Gentle Friends,
Today I got the 8 prototype from SC along with his best wishes and some useful instructions. I'm still having trouble keeping it running (it seems like it times out and starts cooling off), I'm sure I'll sort that out. I've run 3 bowls so far, along the formula SC developed. About .3 grams of fairly fine grind (two inch four piece SC grinder), enough to barely cover the post in the center. The post seems to be the source of the heat as you can see below (story coming....). There's a tiny hole in the top and four similar ones spaced around the post just below the top. These let air in from below, everything else seems sealed. The bowl itself looks like aluminum with thin machine screws through the bottom for the heater leads and the temperature sensor near the center of the bottom (buried in the metal). There's a ceramic plate in the bottom covering the heater which you can see through the center hole when it's on. A rubber gasket seals the top of the bowl to the body, you can see this in the photo below.
The 3 runs went fairly well. I'm using some nice 18% Blue Dream but the hits are a little on the thin side, something like Iolite tends to be. Given they're roughly the same size, construction and temperature (Iolite might have a better flow path) this makes sense at least to me. It gets cache'd faster though and while the dose is effective it's not all that noteworthy. I intend to add some bubble hash to the mix in the next round to liven things up like I would normally do in Iolite. AVB looks OK, not quite as uniform as MFLB but about the right color. I agree with SC that indicated 320 to 330 degrees seems about right.
However, and IMO this is a huge however, the SOB turned itself on and ran away! I turned it off (not always easy to do for me yet, but pushing the button a few times confirmed it was off (it takes 5 or so rapid pushes to wake it up). I'd gone through "off" displayed and shift from orange to blue and was sure everything was Jake. Then I smelled it. It didn't combust since there was no draw, but I bet if I'd pulled on it I'd have got bit. The display was blank when I pushed the button (overheated) and so I pulled the battery. Hotter than the hinges on the gates of hell as they say. Way more than the 330 it was last set to. You can see in the photo what happened:
I'll let it cool off, clean it out and press on with testing as best I can, but clearly it's not a good plan to leave batteries in it until this is understood.....
BTW, if anyone wonders if DubC got enough oil in this the other day? He did. You can see it 'everywhere' peeking through the slots. I intend to try some various concentrates, but I think in smaller loads.
OF
Edit: For those taking notes, this puppy is no slouch for sure. It's pulling about 20 Watts (Evolution level power) to heat up to temperature. It was running about 2.7 Amps at a bit over 7.4 Volts when I checked. IMO quite respectable. No wonder it can get so hot....
And now that it's cool and I've emptied it out, it smells mighty nasty in there, time for some serious cleaning before we press on. The electronics seems to be working normally again. Retracing my steps I'm positive I had it off. Pushing the button when it's on a few times brings up "off" in the window when the button is blue (heater off). Holding it down a few seconds shuts the power off and pushing the button less than five times has no effect. Five presses turns back to standby with "on" showing which changes to temperatures and ramps up when the button is pressed again. Same basic deal as shutting it off.
Spooky.
OF
