The HighLighter (Glass-Core Open-Source Halogen Log) Kit Hosted by REFC Labs

RedEyeFlightControl

Inventor,Maker, Pro Nerd, Entgineer, GladScientist
Manufacturer
Hi all,

RedEyeFlightControl here, to introduce the next vaporizer release from REFC-Labs.com and friends!

The HighLighTED - The HighLighter Thermal Extraction Device

This project took about 6 months and was recently completed by the Scientifically Higher Design Collective (also including @khelek41girl APwinger, Ketheptis, and @AWistfulNihilist )

-A brief history-

Halogen heaters have always been a desirable concept, as well as a highly performant heat source. Our dev group decided to pursue a side project that one of its members really wanted, so we designed a DIY kit to make available a highly-performant, clean, simple, cheap, and easily repair/replaceable Log style heater core module, which could be used any way as the pilot desires. Over the course of 6 months or so, this design has been peer- refined, upgraded, tested, and re-tested by industry leading inventors/makers/manufacturers.

Current release is tentatively 2-3 weeks from now as early-access users and influencers begin posting information / pics / videos of this heater.

-Current Status-

The HighLighter is a DIY Kit. It is designed to be as easy as possible to assemble, while requiring little to no prior knowledge to build. It requires only several common tools, and every component is a commodity piece of hardware, meaning you should always be able to find parts, regardless of whether it's from my store, or one of the other dev's stores. Our goal was to make this as attainable as possible, to the largest group as possible. Kits will be sold in batches to start, to ensure there are no major launch issues, and that proper support and guidance can be given as needed. I'm expecting to do 20 a week to start. This may very well change if/when this project ramps up.

Wood heat shields (as pictured in some of my IG posts) will start becoming available as an upgrade option. The naked core performs very well, however, a heat shield provides not only a caloric retention upgrade, but a beautiful and unique way to hold and display your core.

The reasons for this decision were three fold - one , the devs of this project have limited bandwidth and may not be able to crank these out as often as we'd like, given expected demand. Two, naked core performance is good enough where the heat shield is not necessary, so those who don't want to drop premium cash for a premium piece of wood or the upgrade in performance, don't need to .

Three, this is an open invite to all other makers, wood turners, artisans, manufacturers - to come and play along in making and selling heat shields!

That's right! I'll be providing the heat shield dimensional spec to whomever wants it - I want to see what other community members can offer for our little core project. Have fun, go mad, design something cool and sell it! We want the whole community to have a part in benefiting from this and we feel the heat shield is the way to do it. This also lets the buyer buy a heat shield from their preferred artist, and sends that artist business! I see this as an absolute win.

-And the other things-

I also make and manufacture the JetDryV, and vend a number of vapes, accessories, and parts, including rigs, spare glass, torches, and an assortment of Custom Dynavap Titanium (one of my other specialties). I am an authorized retailer of Elev8, Dynavap, Pulsar Premium Glass, S&B, Stache, RAW, GRAV, ACE LABZ, Molicel, and other big names. If you don't see it listed, and think it's worthy of the lab, drop me a line and we can talk!. My business is continually growing while I curate the best of the very best for everyone, so please check back from time to time as new products are regularly added to the store.

I'll do my best to answer questions objectively.

The HighLighter Kit will be available at retail pricing (soon, when in stock) here:


Individual spare parts will be listed soon, as well.

Please follow my IG or subscribe to my site newsletter to be the first to know about availability!

All the best,

Red

Thanks for the interest!

PS: Some vids:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vaporents/comments/nucwyd/_/h0xadre https://www.reddit.com/r/VaporMilking/comments/nu55ix
 

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Salvaged_Title_Robot

Well-Known Member
I really like that it's a DIY kit and is intended to be used with easy to find parts. I also like that the dimensions of the heat shield will be given out for other woodworkers and shops to stock them, allowing for customers to buy a regular kit and upgrade later if they want to. I will definitely be ordering when they become available. Hopefully I can get in on the first few batches.
 
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RedEyeFlightControl

Inventor,Maker, Pro Nerd, Entgineer, GladScientist
Manufacturer
I'm so in!!! Love the look of the glow making it through the dark glass.
This was chosen for a few reasons - one, we're actively trapping emissivity because of the color, and two, clear glass is fried eyeballs (the bad kind of fried eyeballs). Even at our voltage range (6 to 6.8 or so), it is rather bright. This runs on a standard 12v 5a vvps and draws about 15-20 watts around the 6-7 volt range (very important for bulb health!). Smaller tested wattages just didn't have the snot we were looking for, and higher voltages put us in the halogen danger-zone where the tungsten is offgassed from the filament, and then deposits to the glass (forming black/soot spots). This prematurely ages the filament since the quartz package is too cold for it to offgas back during the tungsten redeposition cycle, so we run it at around 40% of its rated wattage, for bulb safety and longevity purposes.

