subway13029
Well-Known Member
My main issue with the pods has been decreased battery life..I'm guessing because it takes longer to heat up with pods?? But I do agree that performance wise just straight loading works a champ..
FlowerMate Vapormax V/V5.0/V5.0S/V5 Pro
- Thread starter Shit Snacks
- Start date
archangelz001
FIRE!!
I agree. Just wondering if you put a screen in the bottom of your Aura? Do the pods still fit if you do that? I have only done a couple of pods so far and haven't installed a screen. I'm worried that once installed I won't like it and won't be able to get it out. What are your thoughts?
OF
Well-Known Member
I'm running a screen in mine, I don't like those big holes. I cut a 5/8 screen to size (a bit over 3/8 inch square, enough so it's a snug fit 'edgewise'. The trim the four corners off making an 8 sided 'stop sign'. Then form it into a dome, drop it in 'dome up' and force it flat with a chopstick, pencil of something flat ended. The 8 corners keep it in place, yet it's easy to remove (bent tip on a safety pin) later.
There shouldn't be any serious fouling issues if you keep your herb on the dry side going it (vapes better that way as well), the output screen is the one that usually fouls, not the inlet.
No need to worry about fit thickness wise, there's a fair bit of play there. You can test with a little flat piece of folded foil on the top of the pod. You can put a fairly thick stack in before the cap no longer seats. A screen in the bottom isn't a fit issue IMO.
OF
OF
Well-Known Member
I'm not 100% sure what you're talking about but I think it's the edge of the bowl? This is the version with the LED in the mouth? That light goes through the clear silicone section just under the threads where normally the 'nose' of the MP fits? The white lip you see below that is the ceramic surface of the oven body (bowl) and should rightly be white.
Looks normal to me, although kind of dirty?
OF
Vapordeflor
Well-Known Member
Yeah.. as OF said that white spots are the only clean spots in your flower chamber 
. It should be pure white, although i find this hard to acomplish with my 5.0s, the method i use is scraping the chamber previously cleaned with ISO with a needle... is the only way i have found to clean it properly... I use this reply to ask if this method is safe or i'm taking to much risk by scraping it (i always do it gently to not damage the chamber).
. It should be pure white, although i find this hard to acomplish with my 5.0s, the method i use is scraping the chamber previously cleaned with ISO with a needle... is the only way i have found to clean it properly... I use this reply to ask if this method is safe or i'm taking to much risk by scraping it (i always do it gently to not damage the chamber).
KeroZen
Chronic vapaholic
@OF : my contact told me that after our feedback they reworked the battery gauge on the Mini Pro, it will now be closer to the available time (vs merely displaying the cell voltage)
And yes, they do read this thread, so if you guys have any comments, wishes or griefs, do not hesitate to express yourself here!
And yes, they do read this thread, so if you guys have any comments, wishes or griefs, do not hesitate to express yourself here!
Yeah thats just dirty, I've never been able to keep them clean so don't bother! It'll still work fine.Ok that's the best I can do, what do you guys think?
I noticed that the mouthpiece on my Aura is cracked, anyone else had that? I haven't dropped it so it must be heat, I can only assume. I'll let my contacts at Smiss know and see what they say. Can't get replacements in the UK, annoyingly.
OF
Well-Known Member
Bummer. Yes, I had a crack on my original one. I didn't drop it but wondered if maybe I wasn't careful about tipping it when I took it off? Lucky for me I bought it from Randy at PIU, I emailed him. He'd never seen it (Aura was fairly new, at the time 'nobody' had MPs) so I emailed him a photo. He had a replacement in the mail that day which I had two days later. I suspect he pulled one off a new unit. Not long after than his page showed it. Two days from noticing the crack to having the replacement in hand and working. Not an all time best for PIU but service near impossible to beat for sure.
Good luck with the replacement. FWIW my cracked one still works, the crack isn't 'growing' for now. I think maybe I'll try to make a WPA from it some day?
OF
Alegre
Pobre payaso
Thanks guys!
I couldn't remember if the oven body was white to begin with, I guess it was and is just dirty. I clean it with ISO every week but never really looked at it like I did yesterday (magnifying glass with flashlight) so apparently it's normal for it to get black.
I had the same problem. My suggestion is cut out a screen to put on top of the load and take the screen out of the mouthpiece. I have tried a lot of different combinations, and this one work best for me. Also I don't use the pods at all.
OF
Well-Known Member
Brother @KeroZen seems to have identified the smell to be the adhesive on the insulating tape in the furnace. Some seem to need more 'burn offs' than others. The last one I did ran the battery flat at Full Blast (428F?), something like 10 sessions before I couldn't detect anything. Then, as is my custom, I went half that far again (until the battery was under half) before reducing temperature and first use as a vape. About what my new Mini Pro was, my first Aura took a lot longer as I recall. Some report no issues with theirs. I'm sure some are more sensitive to this than others.
It works by conduction. At KZ reminds folks, this means you need to pack it at least some to get good contact. Dumping it in loose enough to fly around isn't 'right'. Not enough to block the draw, of course, but enough to pack things down and out, even if that means the oven is only half full. It comes with a packing tool, right? That will work, of course, as does a new wood pencil, chopstick sanded down golf tee (a personal favorite at one point), piece of 3/8 wood dowel (current favorite) or anything else handy.
Enjoy your Aura, I think it's a solid vape. You may need to experiment a bit to decide how to best use it to match your wants and needs, but it flexible in techniques so have at it.
OF
archangelz001
FIRE!!
Anybody got an idea how to remove or replace the little screen in the mouthpiece of the Aura? FM included several extras in the package but for the life of me I can't find a way to open the mouthpiece easily.
