Welcome to ECF, Tom. I think the batteries we {vapers} use might be able to safely handle a 30 second pulse, but I don't know for sure and definitely wouldn't want to try and find out.
If you dry fire one of 30 seconds it will just melt. The thing that makes vaporizers work is the phase change of the liquid. It’s the same thing that keeps pot bottoms from burning and melting out. It won’t get hotter than the boiling liquid UNTIL the liquid isn’t there anymore. Then it will just keep on getting hotter. Eventually the metal turns to liquid and stops conducting. A coil is just a resistor. The metal is picked specifically because it conducts but poorly. The liquids are picked because they have a low boiling point. This is why water isn’t used as a base. Its boiling point is too high. It will do it, but the vapor it produces is too hot. Alcohol almost works, but you have the 15 seconds of stupendous drunkenness problem. So they use Vegtable glycerine the same as a fog machine (vapes are basically tiny battery powered fog machines) or PG, which also has a really low boiling point and is non-toxic.
There is math for all of this. Apps even. Space heaters do the same thing, (and actually use the same metals. It a major reason they’re so available). but they use a lot more metal which is calculated to get orange hot but no hotter. You can make a vape coil from a short length of wire out of an old toaster. I’ve done it. I’ve also used vape wire to make foam cutters. Really good ones even.
To make “invisible” vape smoke you use a high pg liquid with just a little water in it. It vapes ok and there’s almost no smoke. If smoke wasn’t wanted there are all kinds of bases that could be used.
Lithium batteries are a favorite because their nominal voltage is a bit under 4v. Regulated box mods have variable boost/buck systems on their pcbs so you can vary the voltage, making a particular coil behave in a particular way. When I started it was just 3.7 only which will produce a weak “plume” 5v works better. Depending on the coil though and how much resistance it has determines the wattage. I’ve heard of people vaping at 50w or more using coils with very little resistance. “Sub-ohm vaping” this means you get more surface area and more amp so more liquid boils and more “smoke”. MTL vapers use stronger liquids but less wattage. (Generally well under 20w) and smaller coils that are closer to an ohm or maybe a bit more. Plus ohm vapers use low power batteries but very high resistance coils to get the same effect without upping the voltage. It’s a largely dead thing, but before there was sub-ohm there was plus ohm. I’ve seen foils as high as 4 ohm. Long ago though. If you put a 4 ohm coil ona 40watt mod it would probably explode in less than a second.
The problem has always and continues to be the cigarette companies. Cigarette companies hate vaping and always have. They own vaping companies now, but they’re all disposable companies. They have a very long rep for not caring whom they hurt or kill, just whether they are caught at it.
It used to be that the government did basic research and wide banded the results. Now they don’t, but there is a law that any research has to be wide banded. The cigarette companies avoid that though. They did and do it by not quite finishing experiments and then canceling them just before the official end so only THEY have the info. They did it for many many years. Because they know how “never been done” experiments will come out, they can set up experiments that point differently than reality. It’s the same concept as “cooking the books” which is a method of making fraudulent accounting appear genuine. A set of “real” books is needed though. With this it can be held with nothing but mental stuff so there don’t have to be any physical “real” books. This was dramatized in a movie called “the insider”. It’s not a new movie but they still seem to be at it. Their goal still seems to be “kill vaping and force people to smoke cigarettes where our monopoly is”
The wide banding happened for long enough though to allow e-cigs to be designed using old tech.
