Stupid question about side button mods

[mamabear15]

... I'm about to show my ignorance.

How do side button mech mods work? (ie, theory behind it?)

A "normal" bottom button or even a hybrid makes sense to me. You push up, it raises the battery into contact with the 510 pen (or positive post on atty, in the case of a hybrid) and the circuit is completed....

With a side button, i was recently gifted a KTS by an amazing member here and I love it, it's beautiful, I just don't understand how it does what it does. It looks like the battery is always in contact with the 510 up top and the spring on the bottom, the side button when pushed touches that spring...and how does that complete a connection? Or, more to the point, how does un-touching that spring break the connection? I don't get it how the metal on top/bottom contacts don't form a circuit. Is that bottom spring non-conductive? If so, how does touching the spring do anything? How would electricity get thru the spring when the switch is pushed, if it wasn't already in the spring? And if it was, how does the mod not fire without that switch being touched? And whatever the answer to that is, also, how does the switch complete a circuit unless the body of the mod itself is conductive?

Maybe I'm over-thinking this, but that's one of the things I love about vaping- there's so much to geek out about! I'm a bit intimidated by having no idea how this works, lol

 

[3mg Meniere]

...And whatever the answer to that is, also, how does the switch complete a circuit unless the body of the mod itself is conductive?

You got it. And voltage drop is when the conduction is imperfect, causes waste of energy, and areas of the mod to heat up that aren't supposed to.

And I am not a tech geek.

 

[DaveSignal]

very few mechs actually "push the battery up" except for something like a manhattan. They close the circuit by connecting a pin to the negative on the battery which is also in contact with the metal of the mod.

Side button devices also close the circuit in a similar manner, but in different locations depending on where the side button is. If the button is at the top of the mod, then the battery positive is not touching the 510, ie: there is a gap there, and so the switch closes the circuit by bridging the gap with something metal.

 

[Thrasher]

Many like the poldiac, roller, 69 have two pins one touches the 510 in top, the other touches the battery+ on bottom,
in the button is a small bar that when you press it it touches both pins closing the circuit

In the case of the pinky fire mods like gg or natural the button is pressed in and touches a pin on the negative battery terminal, the neg pin is insulated from the body and the pos is always hot.

I prefer the poldiac style that way even if the battery wrapper is damaged the circuit stays open becuase the button controls the positive flow

 

[mamabear15]

Thank you all for the answers!! As ever, Thrasher you put it in terms my strange brain "gets" most easily lmao

 

[mamabear15]

So to check my understanding - basically what keeps it from being a "always circuit" is that the negative pin (or other, as you said some styles are different) is insulated...so even tho that spring does have current flowing, it doesn't go anywhere until the pin completes the circuit - and that does in fact flow thru the body of the mod to do so?

 

[DaveSignal]

yes. except the switch spring does not have current flowing through it until you fire the mod... in which case every part of the mod that is metal and part of the circuit has current. And voltage drop.

 

[edyle]

here's one way