Ok, now for the less-than-super-successful experiments...
For anyone that has the
vaporesso VECO tank,
DO NOT FOLLOW MY EARLIER IDEA AND TRY TO DRILL HOLES IN THE CHIMNEY
I attempted this to aid the less-than-satisfactory atomizer coil wicking rate when using medium-thickness co2 oil through the 3 large, but insufficient, default wicking holes. The atomizer chimney was holding back alot of co2 oil, about a half a gram it in this case seems, from reaching the coil, which is a design feature I did not like. Even with all this oil on the tank, the coil was dry, and it was offering no cloud when puffed on.
Even with all this oil on the tank, it wasn't puffing. I wanted to "set this oil free" to get to the coil.
As I learned the hard way, drilling new holes in the chimney caused a breach of the airflow path, mixing it with the juice flow from the inside of the tank. With the unique way the VECO tank mixes top airflow with bottom-loading coils that have airflow coming in from the top, separated from the (sideways, lateral) juice flow, and airflow entering the coil from the bottom,
this allowed the juice filled into the tank to leak into the bottom base of the unit, where it does not belong
I tested the tank with plain VG after I made this mistake to confirm this.
The red arrow points to where I made a hole. Perhaps you can see how the chimney is hollow, 2 ply metal. On the default wicking holes, this gap in the 2 layers of metal is not open, obviously.
Another angle on another hole. The right part of the pic shows the bottom base of the VECO tank where the coil contacts the center, insulated, gold part, while the top-airflow coming from the chimney goes to the periphery of the base, and enters the coil from the bottom. You can see my leaked VG in there where it shouldn't be. It's a rather clever, if complex, airflow scheme that allows quick changing of coils without getting your fingers sticky. So if you use this tank, don't mess with it.
Here on the left, is the chimney, top-down view. You can see the 2 layers of metal that separate the inner chimney, from the middle-airflow chimney, and the outside of the chimney (the empty tank space, held in by the glass) That air from the chimney is channeled to to the outer / peripheral area of the base of the tank (right arrow), and into the middle and up into the coil.
On the left again, the chimney, bottom side facing up. Can you see the 3 arcs of airflow around the perimeter? This is what feeds air into the bottom case. If I would have taken a closer look and thought it through, I might have been able to avoid this mistake.
Oh well.
At least I don't have this same airflow dynamic going on with the new x-baby RBA coils drilled with holes.
And just for sharing, this is how that "EUC cCell" looked after being filled with only 1 gram of co2 oil. Pretty crusty.
It probably would have held up better if I continued to keep the tank topped off with over 1 gram of oil, but I feel that a 2ml-sized tank shouldn't require that... (that's a design flaw IMO) or also if the oil I used was more fluid, like Steven's THClear runny distillate syringes. But compared to alumina donuts, which are much less crusty even when run dry after many grams vaped, I think these silica cylinders are less clean and flavorful, especially after many fill-ups.
Next to a brand-new unused cCell. The metal wire in the cylinders is quite visible here.
So staying on the topic of the porous silica ceramic cylinders.... yet making a pivot still....
I came back around to trying a cubis coil build with these things.
I had tried this atomizer build earlier with some HTFSE, but the initial attempt was a failure due to a lack of information and "user error"
As it turns out, this batch of ceramic cylinders I got are made with stainless steel coil wires, which has a TCR figure of about 120
(most TC mods have a pre-set mode for SS)
But I didn't know this, so I falsely presumed these heaters had nichrome wire leads like the donuts I'm used to, which have TCR #'s ranging from around 200-245, for the size / batches I've observed.
So when I set it up with TCR 245 and only 18w, at a low 300F, those settings allowed the mod to
grossly overheat my ceramic cylinders, and the first puff on the fill-up was a super huge, hot, grey, nasty combusto-cloud
that probably had a real temp of at least 500-600F
It was so gross, but I managed not to cough or throw up. But it was also very irritating on my throat and sinus. I figured out what happened, and dropped my temps, and later set the TCR to the proper SS316L mode, but the damage was done.
The initial hot-mistaken hit ruined the flavor of the coil with a carbon-reclaim layer, no matter how low the temp, all puffs after that were still very harsh. This was a waste, and another "learning mistake" so I put this tank/atomizer to the side for a while as I moved on to more profitable tank projects....
That was 3 months ago, fast forward to a few weeks ago...I got back to this coil.
I actually removed almost all the HTFSE from this tank and syringe-transferred it to a separate 7mm donut cubis tank I am using, and the oil was still pretty fresh, so that was ok.
Then I thoroughly alcohol soaked and cleaned the coil and tank. After the user-heating error, the porous cylinders came back
almost as white as new.
I added a few strands of the trusty readyXwick 1.7mm this time. Second attempt at this coil, I went with distillate oil, the THClear syringe "strawberry glue" flavor
SS316L mode, 18w, from 360-400F, it is "working" but the clouds are rather inconsistent, and the flavor is quite harsh and unpleasant.
I'm blaming that mostly on the excess terpenes of the distillate.
It's not nearly as bad as my double TCR# heat mistake, but the distillate vape is not good with this atomizer. I can barely take 2 or 3 hits in a rapid succession. It irritates my throat too much. Even with 2 heaters, the cloud isn't as big as I'd expect at up to 400F. I try to mess with the air throttle to dial in the best, low-temp hit, and that ideal spot seems to be 2 / 5 air holes open. 4 or 5 holes open makes bigger clouds, but it's so harsh. 2 /5 is less harsh but still not good.
So if I tried filling this atomizer with some good co2 oil instead, or perhaps some thicker, less-terpene-diluted distillate, or that nice HTFSE I've been filling tanks with, I could probably expect better results, right? Probably.
However, I've got some of this same type of semi-irritating terpy distillate on my 5mm donut tanks on some other cubis tanks, and somehow, I'm having more success in moderating the harshness while still getting big clouds. The peppery feeling is still noticeable with donuts, but it seems lesser, too.
So with all these good new options for making smooth, temp-controllable ceramic RTAs that don't leak, these little porous silica tubes seem to be maintaining their
second-tier rank, IMO. These things are much better than a traditional cotton wick and metal wire, but in the fields of
taste, smoothness, and reclaim-resistance, alumina donuts are much better than the tubes, also.
Not sure how many folks out there are using the liberty v9 tanks, but I've had mine for a few days now and they are absolutely amazing. These tanks seem to run through the oil pretty fast but you get nice hits. At $8/ea on ebay I think I have found my stealth pen finally =)
Hey, nice to see that someone is enjoying those little liberty tanks after I've been spamming them up in several different threads.
I was putting that forward more for the sake of argument / sharing / comparing, since I have not used it myself.
It seems that the ceramic heater on some of those liberty tanks are of the porous silica type, like I was talking about earlier. For using with an unregulated, little pen-style battery, and not a TC mod, that's probably one of your better choices.
In the short time that has since passed, even more good stuff has come out. W9's new trinity tank has a 0.5Ω Ti wire with a ceramic wick, and it should be very hard to overheat / burn oil with a small battery due to the sub-ohm coil, but maybe doesn't hit "as hard" as your liberty tank because of that? But that's just another good reason to pair these little tanks with a tiny TC mod like the evic basic
(probably shorter than your pen still )
Even the
"vape 710" canadian vape pen attys, which for the longest time did not have sub-ohm coils for TC, is finally catching up. Now available with a sub-ohm cCell, although they're always sold out. And I don't know how bottom-airflow tanks like these don't leak out on you, but supposedly the trinity tank doesn't leak.
Even if these are not the kind of tanks I'd like to use, it is good to see the market for tanks for concentrates improving itself.