Discontinued Splinter Z by RBT
- Status
Mr. Gweilo 420
Dude
Splinter Z definitely does the business. I rate it equally to a Lil Bud although they are quite different products. I'm using a Paranormal DNA mod mostly at 50w and it really does produce thick clouds almost instantly.
CL52613
Well-Known Member
Glad the MV1 is now performing as it was supposed to. I have very little hand dexterity, and the crucibles were just too much trouble. As for the XL8R, so it is used to cool the vapor, whereas in the ELEV8R it was used as heater?
Summer
Long Island, NY
@CL52613, I don't know what the function of the dimpling in the elev8r serves, but for the XL8r it definitely cools. @LabPong, what do the dimples on the EV8 do?
So noted @Mr. Gweilo 420. Some would say the the Elev8r would also be included in this top-tier category as some rate it up there with the NVFP.
Vapefiend has a top 5 stream up in which they use the Splinter. And I believe that it's VXL's Calyx mouthpiece that they are using on it. It looks real sweet. I think I'm gonna have to have it.
the
VFd did mention that he has 2-hole Zs in stock. I presume it's bubingas from his last order. Ryan is finishing up a VF Z order & the pictures show like 4 different woods. Don't know if will be 2 or 4-holes or mixed. FWIW, VF mentioned that he ships to AU.
So noted @Mr. Gweilo 420. Some would say the the Elev8r would also be included in this top-tier category as some rate it up there with the NVFP.
Vapefiend has a top 5 stream up in which they use the Splinter. And I believe that it's VXL's Calyx mouthpiece that they are using on it. It looks real sweet. I think I'm gonna have to have it.
VFd did mention that he has 2-hole Zs in stock. I presume it's bubingas from his last order. Ryan is finishing up a VF Z order & the pictures show like 4 different woods. Don't know if will be 2 or 4-holes or mixed. FWIW, VF mentioned that he ships to AU.
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little maggie
Well-Known Member
I apparently bought a splinter v. (There are a few artists here that I will buy almost anything from that works with flowers) Anyone know what that is?
Shit Snacks
Milaana. Lana. LANA. LANAAAA! (TM2/TP80/BAK/FW9)
That is the Splinter V1 that are produced in China now Maggie, so V1 just means version one, essentially saying every US Splinter that came before it was a beta
Summer
Long Island, NY
essentially saying every US Splinter that came before it was a beta
I don't consider any of the previous US versions beta, but I do see the V1 as indicating China made version 1. Apart from the continual upgrades that RBT made to the Splinter the only 2 things I believe he had to correct since release were the heater failing (I believe Ryan said in a stream it was only a 1% failure rate?) & the 510 adaptor separating from the wood.
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Shit Snacks
Milaana. Lana. LANA. LANAAAA! (TM2/TP80/BAK/FW9)
Yes, to us, but I think the V1 is going to be the mainstream launch product for the actual public who may not ever know about anyting that came before it... I mean we kind of are like betas since there are still relatively so few in the wild, at least in my mind based on past RBT products. But you are absolutely right
I think essentially those little indents affect the temperature of the air one way or another by absorbing and holding heat.
So the same mechanism works for both purposes, one to accumulate and store heat to be released for heating herbs, and the other to absorb heat pulling it from the airstream to cool the hit pre-inhalation.
Both ways it appears it works. And as @Summer has said, I can attest to the heavy hitting power of the Elev8r. Definitely right up there with the heaviest desktops, its a real smack to the face.
oddjobold
Vape swap shop
Although it is very cool to have a portable zion heavy hitter and i dont regret buying the splinterZ - i am using my standard splinter a lot more.
Size is the main factor, the Z is too big for a pocket. I also find it can be a little harsh, and the splinter feels more "balanced".
The splinterZ excels at finishing loads in only a couple of hits, with huge clouds.
Still glad to have it in my line up.
Size is the main factor, the Z is too big for a pocket. I also find it can be a little harsh, and the splinter feels more "balanced".
