Hi rnln and everybody else! I don't spend as much time as I used to on ecf, but it was my first forum and has grown to be the king of e-cig forums. So when I want to research something to do with vaping, I will come here. Currently I'm trying to decide if there is a rebuildable tank atty for me, so that is why this thread caught my attention.
This is my 7th year of vaping and it's been amazing watching the industry grow. I saw people start figuring out how to make mods on their own from things like little flashlights and Altoids boxes - Then hand carved wooden boxes that were works of art, and machined metal ones that were made by people who are very skilled in engineering, at being machinists, and attention to detail. My dad was a machinist and later the machine room foreman for a tool and die company for all his working years and when he starts referring to things in 10,000ths of inches, it's a little crazy-making for me. I will ask him to please let me know what that is in a normal fraction, but he gets a big kick out of annoying me with his 10,000ths of inches talk. LOL! Anyway, I suppose I will always have a soft spot in my heart for skilled machinists who know how to hand-make things.
Tool and die companies are so different now that so much of the work is being done by computers. It's kind of like using a slide rule. When I got my first slide rule for some math or chemistry class in high school and realized how it worked, I had great respect for whomever figured out how to make that thing. But my guess would be that you have never had to use a slide rule, because of..... computers! Toward the end of my dad's working years, computers were doing a lot of the work he had done by hand. It was the true end of the industrial age.
So, that just goes to show how much I would love to have a hand machined, well-made, mechanical mod, but cannot justify the price - maybe someday I'll find one that isn't so big that it looks like a sex toy - haha! I started out with an Njoy that was about the size of a nice fountain pen. It had cartridges. I am so glad I don't have to mess around with those things anymore. I even tried different ways to clean the atomizers and killed a few in the process.
I am not one for wanting the latest, greatest gadget for anything. I tend to wait to see if something is well received by everybody else who wants the latest greatest gadget that comes out and let them be the beta testers for a while to work out the bugs before I'll buy it. A vendor sent me some 808 cartomizers (soon after they came out) to try and I loved them! They were such an improvement over cartridges. I watched people drip directly on their atomizers, then de-bridge them. I knew dripping would not be for me, so I happily used 808 cartomizers on an 808 stick battery for a while. The industry continued to grow and for the most part, I just watched. I did develop a hobby of making my own e-liquids, so sometimes my kitchen looks like a laboratory.
After I watched the eGo arrive on the scene and saw how it was not going away anytime soon, I ordered it. So the better part of my vaping years has been with an eGo and 510 cartomizers. I still use eGos, but began having trouble with cartomizers. The quality control began going downhill and I was having about a 20% failure rate for them. But I still consider the eGo to be the little workhorses of vape devices.
Every once in a while I would try a tank, but they always really muted the flavor for me. I'd much rather have flavor over giagantic clouds. Anyway, a tank finally came out that I tried and liked. The Kanger mini ProTank 3 is what I've been using for a few months. To celebrate my 6th vaping anniversary, I bought an iTaste MVP and it was a good decision. I really like it - and the mini dual-coil ProTanks look really nice on it and work very well. I am a happy camper/vaper.
The term rebuildable is confusing. All I have to do to "rebuild" this tank is screw in a new coil head. That is not rebuilding to me - so the ProTank is really a changeable device and not a true rebuildable. I'm glad I didn't throw away the coil heads when they died, because now I can rebuild them - especially since Kanger came out with an "upgraded" version of the replacement coils and I don't like them quite as much. So now I'm learning about true rebuildables. I still need to get some Kanthal wire and I could rebuild my dead Protank 3's coil heads. I'm good at working with miniature things, so I know I could do it. But, being the great procrastinator I am, I'll probably wait until I'm using the last changeable coil head I have.
So rnln, when I read your post, I thought maybe all you wanted was a good tank that had replacement coils (no real building involved). The reason I like the Kanger ProTank mini is because it is dual coil and dual coils are a win for me for taste. The new ones work fine and I think Kanger made them so people couldn't rebuild them. There are still some original ones, but they are hard to find. Because the mini tanks are more than half the size of a regular tank, my theory is that that is another reason why the taste is better. I like a warm, moist vape. The smaller tank seems to contribute to that.