OF
Well-Known Member
The last 1/4 inch or so is a screw on cap that holds the screen. Hold the plastic part with one hand and pinch the cap and twist off CCW. If it's not clean either heat it or put a drop of ISO on to dissolve fouling.....or both.
OF
archangelz001
FIRE!!
OF
Well-Known Member
blackstone
Well-Known Member
I was going to ask if there is cracks in glass, could they be repaired with a butane torch, like fire polishing?
But maybe not as you didn't mention it above. Maybe there's not enough heat to penetrate the glass or it would just blow a hole in the glass?
Also I think I saw you giving some recommendations about the different FMs a few pages back, and I just wanted to clarify 1 or 2 things.
Has the FM mini Pro got a slightly smaller battery than the normal FM mini?
And also I was just wondering does the FM v5.0s have twice the batteries of the normal mini, or double the capacity?
And where does the Aura lie in between those two re: battery life?
Thanks, your posts are so helpful to me and I'm sure many others too! I'm considering an Aura but the concept and good reports of those OG FMs always did something for me too.
I'll let you in on a little secret, I heard about the benefits of using cotton as a packing material in conduction vapes recently, it was probably one of @OF 's legendary posts! And holy hell it does work really great!
It works so good I'm actually upset that it didn't recommend it in that particular vapes' manual, or any manual!
It has a similar density to ground herb and if you run hot air through it first, it is virtually odorless.
I now keep a bit in my metal barreled conduction vapes' pouch,
and I fill the chamber around 80% herbs : 20% cotton piece rolled in a ball. Works brilliant.
I thought of a steel wool ball, or heard about glass spacers, ABV, but I never would have thought of this cotton!
With the design of the Aura, you should probably insert the cotton in the chamber first, so the vapor doesn't need to pass through it on its way to your mouth. But you could try any old way to suit you
OF
Well-Known Member
You're correct, glaze can't be 'spot fixed' after firing. It has to do with expansion of the base (ceramic body) and the glass coating. The problem is they change size at different rates with temperatures. In a fun way, glass at room temperature is really still a liquid seen from some perspectives (very old windows are thicker at the bottom from gravity in fact) so 'stress cracks' are easy to produce. It literally takes days to safely cool in many cases. You need a kiln and lots of skill for such stuff.
The Pro version of the Mini is lower, 1919mAh against 2686 for the 'plain Vanilla' Mini when I measured them. The Aura is 'the same' (2666mAh), while the 5.0 is twice that. So the Aura has the same battery as the Mini but a little longer 'play time' due to better insulation?
FWIW I think the Aura at $60 from PIU is a deal not to be missed. Light and very easy to use, variable temperature, USB charging, useful battery 'meter', and an excellent backup that will see some use on it's own merits.
OF
So the other day, higher up on this page, I was rattling on about cracked MPs:
So, I just went to use the Aura and the replacement MP has failed! A crack in the flat area (same as before) has spread to the lip but more importantly it's also spread up the boss inside that holds the metal parts in:
The plastic top came off, leaving the metal part in the mouth of the Aura, retained by the inset o-ring in the rim. Once the boss 'loses it's grip' all is lost here.
The good news is the stub on the metal part is a perfect fit for 1/4 ID Silicone tube so I have a WPA to play with now! This unit has seen a lot of use, but this is now the second MP that's cracked on it? I hope this doesn't mean there's going to be problems here.......
OF
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kellya86
Herb gardener...
This myth was blown out of the water not long ago.. it's is now accepted that glass is neither liquid or solid. I think they studied a very old piece of glass to figure this out. If I remember I thinks it's call an amorphous solid.... not sure though.... but glass definitely doesn't flow...
Sorry for nit picking..
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OF
Well-Known Member
Not nit picking, but trying to avoid making it too complex......glass is not a solid as we normally think. It doesn't have the necessary atomic level ordering to qualify. It's an amphibious solid, it lacks order like crystals have. It's molecules are random, not ordered, in places. Important stuff from a materials POV. Room temperature glass can be described in terms normally used for liquids, and doesn't meet all the requirements for solids. This explains why glass coatings can fail 'while still solid' (they aren't really).
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-fiction-glass-liquid/
OF
kellya86
Herb gardener...
I think autocorrect got you, you said amphibious instead of amorphous, was this intentional???
I think asphalt is the thickest liquid on the planet, some guy has had some in a cup for like 50 years or something and it's dripped 3 times but he has missed it everytime...
Useless info...
I think asphalt is the thickest liquid on the planet, some guy has had some in a cup for like 50 years or something and it's dripped 3 times but he has missed it everytime...
Useless info...
OF
Well-Known Member
Yep, although I guess it could be amphibious I did in fact mean amorphous, something entirely different. Disordered, which is the important part. The difference between chimney soot and diamond? Thanks for the correction. I'm not sure it's exactly useless, but sure not earth shaking.
I recall 'pitch' in the drop test (which is older than I am....), I thought it was Coal Tar Pitch as opposed to Petroleum not that it matters much. In that case you can indeed reheat asphalt/tar/pitch to patch it (to get back to the OP's question on repair of the bowl glaze), unlike glass. The problem there is, I think, cooled glass is brittle and will develop cracks where asphalt/tar won't?
In other news I got a prompt reply from PIU about the cracked MPs. FM has an upgraded MP in process, it has less metal conducting heat up into the MP since it doesn't stick as far into the oven as I understand it. They should be 'here' in a week or two. I'll try to limp along until then, good to know they're on top of it. Funny it's a heat issue since I really don't hammer mine like I know some do (usually short sessions at 390F). Then again I do seem to be reaching for it often lately.......
And so it goes.
OF