Looks pretty sick...how do you get an early access coupon? Or you have to be part of the developing team for that?
This is open for the dev team to get standardized components that everyone else will be getting, to ensure the kits are 100% on point. We do have one or two influencers participating as well.

Kits will go full public with an appealing retail price in a matter of 2-3 weeks and released in small batches to start to ensure we can both support, and maintain sales/supplies.

Thank you all for the kind words! So glad to be a part of this project and its kickass team of people!

I see on reddit claims of hundreds of these bulbs being tested with zero failures.
Is that the case and how have you managed to test that many so fast?
Panic is probably embellishing a bit with that trailing S. We realistically tested about 80-120 bulbs between us. That's 5 devs and several builds per several bulb types across 5 sites, several different kinds of glass aggregate, etc. - so a hundred or more isn't really too unrealistic.

Edit since I forgot to actually answer the only bulb failure I'm aware of is the one that arrived with a broken pin in the box it shipped in. Otherwise, no known failures of any kind on any bulb across any site - I'm sure we'd be talking about it if it happened in testing/use. This is not a concern for other halogens, as far as I am aware.

Nice work @RedEyeFlightControl, saw this on Instagram last night, looks super cool and effective! Glad you decided to finally start the thread for it here, the details sound pretty great to me, congrats to you and the rest of the team... Good luck with the launch, seems like you may not need it though:tup:
Thanks so much!!! Yeah I wanted to wait a bit on the thread until the ingredients and docu were fully baked. I have a few things yet to update but we're just about ready to jam!
 
Last edited:

arb

Semi shaved ape
This was chosen for a few reasons - one, we're actively trapping emissivity because of the color, and two, clear glass is fried eyeballs (the bad kind of fried eyeballs). Even at our voltage range (6 to 6.8 or so), it is rather bright. This runs on a standard 12v 5a vvps and draws about 15-20 watts around the 6-7 volt range (very important for bulb health!). Smaller tested wattages just didn't have the snot we were looking for, and higher voltages put us in the halogen danger-zone where the tungsten is offgassed from the filament, and then deposits to the glass (forming black/soot spots). This prematurely ages the filament since the quartz package is too cold for it to offgas back during the tungsten redeposition cycle, so we run it at around 40% of its rated wattage, for bulb safety and longevity purposes.


This is open for the dev team to get standardized components that everyone else will be getting, to ensure the kits are 100% on point. We do have one or two influencers participating as well.

Kits will go full public with an appealing retail price in a matter of 2-3 weeks and released in small batches to start to ensure we can both support, and maintain sales/supplies.

Thank you all for the kind words! So glad to be a part of this project and its kickass team of people!


Panic is probably embellishing a bit with that trailing S. We realistically tested about 80-120 bulbs between us. That's 5 devs and several builds per several bulb types across 5 sites, several different kinds of glass aggregate, etc. - so a hundred or more isn't really too unrealistic.


Thanks so much!!! Yeah I wanted to wait a bit on the thread until the ingredients and docu were fully baked. I have a few things yet to update but we're just about ready to jam!
How much time in on each bulb then?
 

RedEyeFlightControl

Inventor,Maker, Pro Nerd, Entgineer, GladScientist
Manufacturer
How much time in on each bulb then?

My first ever core, which is installed in my bocote heat shield, has been assembled since the end of December, and runs daily, all day every day with a few exceptions. The blue core in my canary heat shield was my other first test unit. It too, remains FF and unmodified since it was assembled, shortly after the first one here in the lab.

By my rough and generous guestimate:

3-4 days a week of constant on (Fri-mon) then a few days where it spends several mid-day hours when I'm away from home. So let's say

3.5 days x 24 hrs a day - 84 a week
3.5 days x 18 hrs a day - 63 a week
Which totals avg of 147 hrs.

(Out of 168, this is roughly 87% time spent on)

times... 6 months and a few weeks but we'll round down to 180 days

180*.87 = 156 days or around 3744 hours average so far, well exceeding the bulb's 2000 hour lifespan. The others have run for less time, but not that much less. I usually had 2 or 3 running at once non-stop for long term thermal analysis (I've attached some pics).

