herbivore21
Well-Known Member
I really do not recommend using Polycarbonate in a vapor path like this. Polycarbonate is well known to outgas moderately in many applications (less than other plastics like PVC of course, but still!). Polycarbonate also contains BPA's, a potentially hazardous compound found in a variety of plastics. This compound is not considered food safe.I had an idea for a chamber attachment way back during the Indiegogo campaign. Once i finally got mine and measured the mouthpiece i bought some 5/8 inside diameter polycarbonate tube which fit perfectly, and i ended up with this. Works great! And it also doubles as a protective case kinda... although it gets gooey pretty quick, I've found that getting it hot and using a dry q-tip to collect all the build up works great. Then you can put the goopy cotton inside the grasshopper and vape that!
Polycarbonate has a nominal melting point of 512f. While the temp of airflow in the GH alone is not likely to reach this level, there is no research that has been carried out with polycarbonate to establish that it is safe to expose to hot cannabis aerosols (which include complex mixtures of terpenes, some of which can have a strong solvent action) approaching the melting point temp repeatedly over a long period of time.
What we do know is that the now-infamous Pinnacle Pro was well known to have melting/flaking/deformation/chipping of Polycarbonate mouthpiece tips with moderate-heavier use, especially at the higher temps. Polycarbonate was eventually abandoned for this product. See page ~150 or so in the PNP thread for a lot of mention of this issue.
As we can see, polycarbonate has been dubious when used with vapes that have higher temp capabilities and heaters that are close to the mouthpiece tip. We should remember that the heater in the GH is closer to the mouthpiece tip and also is heating a much lesser volume of air in a much narrower airpath, especially toward the tip than the PNP. This is potentially somewhat offset by the PNP having some higher nominal temp settings, however we do not know where these temps are measured from in the device. I can say that from my experience using both devices; the GH is noticeably hotter during use than the PNP, both in terms of the heat of the vapor entering your mouth as well as being hotter to the touch toward the mouthpiece tip.
Of course, I don't mean to call you out and it is your decision as to what you will accept in terms of materials safety . I am not here to tell you what to do, but it would be remiss of me not to explain the above.
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