The splinterZ excels at finishing loads in only a couple of hits, with huge clouds.
Still glad to have it in my line up.
mucsusn
60 going on 20
I really can't say enough about both of the Splinters. Along with my VapCaps and the occasional cartridge pen, most of my other vapes sit idle...
Had a nice jazz trio gig tonight, home with some good IPA's and a flower/CBD mix. Started in my OG and finished in my Z. They each have different strengths. Both are an excellent adjunct to any collection.
Had a nice jazz trio gig tonight, home with some good IPA's and a flower/CBD mix. Started in my OG and finished in my Z. They each have different strengths. Both are an excellent adjunct to any collection.
KeroZen
Chronic vapaholic
Funny that right in the other thread @little maggie just said she found the Z much milder... so just the opposite of what you said.
Mr. Gweilo 420
Dude
I find them both very smooth lol.
Mr. Gweilo 420
Dude
@Summer I saw VF had a few different varieties of woods for the Zs. I resisted at the moment. By the way I'm Australian but I live in Hong Kong. Most manufacturers are happy to ship here but one or two think the worst. I'm not remotely involved in any kind of vape related profession lol.
KeroZen
Chronic vapaholic
I think with convection and short vapor paths, the distinction between "great smooth vapor" and "I just kissed a hair drier" is very thin...
From my experience, as soon as the air / vapor ratio is not satisfying, one starts to perceive more harshness and more of the "just sucking hot air" effect. This has two implications:
- You really need to find a vape that copes with your drawing speed and intensity, as it's easier than trying to adjust the way you draw. If you want massive air flow and very little restriction, you'll need a lot of Watts. Otherwise having the vape create the right amount of draw restriction also works quite well (and this is where the difference between 2 and 4 holes Splinters is key, carb'ing the air intakes is another solution)
- It took me some time to understand the second implication, but I think TC mode can be perceived as being harsher compared to Power mode, because progressively, the air / vapor ratio is getting worse and worse, the more you deplete the current "temperature level". And you need to remember to increase the temperature regularly to counter that. The problem being that in order to realize that it's time to bump up, you need to get a couple crappy wispy hits first, and thus more harshness!
We don't feel this effect much in Power mode because consciously or not we adjust our draw and trigger times in a much more natural and organic way. This is how we can achieve the same temperature ramping up but in a continuous fashion and not in discrete steps like we do with TC (unless you bump say one half degree up after every hit...) That plus the natural heat soaking of the vape + stem/bowl system over the session time, gives a very fluid experience.
Starting TC mode at max temperature (in order to not bother with the temp stepping) doesn't achieve the same result as Power mode either. You get the hottest possible air right from the start and all the way through the session, whereas in Power mode you only reach this extreme temperature for the very few last hits before the bowl is cashed.
So you all know how much of a TC advocate I could be in the past, I imagine what I'm saying contrasts with my usual enthusiasm... But somehow I wish we could combine the best of the two. I would like something natural and organic like Power mode, but coupled with the "idiot-proof-ness" of TC mode that gives me this much needed safety belt in the form of the insurance I'll never ever combust (and if setup right, that's I'll never ever char my load)
Because as much as I love Power mode, I really *hate* when with just a single mishap, say because you were distracted and fumble the trigger timing, you can ruin a perfectly fresh bowl and get a damn center black spot that completely spoils the taste for the remainder of the session (you can stir all you want, when it has roasted too much, it acquires that crappy taste, the only solution is to sort the black bits out of the ABV and discard them and it's a fucking pain and not fun at all)
What I would like would be having a mode that behaves exactly like Power mode, until you push it too much and then it caps the temperature and falls back to TC mode. The trick being that the cutoff point between the two modes should be automatically variable (otherwise if that's just the temperature before combustion happens, it wouldn't prevent hot-spotting... afterall when we hostpot we don't combust either, it happens before that)
So it's a bit ill-formed and maybe the best solution would be to just acquire the habit of bumping the temperature after every hit? But unless you manage to setup TC mode very well, you end up in practice with not that many usable temperature steps (and worse, some mods only allow +/-5 degrees change with each click) Other vape makers already tried to introduce automatic temperature stepping in the past (even as far back as the Ascent but perhaps even earlier?) and I always disliked that because it tried to impose a fixed walking pace on you and I perceived that as a loss of freedom (i.e. me being forced to adapt to the machine and not the inverse)
You see it's not a trivial problem... I still don't have found any practical nor elegant solution.
