What should dry burning smell and look like?

[Spork]

I'm having problems with a bad taste in both my attys, sort of a burnt plastic taste. It's been driving me nuts for 2 days now and I almost went back to analogs.

Yesterday I cleaned one of the attys and let it sit and dry for 24 hours. Before giving it a try tonight I decided to be bold and remove the bridge. The process went well and was actually a lot easier than expected.

All the cleaning guides here say to do dry burns before using again, so I did. After doing a few short dry burns I noticed two things. 1) The coil turns white, I assume that's ash from the gunk? 2) It smelt really bad. The dry burn was the exact same bad smell/taste that caused me to clean and do all this in the first place. Are both these things normal?

For some reason I didn't think a dry burn would smell that bad. Maybe the first or second short burst when there was stuff still on the coil but not after the fifth or sixth burn. At most I was just expecting a hot metal smell.

Where is this coming from? The reason I wanted to remove the bridge was to be 100% sure there was no wick fibers or something else touching the coil that could cause this taste/smell, yet it's still there. What's that white bowl that the coil sits in made out of? The coil doesn't touch that does it? Could it be touching/burning it and causing that taste?

 

[Papa Lazarou]

That would be carbonised juice and stuff that is left behind on the coil and burns. The coil is actually wrapped around the wick in most cases. The wick does not burn.

Good video showing a full dry burn - YouTube - Cleaning a Low Resistance 510 Atomizer

 

[BlackMetalBuick]

I've had a similar bad experience with dry burning and don't plan on ever doing it again. It was starting to taste funky so I did exactly what you're supposed to do, heat it up until red, get all the gunk out of there. Just like you're experiencing, I found that this increased the crappy burned taste and pretty much ruined my atomizer.

 

[texasgranny]

I am NOT experienced at this at all!
But
I believe that I have read,(not100%sure) that there is only one cart/atty that you can do a dry burn with....?????
and is not recommended for many others.

So others may help you, what unit....cart....atty are you using?

 

[texasgranny]

Check out What You Should Know About Electronic Cigarettes for all the information on electric cigarettes you could ever need!

Does Not talk about a dry burn at all!!! cosul!!!
Hummmmmm......

 

[Stosh]

Here's a little info on how to dry burn, clean your atty : http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/tips-tricks/69834-my-atty-resurrection-method.html

I've found success with my attys by just dripping a few drops of pure, 0 nic VG on it
and vaping / burning it back off. It's quick and easy for a regular maintenance program.
They seem tougher to clean if you let the get too gunked before bothering to do anything
to them at all. Works for me, YMMV.

 

[zoiDman]

When you vape, a certain amount of "gunk" builds up on the wick. The gunk is invaporized PG/VG, colorings, flavorings. Sooner or later, depending on your juice and the way you vape, this gunk builds up enough to restrict new juice from getting to the coil wire.

At this point, the coil wire no longer vaporizes juice but starts to Burn gunk. This is what causes the bad taste in an atty or some cartomizers. Doing a dry burn burns off this gunk leaving you with an ash covered wick which can transfer juice again.

I would suggest that at the very first hint of a bad taste in an atty that you do a cleaning. I like to rinse the atty in hot water. Blow it dry and the drip 10 or 12 drips of Vodka or White Vineger onto the bridge and let it set for an hour or so.

The Vodka helps break down the gunk and makes dry buring sometimes unneeded. It also makes it easier to dry burn if you decide to.

 

[basilray]

That would be carbonised juice and stuff that is left behind on the coil and burns. The coil is actually wrapped around the wick in most cases. The wick does not burn.

Good video showing a full dry burn - YouTube - Cleaning a Low Resistance 510 Atomizer

Wow! No...I would disgree with that completely. As a dry-burn fanatic myself...you just can't fire an LR that long.

1. Take of the atty and blow as much juice out as you can
2. Put the atty back on and fire it for 3 to 5 second burts
3. Repeat #2 a few times
4. Take the atty off and blow as much juice as you can...heating the atty up will cause excess juice to come out a bit
5. Repeat 1 - 4 until the atty starts to glow red, or you can no longer get juice out
6. If the atty is glowing red, be a bit careful...this is the danger zone - dry burn in burts until no more vapor or smoke is produced
7. Once you get to this point, you can rinse and dry the atty or just let it sit

**Be sure to gently blow in the atty as you do this**

DaMulta is more or less saying the same thing...but you just can't burn some of the LR's out there like he did in the video...or they will die a horrible death.

 

[zoiDman]

Aggreed. Doing a dry burn is a walking a fine line between cleaning and ruining your atty. It is much better to go slow and just make a little smoke at a time, let off and then repeat then it is to go for one massize 15 second thrust burn.

Also be very careful when you blow on a hot coil. If the coil is red and you blow on it, it will quickly go to yellow. And Yellow is when the coil wire melts/pops.

 

[oldsoldier]

I had an atty that was doing pretty poorly after only a few days use so I debridged it for the hell of it. I view atty's as expendable items anyhow so I figured if I debridged it and it still worked I could use it for dripping. After debridging it I was surprised at the state of the heating coil, so I set it aside. I had been thinking about doing a dry burn but never got around to it.

I just did a dry burn on it and it is clean and works great.

oh and just for S&G I checked it on my DMM and it is running at around 3 ohms resistance, if I had checked the resistance before I debridged it I would probably would not have gutted it- I'd have saved it to use on a 5V passthru...

 

[Nomoreash]

Sound like the op just didn't do the dry burn long enough. It also may have been the equipment he was trying to do the dry burh with...which he didn't specify.

The fact he could still see smoke and that aweful smell means it wasn't all burnt off yet. If you follow highpings method at the link stosh pasted every step is listed. If you're careful and don't go to far with a dry burn it will greatly lengthen the useability of an atty. I've had several I would have thrown away because just cleaning them didn't work anymore. Once I incorporated doing doing dry burns along with my regular cleaning ritual I was able to save them all and they perform as good as when I first got them and doing them regularly means they don't build up to much and the dry burn goes much faster than if you let it build up till it's unusable. I've never popped an atty doing a dry burn but I don't go crazy with it either. Pulsing the button to get just the right glow to burn and not pop it is important. If you just hold the button down and keep holding it you're going to overheat it.

Also if he's trying to do a dry burn with a reg 510, Riva/Ego or similar it's very difficult to do. Especially if it's the first burn and it's really built up. I tried it with my Riva and went through 2 fully charged batteries on one atty and NEVER got it to glow, they just don't have enough power behind them and you'll drain the batteries to dead in no time trying. I got a 5v pass through just for that and it works great or any of the standard non proprietary battery PVs should work great also.

 

[Spork]

Thank you everyone, especially Stosh for pointing me to Highping's guide... it worked great.

Pretty sure my problem was not burning long enough and not enough times. Also, I didn't clean it again after the burn to get all that ash off. I actually ran through Highping's steps 3 full times to finally get it clean.

No more nasty taste or smell.

I did end up cracking open my emergency pack of analogs and smoked 4 of them today because I thought I was screwed until I could get some new attys in the mail on Mon or Tues. Thank god I brought this atty back to life cause man analogs taste like crap now.