Vapor Flask V3 DNA40 Clone thread

[TheBloke]

Since you seem to like collecting Chinese TC mods

I was just thinking about this and extending it - what vaping products do I have that aren't from China?

I came up with the following list:

• Wire (UK)
• Cotton (Muji, Japan)
• (Probably) six of my eight batteries (Korean Samsung 25Rs, though they may also now be assembled in China I just read?)
• Pre-made juice, and flavour concentrates (UK, Italy, USA)
• Oh, and that FD v3 Shorty I bought for the VF (USA)

Everything else of consequence - 20-odd tanks/RTAs, 12 RDAs, six mods (including the two on order), my battery charger, my ultrasonic cleaner, ohms reader, atty holders, bags of screws, DIY juice bottles, hell even my drills and (almost certainly) all my screwdrivers and other tools - all Chinese made or at least assembled.

Thank you Mother China, for the gift of vaping!

 

[Unior]

I have been looking for a VF clone the last couple of days & have read a lot of stuff in this thread. Obviously not all because it is lengthy. My question is has anyone got the VF V3 clone recently from FT? It looks really close, has spring loaded center etc. If anyone has let me know how it is. Also who makes it & who makes the chip? I am debating between this & the Kangxin VF mini 50w.From what I read seems like the Kangxin chip is the best clone chip. I just don't know if this chip is in FT's clone.

 

[Phone Guy]

I have been looking for a VF clone the last couple of days & have read a lot of stuff in this thread. Obviously not all because it is lengthy. My question is has anyone got the VF V3 clone recently from FT? It looks really close, has spring loaded center etc. If anyone has let me know how it is. Also who makes it & who makes the chip? I am debating between this & the Kangxin VF mini 50w.From what I read seems like the Kangxin chip is the best clone chip. I just don't know if this chip is in FT's clone.

I am assuming the Vaporflask on FastTech is infinite made, which I happen have one I bought used with a dead chip from another member. I can't speak about the chip, since I never used it. But the 510 spring loaded pin is nice. The up and down buttons are nicer to me they look like brushed aluminum (or metal) with a plastic core. It has no hot glue insisde and a plastic tray that's holds all the electronics, plus a 1amp usb charger. The only thing I personally didn't like was the finish... It has a coating that repels finger prints but no doubt makes it more scratch resistant vs the waidea brushed finish. Oh and has Phillips screws in the top plate versus the hex/torx screws on the waidea.

The grounding on the infinite is with a brass ring between the nut and the 510. And last the infinite has 2 color led for charging one for done and one for charging where the waidea has 1 led either red for charging or off (no light) for done.

I personally think either would be a good choice assuming your going to use whatever ChiNA40 chip it comes with. Again I have no experience with the SXK chip in the infinite, I replaced it with a genuine dna board.

The waidea chip I am using, and it seems to work ok. And I personally think the waidea has a much nicer finish and feel to it, with the exception of the chromed up down buttons, and the non spring loaded 510. But the results have been fine so far, as in everything works, everything attaches and makes contact with the fixed 510.

This is all ASSUMING the current fasttech flask is the same as the one I have (well my wife has now)

If you search this thread, I posted some pictures before of the finish and stuff.

Good luck.

 

[TheBloke]

I have been looking for a VF clone the last couple of days & have read a lot of stuff in this thread. Obviously not all because it is lengthy. My question is has anyone got the VF V3 clone recently from FT? It looks really close, has spring loaded center etc. If anyone has let me know how it is. Also who makes it & who makes the chip? I am debating between this & the Kangxin VF mini 50w.From what I read seems like the Kangxin chip is the best clone chip. I just don't know if this chip is in FT's clone.

I have ordered the 50W silver from FastTech, but I won't have it for at least a week, quite likely 2-3 weeks. It currently shows as available only in 7 business days, which means I probably missed the first stock. Others are reporting in the FT thread that theirs have shipped, but I suspect they ordered it while it said In Stock, a day or two ago. I will know more in a few hours when China wakes up, but I'm resigned to waiting at least two weeks.

On specs alone, this is the best Flask ever. 50W, lower min resistance (0.06), C as well as F temperature, spring loaded 510, slightly bigger screen with more spacious layout, and possibly (unconfirmed for this mod) a new feature where you can configure the nickel purity level of your wire.