PS: the problem with previous auto-stepping modes was that it was often timer-based and applied to conduction vapes. Most vapes lack the ability to detect hits, but a few of them do (like Firewood, but it can be apparently tricky as some hits if too weak can go undetected) Here we have the advantage that we can detect easily each hit when they are on-demand: just watch the trigger button state. So maybe we could just add a mode in our custom firmware to auto-bump the temperature after every trigger press with a small increment (user selected to cope with those who cash their bowl in 3 hits vs those like me who do the same in 30 hits, I would probably need for instance much less than 1 degree increment after each hit... or perhaps not, going from 190°C to 220°C is only 30°C afterall)
PS2: even better, I would like this increment to be non-linear. When I use conduction vapes, I spend much more time in the first few temperature levels than I do in the upper ones. When you do a proper temperature ramp, you spend very little time at the max level because there's practically very little left there. So the increment should have an exponential curve or similar, staying with a gentle slope for a long while then ramping up faster at the end of the session.
PS3: I've been running ArticFox for a long time now, maybe someone will just tell me @funkyjunky already implemented that feature in his firmware? The problem is, tubo_myevic is really lagging (stagnating in fact, still at the my_evic level) when it comes to device compatibility. It's normal after-all, he customized it to support his vapes so his firmware works for the mods that are inside his products. But AF has much more compatible devices... unfortunately it's closed source so we can't easily back-port that. And AF devs are not very open to feature requests and even less if they are not for e-liquids...
From my experience, as soon as the air / vapor ratio is not satisfying, one starts to perceive more harshness and more of the "just sucking hot air" effect. This has two implications:
- You really need to find a vape that copes with your drawing speed and intensity, as it's easier than trying to adjust the way you draw. If you want massive air flow and very little restriction, you'll need a lot of Watts. Otherwise having the vape create the right amount of draw restriction also works quite well (and this is where the difference between 2 and 4 holes Splinters is key, carb'ing the air intakes is another solution)
- It took me some time to understand the second implication, but I think TC mode can be perceived as being harsher compared to Power mode, because progressively, the air / vapor ratio is getting worse and worse, the more you deplete the current "temperature level". And you need to remember to increase the temperature regularly to counter that. The problem being that in order to realize that it's time to bump up, you need to get a couple crappy wispy hits first, and thus more harshness!
We don't feel this effect much in Power mode because consciously or not we adjust our draw and trigger times in a much more natural and organic way. This is how we can achieve the same temperature ramping up but in a continuous fashion and not in discrete steps like we do with TC (unless you bump say one half degree up after every hit...) That plus the natural heat soaking of the vape + stem/bowl system over the session time, gives a very fluid experience.
Starting TC mode at max temperature (in order to not bother with the temp stepping) doesn't achieve the same result as Power mode either. You get the hottest possible air right from the start and all the way through the session, whereas in Power mode you only reach this extreme temperature for the very few last hits before the bowl is cashed.