Best wishes, rnln, and to everyone else for finding their sweet spot with the perfect vape set-up!
This is my 7th year of vaping and it's been amazing watching the industry grow. I saw people start figuring out how to make mods on their own from things like little flashlights and Altoids boxes - Then hand carved wooden boxes that were works of art, and machined metal ones that were made by people who are very skilled in engineering, at being machinists, and attention to detail. My dad was a machinist and later the machine room foreman for a tool and die company for all his working years and when he starts referring to things in 10,000ths of inches, it's a little crazy-making for me. I will ask him to please let me know what that is in a normal fraction, but he gets a big kick out of annoying me with his 10,000ths of inches talk. LOL! Anyway, I suppose I will always have a soft spot in my heart for skilled machinists who know how to hand-make things.
Tool and die companies are so different now that so much of the work is being done by computers. It's kind of like using a slide rule. When I got my first slide rule for some math or chemistry class in high school and realized how it worked, I had great respect for whomever figured out how to make that thing. But my guess would be that you have never had to use a slide rule, because of..... computers! Toward the end of my dad's working years, computers were doing a lot of the work he had done by hand. It was the true end of the industrial age.
So, that just goes to show how much I would love to have a hand machined, well-made, mechanical mod, but cannot justify the price - maybe someday I'll find one that isn't so big that it looks like a sex toy - haha! I started out with an Njoy that was about the size of a nice fountain pen. It had cartridges. I am so glad I don't have to mess around with those things anymore. I even tried different ways to clean the atomizers and killed a few in the process.
I am not one for wanting the latest, greatest gadget for anything. I tend to wait to see if something is well received by everybody else who wants the latest greatest gadget that comes out and let them be the beta testers for a while to work out the bugs before I'll buy it. A vendor sent me some 808 cartomizers (soon after they came out) to try and I loved them! They were such an improvement over cartridges. I watched people drip directly on their atomizers, then de-bridge them. I knew dripping would not be for me, so I happily used 808 cartomizers on an 808 stick battery for a while. The industry continued to grow and for the most part, I just watched. I did develop a hobby of making my own e-liquids, so sometimes my kitchen looks like a laboratory.
After I watched the eGo arrive on the scene and saw how it was not going away anytime soon, I ordered it. So the better part of my vaping years has been with an eGo and 510 cartomizers. I still use eGos, but began having trouble with cartomizers. The quality control began going downhill and I was having about a 20% failure rate for them. But I still consider the eGo to be the little workhorses of vape devices.
Every once in a while I would try a tank, but they always really muted the flavor for me. I'd much rather have flavor over giagantic clouds. Anyway, a tank finally came out that I tried and liked. The Kanger mini ProTank 3 is what I've been using for a few months. To celebrate my 6th vaping anniversary, I bought an iTaste MVP and it was a good decision. I really like it - and the mini dual-coil ProTanks look really nice on it and work very well. I am a happy camper/vaper.
The term rebuildable is confusing. All I have to do to "rebuild" this tank is screw in a new coil head. That is not rebuilding to me - so the ProTank is really a changeable device and not a true rebuildable. I'm glad I didn't throw away the coil heads when they died, because now I can rebuild them - especially since Kanger came out with an "upgraded" version of the replacement coils and I don't like them quite as much. So now I'm learning about true rebuildables. I still need to get some Kanthal wire and I could rebuild my dead Protank 3's coil heads. I'm good at working with miniature things, so I know I could do it. But, being the great procrastinator I am, I'll probably wait until I'm using the last changeable coil head I have.
So rnln, when I read your post, I thought maybe all you wanted was a good tank that had replacement coils (no real building involved). The reason I like the Kanger ProTank mini is because it is dual coil and dual coils are a win for me for taste. The new ones work fine and I think Kanger made them so people couldn't rebuild them. There are still some original ones, but they are hard to find. Because the mini tanks are more than half the size of a regular tank, my theory is that that is another reason why the taste is better. I like a warm, moist vape. The smaller tank seems to contribute to that.
Best wishes, rnln, and to everyone else for finding their sweet spot with the perfect vape set-up!
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