However, with these clones the devil is always in the detail. We won't know until someone receives one how it actually stacks up. Infinite/SXK are known for good quality, so I am quite confident. But then a user on this thread, @Phone Guy , has an earlier iteration of cloned flask which we think might be Infinite and the finish was not as nice.

So if you're in no rush I would wait until people start getting the new ones - the first reports will likely be in the FT forums in 5-7 days. It's even possible that some reports will come in before they get new stock, though if you wait until then to order you'd likely not be in the next delivery.

Or if you're a gambling man, just order one right now It is after all only $50!

Or to be sure of a known-good product as soon as possible, order the Waidea VF from 3fVape or Focal eCig - that's what many of us have in this thread, and it's a good vape with good TC, and the finish is nice = basically 1:1 with the original.

Not quite as good as a genuine DNA 40, mostly due to its behaviour when it goes to sleep - it basically resets and you have to press fire once to wake it up then again to fire, rather than just firing immediately from sleep. That also means it never stays locked for long, if you full-lock it. That's another thing I'm hoping will be fixed by this new flask with new chip/board. But no guarantees of course. (And to be clear, it's far from a terminal problem; just the main way it differs from genuine in normal usage.)

I should mention as well that the Waidea has had issues with a poor ground connection, which many of us have had to fix by opening it - fairly easy to do, but not ideal. Waidea have promised that is being fixed so it might be fixed on new orders, but no way of knowing yet.

 

[nelsonm64]

oops, nvm....

 

[Phone Guy]

For the record, my experience with fast tech is just because it says will ship in 7 days (or # of days) doesn't mean it will... Sometimes they say 7 days and ship the next day, sometimes they say will ship in 5 days and doesn't ship for 2 weeks.... So take that "will ship ## days" with a grain of salt.
It can go + or - either way.

 

[dwcraig1]

I would think FT sold a ton of them in the last few days, .............

 

[Unior]

Thanks for the advice! Not sure what I am going to do. I may just go ahead & order the FT. you know how it is when u see something & want it. By the time I wait for the reviews & then order it will be at least a month out. I may check out the Waidea. But like you have stated I have heard certain small issues with its function from several members. But hey, it's a clone! Not going to be perfect. The way things are going though people are getting pretty close! I think I am personally more concerned about function than the finish. I will most likely use it mostly at home.

 

[Tpat591]

Thanks for the advice! Not sure what I am going to do. I may just go ahead & order the FT. you know how it is when u see something & want it. By the time I wait for the reviews & then order it will be at least a month out. I may check out the Waidea. But like you have stated I have heard certain small issues with its function from several members. But hey, it's a clone! Not going to be perfect. The way things are going though people are getting pretty close! I think I am personally more concerned about function than the finish. I will most likely use it mostly at home.

I just checked back in the thread and it was April 21 when Nicole popped on to say that the Boss from Waidea was comitted to correcting the grounding deficiency and had sourced a supply of ring terminals. I am assuming a week to deliver the washers & and another to train staff in proper assembly.

We never did hear back if they are rolling off the manufacturing lines with the correction in place or not. If we take him to his word, the first units with the correction would be in this current manufacturing run and I assume it is possible that most of the old inventory has already been sold off as they were having trouble keeping up with demand at that time.

A Waidea ordered today might actually have the fix in place, but unfortunately, it will be a couple weeks before people start receiving them before we get feedback reports on whether it is completed or not on units they received. Frankly if it is fixed, one might not have a reason to pop the top to check to see if they installed the washer at all.

 

[TheBloke]

I would think FT sold a ton of them in the last few days, .............

I expect you're right!

For the record, my experience with fast tech is just because it says will ship in 7 days (or # of days) doesn't mean it will... Sometimes they say 7 days and ship the next day, sometimes they say will ship in 5 days and doesn't ship for 2 weeks.... So take that "will ship ## days" with a grain of salt.
It can go + or - either way.

Thanks! Yeah I've been hearing various stories of FastTech in recent weeks, mostly negative of course as mentions of cheap vendors on the 'net invariably seem to be. I gather that sometimes they state something is in stock then later the customer sees "Restocking" with no idea of when it will come. There are people in Facebook vaping groups I'm in who have waited literally months for orders. Though I can never 100% pin down whether they checked thoroughly that all items were In Stock before ordering.