EDIT - I did a bad math and fixed it. These bulbs have a TON of hours!

img_thermal_1619133307950.jpgimg_thermal_1619324361469.jpgimg_thermal_1619324376181.jpgimg_thermal_1621483205981.jpg
 
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khelek41girl

Well-Known Member
Accessory Maker
I had to take a quick video for you all to shed more "LIGHT" on the topic! (hahaha.........sorry, Im high :spliff: )

Another apology, I am far too high, thanks to this little doozy of a setup, to do any video editing that actually had sound or music >.<

 

Chainfish

Well-Known Member
This one looks interesting. I don't have ability to follow on instagram (no phone). Has a price point been mentioned yet?
 
Chainfish,
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RedEyeFlightControl

Inventor,Maker, Pro Nerd, Entgineer, GladScientist
Manufacturer
This one looks interesting. I don't have ability to follow on instagram (no phone). Has a price point been mentioned yet?
I have not disclosed the retail price on the heater core kits yet but you can expect them to be under 100USD. Affordability weighed heavily on both design decision-making and replacement parts.
 

ProfessionalHandJob

"A handjob is still a job, okay?"
Hi all,

RedEyeFlightControl here, to introduce the next vaporizer release from REFC-Labs.com and friends!

The HighLighTED - The HighLighter Thermal Extraction Device

This project took about 6 months and was recently completed by the Scientifically Higher Design Collective (also including @khelek41girl APwinger, Ketheptis, and @AWistfulNihilist )

-A brief history-

Halogen heaters have always been a desirable concept, as well as a highly performant heat source. Our dev group decided to pursue a side project that one of its members really wanted, so we designed a DIY kit to make available a highly-performant, clean, simple, cheap, and easily repair/replaceable Log style heater core module, which could be used any way as the pilot desires. Over the course of 6 months or so, this design has been peer- refined, upgraded, tested, and re-tested by industry leading inventors/makers/manufacturers.

Current release is tentatively 2-3 weeks from now as early-access users and influencers begin posting information / pics / videos of this heater.

-Current Status-

The HighLighter is a DIY Kit. It is designed to be as easy as possible to assemble, while requiring little to no prior knowledge to build. It requires only several common tools, and every component is a commodity piece of hardware, meaning you should always be able to find parts, regardless of whether it's from my store, or one of the other dev's stores. Our goal was to make this as attainable as possible, to the largest group as possible. Kits will be sold in batches to start, to ensure there are no major launch issues, and that proper support and guidance can be given as needed. I'm expecting to do 20 a week to start. This may very well change if/when this project ramps up.

Wood heat shields (as pictured in some of my IG posts) will start becoming available as an upgrade option. The naked core performs very well, however, a heat shield provides not only a caloric retention upgrade, but a beautiful and unique way to hold and display your core.

The reasons for this decision were three fold - one , the devs of this project have limited bandwidth and may not be able to crank these out as often as we'd like, given expected demand. Two, naked core performance is good enough where the heat shield is not necessary, so those who don't want to drop premium cash for a premium piece of wood or the upgrade in performance, don't need to .

Three, this is an open invite to all other makers, wood turners, artisans, manufacturers - to come and play along in making and selling heat shields!

That's right! I'll be providing the heat shield dimensional spec to whomever wants it - I want to see what other community members can offer for our little core project. Have fun, go mad, design something cool and sell it! We want the whole community to have a part in benefiting from this and we feel the heat shield is the way to do it. This also lets the buyer buy a heat shield from their preferred artist, and sends that artist business! I see this as an absolute win.

-And the other things-

I also make and manufacture the JetDryV, and vend a number of vapes, accessories, and parts, including rigs, spare glass, torches, and an assortment of Custom Dynavap Titanium (one of my other specialties). I am an authorized retailer of Elev8, Dynavap, Pulsar Premium Glass, S&B, Stache, RAW, GRAV, ACE LABZ, Molicel, and other big names. If you don't see it listed, and think it's worthy of the lab, drop me a line and we can talk!. My business is continually growing while I curate the best of the very best for everyone, so please check back from time to time as new products are regularly added to the store.

I'll do my best to answer questions objectively.

The HighLighter Kit will be available at retail pricing (soon, when in stock) here:


Individual spare parts will be listed soon, as well.

Please follow my IG or subscribe to my site newsletter to be the first to know about availability!

All the best,

Red

Thanks for the interest!

PS: Some vids:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vaporents/comments/nucwyd/_/h0xadre https://www.reddit.com/r/VaporMilking/comments/nu55ix
Shutup, and take my money!
 
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