigarette types, and are able to sell out all the inventory they can produce. Ecigs are already becoming a multi-billion dollar industry, so if this company can increase production, where will they be 5 years from now? Maybe it's worth their time? He agreed.
The engineering team want an email listing your spec requirements, Rob. I can't give that, so as soon as I hear from him, I will forward you his email and you can deal with him directly.
While I was typing this, got the email from McKernan rep... the list is all distributors... and unlikely to have this bottle in stock, to spec... I'll forward it however if you want to see it anyway.
Which email should I be forwarding to? The one on the website OK?
Called Plastic Bottle Corporation, who claimed on their site 5000 pc minimum (pretty low minimum for custom manufacturing): Plastic Bottle Corporation; plastic bottle, plastic bottle manufacturer, plastic bottles, plastic jugs, plastic jars, plastic bottle manufacturers
They said that minimum only applied to higher end plastic bottles, for a 6 ml square custom bottle, the minimum run would be 25,000 units. To try McKernan, maybe they can help because they are a distributor and deal with a lot of different manufacturers.
I called McKernan: McKernan Wholesale Bottles | Surplus Bottles | Wholesale Jars
Spoke with their senior salesperson at length, who had worked for McKernan for 10 years, and in that time, never saw anyone request a tiny square bottle. She checked their entire inventory for me, including overstocks, not even close (they have a HUGE variety of inventory, including some pretty weird bottle shapes). She said that they deal with Chinese plastics manufacturers for lowest pricing on custom orders, and the minimum order would be 100,000 bottles to go that route. She's emailing me a list of manufacturers that may help.
Meanwhile, I called Dynalab Corporation: Contact Dynalab Corp.
Dynalab specializes in lab equipment, for both single and reusable, and they make LDPE and HDPE bottles. Talked to the sales person... they don't make bottles that small
. Sent me to Nalge manufacturing. Nalge Nuc: Nalgene | The original water bottle. Made in the USA. BPA Free.
- paydirt maybe.
Nalgene was purchased by Thermal Scientific recently. I spoke to one of Thermal Scientific's technical support group (the guys who design/test bottles). I explained what we were looking for, tried to get some info on new molds if the current molds do not exist. He said that to create a new mold from scratch, we're looking at up to a million dollars in pre-production. I said we're not trying to design a new car here, this is a teeny plastic bottle, so lets walk back a bit... can an adaptation be made with existing round molds? He said he had to check with engineering to see if there was a structural reason for why there are no square teeny LDPE bottles on the market right now already, smaller than 30 ml.
I explained to him that I am not part of the company making the inquiry, my company however has dealt with plastic bottling before (have an account with Mckernan already, which is why they were forthcoming with info). I also explained that the bottle must be able to hold e-liquid safely over years, food grade, ldpe soft, and containing no chems that can leach out into the fluid over time. That the reason their engineering team would waste their time on this issue is that while it's a very small company, it's one of the most well regarded and popular in ecigarette types, and are able to sell out all the inventory they can produce. Ecigs are already becoming a multi-billion dollar industry, so if this company can increase production, where will they be 5 years from now? Maybe it's worth their time? He agreed.
The engineering team want an email listing your spec requirements, Rob. I can't give that, so as soon as I hear from him, I will forward you his email and you can deal with him directly.
While I was typing this, got the email from McKernan rep... the list is all distributors... and unlikely to have this bottle in stock, to spec... I'll forward it however if you want to see it anyway.
Which email should I be forwarding to? The one on the website OK?
The o ring in the current bottle is to seal the threads of the top cap not the feed tube.
Nice body of work glassgal!
The one response I got so far (which seemed pretty vague) also had a min order of 50K to 100K units... the million dollars in pre production is insane. ..I could buy my own injection blow mold machine for that.
I'd have some concerns with getting LDPE bottles out of China...
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The one response I got so far (which seemed pretty vague) also had a min order of 50K to 100K units... the million dollars in pre production is insane. ..I could buy my own injection blow mold machine for that.
I'd have some concerns with getting LDPE bottles out of China...