Based on what I've seen recently and in particular just now with the new Flasks, it looks like a message such as "Ships in 7 business days" is a generic estimate. The more concrete message is when it then adds an ETA below that. I guess the generic message is basically saying "There will be X days between batches" and the ETA is then the (estimated) time to the arrival of the next batch.

As of a few hours ago, all the Flasks have been updated with an ETA, and now say "Ships in 7 business days (ETA 5/14 - in 3 days)" So that's improved a bit over the mere 7 day generic message.

But I still have ambiguity over my specific order. When I go to my order history, it shows the following:



My original Scheduled Ship date, set at time of order, is 20th May which was literally <date of order> + 7 business days. Therefore a placeholder, I assumed.

My order history now additionally show the ETA message, the identical one as on the product page.

So my hope is that the "Scheduled Ship date" remains a place holder, and that before or on the 14th the Scheduled date will change to the 14th or 15th. Or that it'll just suddenly ship around then.

But my worry is, why don't they change the Scheduled Ship Date now? Why show ETA 3 days, but Scheduled Ship a further 6 days from then?

So now I'm wondering whether that means I'm not actually in that 14th May batch (which presumably is dished out first-come-first-served.) And that therefore it says "ETA 14th May" on my order history simply because it automatically pulls the current info from the product page, not as any kind of message for me.

Hopefully that's not the case, not least because it would be really confusing and annoying for customers to print an ETA on their order that didn't apply to them.

Or maybe it means that they don't even know themselves, yet. Maybe the number of units received in each batch is not known for certain, and/or their backend is not sophisticated enough to automatically allocate existing orders to incoming batches in the right order. So it shows the general ETA for every order, and doesn't change anyone's Scheduled Ship until the batch is actually here. Then they figure it out on the day.

So much ambiguity And yes I probably think about this stuff way too much

 

[KenD]

I expect you're right!



Thanks! Yeah I've been hearing various stories of FastTech in recent weeks, mostly negative of course as mentions of cheap vendors on the 'net invariably seem to be. I gather that sometimes they state something is in stock then later the customer sees "Restocking" with no idea of when it will come. There are people in Facebook vaping groups I'm in who have waited literally months for orders. Though I can never 100% pin down whether they checked thoroughly that all items were In Stock before ordering.

Based on what I've seen recently and in particular just now with the new Flasks, it looks like a message such as "Ships in 7 business days" is a generic estimate. The more concrete message is when it then adds an ETA below that. I guess the generic message is basically saying "There will be X days between batches" and the ETA is then the (estimated) time to the arrival of the next batch.

As of a few hours ago, all the Flasks have been updated with an ETA, and now say "Ships in 7 business days (ETA 5/14 - in 3 days)" So that's improved a bit over the mere 7 day generic message.

But I still have ambiguity over my specific order. When I go to my order history, it shows the following:



My original Scheduled Ship date, set at time of order, is 20th May which was literally <date of order> + 7 business days. Therefore a placeholder, I assumed.

My order history now additionally show the ETA message, the identical one as on the product page.

So my hope is that the "Scheduled Ship date" remains a place holder, and that before or on the 14th the Scheduled date will change to the 14th or 15th. Or that it'll just suddenly ship around then.

But my worry is, why don't they change the Scheduled Ship Date now? Why show ETA 3 days, but Scheduled Ship a further 6 days from then?

So now I'm wondering whether that means I'm not actually in that 14th May batch (which presumably is dished out first-come-first-served.) And that therefore it says "ETA 14th May" on my order history simply because it automatically pulls the current info from the product page, not as any kind of message for me.

Hopefully that's not the case, not least because it would be really confusing and annoying for customers to print an ETA on their order that didn't apply to them.

Or maybe it means that they don't even know themselves, yet. Maybe the number of units received in each batch is not known for certain, and/or their backend is not sophisticated enough to automatically allocate existing orders to incoming batches in the right order. So it shows the general ETA for every order, and doesn't change anyone's Scheduled Ship until the batch is actually here. Then they figure it out on the day.

So much ambiguity And yes I probably think about this stuff way too much

Fasttech offers to split orders if some of the items are behind schedule. That's where the "official" expected shipping date comes in. The ETA may be May 14, but only after May 20 will they split the order (assuming you'd have ordered more than the flask) without added shipping costs (in any case, additional shipping costs only apply if one or more parts of the shipment are less than $20).

