charliedontsurf said:
Kinda big at worst, probably less cumbersome than a DBV, although you do have to handle this puppy and not leave it on a desk.
I absolutely love the whole concept of halogen powered vaporizers and have always been on the lookout for a small, hot, high intensity lamp to make one myself. Have you guys considered a longer, more flexible tubing w a glass mouthpiece, ala the DBV or SSV? This way you could leave it on the table, or even hook it up to glass.
I don't how big the batteries are or how large the bulb is, but have you considered downsizing the whole thing or making an entirely different model for more portability? Something halogen based with a slim, pocketable build, with a much smaller vapor dome? Just dreaming here. And hey, does the finnish birch taste like xylitol?
I'm very interested in this and any halogen vape and might end up buying it at launch.
Yes, actually the tubing can be as long as needed, I have bought very big reel of this stuff so I am including a long piece of it so the customer can cut it to preferred length
But unfortunately, so far I have not found any sources for glass mouthpieces, it would be more elegant than just the tube..
I am surprised that people here feel it is big, yes it is very big compared to smallest vaporizers like MFLB but at least this design, I feel, cannot be made smaller without some big changes in design philosophy...because of the volume of battery cells.
Actually the wooden frame is pushed to its limits as there is in quite tight package everything, hot heating element, and 2 battery cells each having diameter of 26 mm and there has to be some material left to the sides too
While the heating element doesn't require much space or insulation as the user when inhaling, makes it forced air cooled, the width is currently minimized. Height can possibly be maybe 5 mm lower but that's as far as this design can be shrunk...
The thing is, I started to design this for myself, just to try how a vaporizer would work, without any experiences from vaporizers...actually I still have never used anything else than this my own design so the only feedback I have compared to others is from my customers. So the design goal was not actually a portable vaporizer, but a vaporizer which has the feature of being able to vaporize wirelessly to offer more free and relaxed way to vaporize, but mainly for home/indoor use.
The batteries are large, there are smaller ones but I don't really think it is good idea to use some cheap LiPos which, while having greater volumetric capacity, have often quite limited lifetime and also dangers associated with them in portable, high temperature + different kind of users and usage application..and their charge rate has to be lower, no way to charge other batteries in 30 minutes. While these LiFePo4 - cells are also made in smaller form, their capacity is not enough for this because this heating technique wastes energy more than for example MFLB but it seems to be in life that you have to make some compromises.
The plus side is that this kind of heating with halogen bulb + steel seems to produce very stable vaporizing result when the temp is right, and all the herb is nicely and evenly baked very quickly, and there is very little irritation because the vapor gets some turbulence in the glass bowl which makes all the smallest particles of herbal material to be thrown away and stick to the surface of glass and it makes the vapor almost like water filtered. The downside is of course that gradually some resins start to accumulate to the glass bowl and it has to be washed with warm water + detergent but I still think the loss of active vapors is not huge since it seems to be very effective and anyway all these tubings in vaporizer make up much larger surface area compared to the free flow area inside them.
What I would like to change, is to get more run time from the batteries. The halogen bulb is of course very efficient and doesn't store much energy but the fact that the stainless steel which surrounds the bulb + the herb chamber take quite a lot of energy when they warm up, and it is clear when you shut the vaporizer down, these parts will still be hot some time after wards as they have stored this energy..so I guess if there was a way to make some changes to make this stored heat energy smaller, then the run time would be longer.
There is the metal top plate surrounding the heating element - this seems to be the place where energy is wasted. Sometime I made it very loose fit, so that it didn't touch the heating element and this top metal plate stayed cool during vaporization and I was able to feel how the vaporizer was more quickly ready for vapors, and less power was needed for same results, after all, the metal plate seems to act like a heat sink..The problem is, that this heating element gets its support from this top metal plate, and I haven't found a way to work out this problem...of course it is not a problem, the unit works well already, but it would be even better if I could save the energy wasted on warming up this metal part as it doesn't add anything to the performance, just degrades it. The temperature on the stainless steel part of heating element while vaporizing is about 110-150 degrees Celcius, bulb on the other hand is very hot so I guess it is just a combination of them which gets the air to perfect temp. But still it is hot enough so that it has to be insulated from the wood..I have used just air insulation, nothing to make extra smell /smoke inside, the heating element is "floating" there and this top metal plate supports it that it will be hold straight, so there is some contact and of course heat energy gets transferred from this contact. But it works, and the batteries stay cool, never has this wooded frame got too hot even if I've tried full power 40 minutes without inhaling at all, and durability seems to be good, I have made some tests, to search for its limits in extreme temperature changes, full heating power, placing the unit in the freezer and while frozen charging it again and same thing many times, and I have not had any problems, all works well..I was mostly worried of the natural characteristics of wood, and how it would work when there are big changes in the temperature and moisture but now after 2 years of using these things and after quite extensive stress testing, I feel quite good about this, there has never been any problem or visual change in the wooden frame, even if I've kept one vaporizer outside all summer, and here it is quite cold and wet during night time and daytimes are warm and dry so there was a reason to believe this would have shown weaknesses
But so far it has been working nicely and the most important, vapor quality and stability has been very good.
Also in the video and photos I have just a 490ml clear glass bowl on top of the vaporizer, even the coloured glasses on the front page image are just photoshopped version of the same big clear glass. Those new coloured bowls are smaller, 314ml and make it much more compact looking.
For those who are interested in hands free use, the problem is that the most energy efficient way of usage, smallest amount of basic power level chosen with the power dial wheel and pressing Boost when inhaling, is not an option if you want to use it hands free. I have also tested it hands free, and then the power dial wheel is just turned to a little bit higher power level, the only downside then is that waiting too long time between hits can get the vaporizer to warm up too much, and I have been thinking that this could be solved to make it "auto-boost", the user can signal the need for boost simply with the act of inhaling from the tube, and Venus vaporizer would act just as if the boost button had been pressed.