So you all know how much of a TC advocate I could be in the past, I imagine what I'm saying contrasts with my usual enthusiasm... But somehow I wish we could combine the best of the two. I would like something natural and organic like Power mode, but coupled with the "idiot-proof-ness" of TC mode that gives me this much needed safety belt in the form of the insurance I'll never ever combust (and if setup right, that's I'll never ever char my load)
Because as much as I love Power mode, I really *hate* when with just a single mishap, say because you were distracted and fumble the trigger timing, you can ruin a perfectly fresh bowl and get a damn center black spot that completely spoils the taste for the remainder of the session (you can stir all you want, when it has roasted too much, it acquires that crappy taste, the only solution is to sort the black bits out of the ABV and discard them and it's a fucking pain and not fun at all)
What I would like would be having a mode that behaves exactly like Power mode, until you push it too much and then it caps the temperature and falls back to TC mode. The trick being that the cutoff point between the two modes should be automatically variable (otherwise if that's just the temperature before combustion happens, it wouldn't prevent hot-spotting... afterall when we hostpot we don't combust either, it happens before that)
So it's a bit ill-formed and maybe the best solution would be to just acquire the habit of bumping the temperature after every hit? But unless you manage to setup TC mode very well, you end up in practice with not that many usable temperature steps (and worse, some mods only allow +/-5 degrees change with each click) Other vape makers already tried to introduce automatic temperature stepping in the past (even as far back as the Ascent but perhaps even earlier?) and I always disliked that because it tried to impose a fixed walking pace on you and I perceived that as a loss of freedom (i.e. me being forced to adapt to the machine and not the inverse)
You see it's not a trivial problem... I still don't have found any practical nor elegant solution.
PS: the problem with previous auto-stepping modes was that it was often timer-based and applied to conduction vapes. Most vapes lack the ability to detect hits, but a few of them do (like Firewood, but it can be apparently tricky as some hits if too weak can go undetected) Here we have the advantage that we can detect easily each hit when they are on-demand: just watch the trigger button state. So maybe we could just add a mode in our custom firmware to auto-bump the temperature after every trigger press with a small increment (user selected to cope with those who cash their bowl in 3 hits vs those like me who do the same in 30 hits, I would probably need for instance much less than 1 degree increment after each hit... or perhaps not, going from 190°C to 220°C is only 30°C afterall)
PS2: even better, I would like this increment to be non-linear. When I use conduction vapes, I spend much more time in the first few temperature levels than I do in the upper ones. When you do a proper temperature ramp, you spend very little time at the max level because there's practically very little left there. So the increment should have an exponential curve or similar, staying with a gentle slope for a long while then ramping up faster at the end of the session.
PS3: I've been running ArticFox for a long time now, maybe someone will just tell me @funkyjunky already implemented that feature in his firmware? The problem is, tubo_myevic is really lagging (stagnating in fact, still at the my_evic level) when it comes to device compatibility. It's normal after-all, he customized it to support his vapes so his firmware works for the mods that are inside his products. But AF has much more compatible devices... unfortunately it's closed source so we can't easily back-port that. And AF devs are not very open to feature requests and even less if they are not for e-liquids...
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YaMon
Vaping since 2010
Long read @KeroZen. I work in IT and what I see with regularity is users wishing an application could do everything. The disappointment when you tell them the reality is kin to the look of a FC'er only finding stems and seeds in their stocking. Perhaps what your speaking of will someday be a reality? I do not see the capabilities in the mod I have to be so dynamic, and I would be surprised to find manufacturers wiling to invest the development dollars that would be required not to mention the increased component and firmware costs which would lead to devices not competitive with the other devices the market has to offer. Would you be willing to pay a $300+ premium above the current cost a of a Z & Mod too have this functionality, or would you chose to 'instinctively' regulate the mod?
Hogni
Honi soit qui mal y pense
If it's generally possible someone will make it for sure, maybe just a talented canna aficionado. Herb and trate atomizers are just new coming products the sw developers of the mods didn't have in mind. There was just the intention to make the mods working good with e-liquid up to now.
bossman
Gentleman Of Leisure
My Z is arriving later than expected from holiday delays. My regular Splinter is performing better than ever so I'm not complaining.
I like reading KeroZen's posts, Yamon's too. For my purposes the software options are just fine now that Summer got me started with wattage and Ctipp helped get my TCR settings on point.