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Well, part of the problem here is that if the bottle is a custom size that can't be found on the market currently (and so far, have not seen it), it has to be custom made. People come up with crazy ideas all the time, and manufacturers have been burned with crazy ideas multiple times each, so they tend to prefer to talk to someone who has already bought large quantities of bottles to take it seriously, or can convince them that they aren't just wasting their time.
The million dollar comment was out there, but manufacturing anything is about relationships, and if you aren't an established customer, they don't take you seriously, because plastic bottles are very very very cheap at the manufacturing level. This may be a pointless effort to even pursue that route... I asked for a quantity of 500-1000 to start, but they are looking at 25,000 to 100,000 to start, over a 5 year span, via signed contract. I'm not sure that Rob is prepared for that level of commitment to one component...
Optimally, we find an existing square bottle. Less optimally, find a small plastics manufacturer who will adapt existing equipment for use (that's why the guy at Thermal Scientific is going to check...why aren't there existing teeny plastic bottles... is there something unusual about the process, specifically, are the walls too thin to use their blowing equipment to make a square shape?). Also of course, what it would take to make it (thus the need for specs). I wanted this answer so if that's the reason, we can all stop looking because it can't be made, which is why it hasn't been made. But we don't know this yet. But I HAVE seen small square bottles before... just not in LDPE.
Just letting you guys know that I did make the effort, so we aren't duplicating efforts
. Quigsworth, going to pm you his name and number so you can talk to him too if you'd like.
One additional advantage Rob, if you choose to pursue manufacturing is that Nalge is in upstate NY, close to Maine... product can be easily and more cheaply trucked.
I have spent like some of you many many hours looking for a bottle that would work for the grand anyways . You would think easy enough to find a bottle that would hold more juice for these mods not the case as some of you have figured out .
I dont sell enough bottles to get one of these companies to make a mold for what we want . I sell maybe 15,000 to 20,000 bottles a year best guess .
glassgal I appreciate the effort thanks for all the time you put in . Quigsworth lol love that name I appreciate your effort as well .
I am not willing to get into a contract for 5 years
I dont sell enough bottles to get one of these companies to make a mold for what we want . I sell maybe 15,000 to 20,000 bottles a year best guess .
glassgal I appreciate the effort thanks for all the time you put in . Quigsworth lol love that name I appreciate your effort as well .
I am not willing to get into a contract for 5 years
15,000-20,000 a year means you can go right for the first company... Plastic Bottle Corporation... 25,000 minimum...
Don't blame you one bit...
So glassgal sent me some contact info, I'll give him a call Monday morning but there may be something to what she said about the shape of the bottle we're looking for... there may be a reason why they don't make square bottles i.e. structural integrity and the blow mold process and thin walls...a cylinder is a much more efficient shape. At any rate... I'm constantly ordering different bottles (they're cheap)... sooner or later I'll find my silver bullet... and again, thanks to rudy for opening my eyes to the flat top cap idea.
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this thread made me think of this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKfID-i41sc maybe a modder type guy with an oven and a blow gun could try re-form an existing bottle as a proof of concept.
great idea, quigsworth.
great idea, quigsworth.
I agree! Great concept Quig!
Also, I think people who have the round bottles and who wouldn't buy more of them would buy the square... so if you're anticipating 10K-15K a year bottle sales, you may hit 25K in just resales to all old customers... who wouldn't want an upgrade if it holds more juice and works better. Plus... DIRECT from the manufacturer cuts out the distributors... the cost would probably remain the same to customers, because square bottles would have a higher base cost than rounds, but you'd definitely get them cheaper than if distributors did have squares...
! Also, I think people who have the round bottles and who wouldn't buy more of them would buy the square... so if you're anticipating 10K-15K a year bottle sales, you may hit 25K in just resales to all old customers... who wouldn't want an upgrade if it holds more juice and works better
. Plus... DIRECT from the manufacturer cuts out the distributors... the cost would probably remain the same to customers, because square bottles would have a higher base cost than rounds, but you'd definitely get them cheaper than if distributors did have squares...- Status
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