 

[TheBloke]

Fasttech offers to split orders if some of the items are behind schedule. That's where the "official" expected shipping date comes in. The ETA may be May 14, but only after May 20 will they split the order (assuming you'd have ordered more than the flask) without added shipping costs (in any case, additional shipping costs only apply if one or more parts of the shipment are less than $20).

Ahh thank you! Great to know. So I do have a reasonably good chance of the order being shipped around May 14th then, assuming no major problems.

Do you know what happens regarding splitting orders when I've paid extra for expedited shipping? I never take the completely free shipping, instead I add $2.50 for UK ePacket. Do you know if I would be asked to pay that were I to split orders? Or would that also be carried over, assuming the orders were over $20?

In this case I did order a couple of RTAs along with my Flask, but they were just bonus purchases so I won't want to split on this occasion.

The RTAs I got were a Silver Play clone, and one of the many many Taifuns. I got the GT-T V2 5ml RTA "SS + Glass (matte)" . Not sure if that's one of the good/great ones or not, but it was one of the few that was available in stock and also had fairly plentiful and decent FT reviews.

I got it because I'd heard @dwcraig1 (amongst others) raving about the GT-something. Did I get an OK one? I thought I might have remembered it being the GT-S that was being talked about so favourably here, but those were another 7 Business Day jobby and I didn't want to delay the Flask unduly. I thought I'd take a punt on this one in the meantime

 

[KenD]

Ahh thank you! Great to know. So I do have a reasonably good chance of the order being shipped around May 14th then, assuming no major problems.

Do you know what happens regarding splitting orders when I've paid extra for expedited shipping? I never take the completely free shipping, instead I add $2.50 for UK ePacket. Do you know if I would be asked to pay that were I to split orders? Or would that also be carried over, assuming the orders were over $20?

In this case I did order a couple of RTAs along with my Flask, but they were just bonus purchases so I won't want to split on this occasion.

The RTAs I got were a Silver Play clone, and one of the many many Taifuns. I got the GT-T V2 5ml RTA "SS + Glass (matte)" . Not sure if that's one of the good/great ones or not, but it was one of the few that was available in stock and also had fairly plentiful and decent FT reviews.

I got it because I'd heard @dwcraig1 (amongst others) raving about the GT-something. Did I get an OK one? I thought I might have remembered it being the GT-S that was being talked about so favourably here, but those were another 7 Business Day jobby and I didn't want to delay the Flask unduly. I thought I'd take a punt on this one in the meantime

I've never gotten expedited shipping (no reasonably priced options for Sweden). I'd not expect it to carry over to both/all shipments though.

 

[Nikkita6]

I just checked back in the thread and it was April 21 when Nicole popped on to say that the Boss from Waidea was comitted to correcting the grounding deficiency and had sourced a supply of ring terminals. I am assuming a week to deliver the washers & and another to train staff in proper assembly.

We never did hear back if they are rolling off the manufacturing lines with the correction in place or not. If we take him to his word, the first units with the correction would be in this current manufacturing run and I assume it is possible that most of the old inventory has already been sold off as they were having trouble keeping up with demand at that time.

A Waidea ordered today might actually have the fix in place, but unfortunately, it will be a couple weeks before people start receiving them before we get feedback reports on whether it is completed or not on units they received. Frankly if it is fixed, one might not have a reason to pop the top to check to see if they installed the washer at all.

LOL Tpat, you must have some sort of psychic connection to China As life would have it, I woke up to a skype update from Waidea today, Andy has advised that the updated 510 connection is complete so they will be going out with the next shipments. Hard to say when folks will see them because that depends on each vendors current stock .. so if 3F or Focal still have say 100pcs in stock for example, then we won't see the updated Flasks until that stock is depleted.

On another note .. Waidea has asked me for new products suggestions and I have pointed them in the direction of bottom feeders. Not sure if they will attempt a Squonker (I think they should), but they have taken the suggestion to heart so I expect to see a bottom feeder of some kind within the next couple of months.

Hope everyone continues to vape happy

 

[ThunderDan]

LOL Tpat, you must have some sort of psychic connection to China As life would have it, I woke up to a skype update from Waidea today, Andy has advised that the updated 510 connection is complete so they will be going out with the next shipments. Hard to say when folks will see them because that depends on each vendors current stock .. so if 3F or Focal still have say 100pcs in stock for example, then we won't see the updated Flasks until that stock is depleted.