I'm at risk of becoming a bit of a MAS tweaker I think. I'm curious if the great Splinter performance is going to be the same on my two cheap Arctic Fox mods allowing them to be interchangeable once the Z arrives. If so then I guess I'm without excuses for any holiday mod shopping. Probably for the best since they're so ugly for the most part. I guess I should consider it a positive that the Arctic Fox compatibility list is short too.
At the risk of repeating myself, the wismec rx gen3 dual available from a US warehouse at vapesourcing.com works well and is a good size fit. We'll see soon enough how the Z fits.
I like reading KeroZen's posts, Yamon's too. For my purposes the software options are just fine now that Summer got me started with wattage and Ctipp helped get my TCR settings on point.
I'm at risk of becoming a bit of a MAS tweaker I think. I'm curious if the great Splinter performance is going to be the same on my two cheap Arctic Fox mods allowing them to be interchangeable once the Z arrives. If so then I guess I'm without excuses for any holiday mod shopping. Probably for the best since they're so ugly for the most part. I guess I should consider it a positive that the Arctic Fox compatibility list is short too.
At the risk of repeating myself, the wismec rx gen3 dual available from a US warehouse at vapesourcing.com works well and is a good size fit. We'll see soon enough how the Z fits.
sickmanfraud
Well-Known Member
less espensive option: https://www.puffitup.com/Sipper-Bubbler-Mouthpiece-p/qctq.bubb-curvtop.htm?1=1&CartID=3
Edit: available in 14 mm and 18 mm.
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cybrguy
Putin is a War Criminal
I know there are only a couple hands full of us with Zions, but aren't there quite a few Milannas out there? I wonder how many? I suspect Ryan has been keeping a count...
No doubt Splinter and SplinterZ will surpass it, but still...
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ataxian
PALE BLUE DOT
Their is a best?
Really?
R U kidding?
Heat + CONTROLLER + SHELL
Why R the SPLITTER products the HOLY GRAIL?
KeroZen
Chronic vapaholic
Hm nope actually both Evolv (DNA) and ArticFox devs were pretty clear about the fact they don't want to have anything to do with "illegal drugs". So that's not just a lack of intention, that's a deliberate decision to not support our activities in any way whatsoever (example: AF won't add more than 15secs cutoff because no sane person would ever need that with e-liquid, even cloud chasers doing silly competitions)
Keep in mind e-liquid / nicotine guys already have a lot of trouble to deal with, notably with FDA and per country legislation etc. So don't blame them! As for the Russians living under strong prohibition... yeah, you really wouldn't want ending in a Russian jail believe me!
Well I said that as a software engineer myself, so I pretty much know what is possible or not with the limited hardware we have at hand (and the lack of any sensor apart from what the mod can see)
Adding a simple auto-ramp mechanism for TC increasing temperature after each trigger release? That would be quite trivial. That's why I wouldn't be surprised if someone tells me there's already something similar in tubo_myevic. Even with user configurable start/end points and step increment + non-linearity options, that's all relatively easy.
Having something that feels like power mode but with the idiot-proofness of TC mode and that doesn't get in your way nor require much user intervention nor complexity? Yeah, that's quite more difficult. I don't even have any theoretical solution at the moment. Not even entirely sure that is really possible (hence why I said the problem is a bit ill-formed in my previous post) Just throwing ideas around as I often do.
cybrguy
Putin is a War Criminal
The advantage the Splinters have over the previous RBT products is the power source is a separate part (the mod) which can be customized/personalized in ways that an integral source can not. The heater itself is very similar (nearly identical actually) to the Zion/Milaana and resides under the wood, but the batteries and power generator are moved outside the product itself and that allows for a great deal more control, flexability and choice.
Whether RBT products are "the best" is obviously a matter of opinion, but for me I think they may be. That doesn't mean I have any less love for other products (like VCs) that are different, but RBT products are genius.
Yes please...
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