On another note .. Waidea has asked me for new products suggestions and I have pointed them in the direction of bottom feeders. Not sure if they will attempt a Squonker (I think they should), but they have taken the suggestion to heart so I expect to see a bottom feeder of some kind within the next couple of months.

Hope everyone continues to vape happy

Tell them to do this:

 

[Nikkita6]

Tell them to do this:

LOL, I did

 

[WeirdWillie]

Tell them to do this:

Main body ground, and throughly removing the anodizing/paint from battery tube threads, underneath the 510, and backside of topcap would have been my suggestions.
Along with fix fire form sleep (aka double tap), and fix lock mode.

 

[TheBloke]

Thanks for keeping us updated, @Nikkita6 !

And yeah, as Willie mentioned, after ground the number one fix I would want is the fire-from-sleep / double tap. Right now it's not so much a sleep as a timed shutdown ('DNA 40' displays again when you 'wake' it.)

That is the one thing that continues to (minorly) annoy me about the mod. And I think lock would be automatically fixed if that were fixed such that the mod actually slept, not shut down.

 

[TheBloke]

@WeirdWillie as you're around, a quick question if I may

Some weeks ago you described your process of twisting Ni200. A few days ago, I finally got around to doing it - Ni200 28 + 30 as you described. And it vapes well!

My question is regarding how springy the twisted wire is. I am pretty sure you talked about a method of making it less springy. I think it was torching, perhaps? I like the twisted wire in some respects, but dislike how incredibly springy and therefore un-malleable it is; doubly so compared to normal Ni200 which I find very malleable and very easy to work with, sculpting it in exact positions/shapes etc.

I did my first twisting with "Hard Finish" wire, which I think is the same as annealed? But I am not sure on that. It's definitely, well, a harder finish anyway! My vendor sells "Soft Finish" (just 'normal' I guess) and "Hard Finish" Ni200, and I got both - the Hard latterly in the hope it would break less in post holes, and indeed it doesn't break quite as often.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions on how to make the twisted wire less springy I would be grateful. I don't own a blow torch yet, and have been resisting buying one because they seemed quite expensive (£20 / $30 at least) for something I would only use occasionally to torch wire. If torching is the answer, I was hoping maybe I could hold it over the open flame from my gas stove, perhaps? But maybe that's not hot enough.

And if torching is the answer, maybe I should twist the Soft not the Hard finish, given I'm then going to torch it anyway?

TIA!

 

[WeirdWillie]

@WeirdWillie as you're around, a quick question if I may

Some weeks ago you described your process of twisting Ni200. A few days ago, I finally got around to doing it - Ni200 28 + 30 as you described. And it vapes well!

My question is regarding how springy the twisted wire is. I am pretty sure you talked about a method of making it less springy. I think it was torching, perhaps? I like the twisted wire in some respects, but dislike how incredibly springy and therefore un-malleable it is; doubly so compared to normal Ni200 which I find very malleable and very easy to work with, sculpting it in exact positions/shapes etc.

I did my first twisting with "Hard Finish" wire, which I think is the same as annealed? But I am not sure on that. It's definitely, well, a harder finish anyway! My vendor sells "Soft Finish" (just 'normal' I guess) and "Hard Finish" Ni200, and I got both - the Hard latterly in the hope it would break less in post holes, and indeed it doesn't break quite as often.

Anyway, if you have any suggestions on how to make the twisted wire less springy I would be grateful. I don't own a blow torch yet, and have been resisting buying one because they seemed quite expensive (£20 / $30 at least) for something I would only use occasionally to torch wire. If torching is the answer, I was hoping maybe I could hold it over the open flame from my gas stove, perhaps? But maybe that's not hot enough.

And if torching is the answer, maybe I should twist the Soft not the Hard finish, given I'm then going to torch it anyway?

TIA!

There is annealed (soft)
and tempered (hard)

I literally have about 5 rolls each of annealed so I'm not going to buy any tempered untiI run out.

I work harden each strand of Ni200 before I do my twist, by putting one end in the drill chuck, holding the other end with a pair of pliers and running the drill on low speed.
in other words twist each strand until it breaks usually at the drill this will work harden each strand, then do your twist.
This will take allot of the spring, but not all out.