Ball vape with ss balls and induction heating

[dtrdrk]

Hey there,
im still dreaming of a ball vape that uses induction heating. I know the tempest does it. And i have it and love it. Still wondering if it
would be possible to use a glass or ceramic housing for the balls (similar to qaroma) and fill it with stainless steel balls that get heated
directly via the induction coil. Could this work? Or is it a useless idea? Cheers

 

[Custom Flower Hardware]

Hey there,
im still dreaming of a ball vape that uses induction heating. I know the tempest does it. And i have it and love it. Still wondering if it
would be possible to use a glass or ceramic housing for the balls (similar to qaroma) and fill it with stainless steel balls that get heated
directly via the induction coil. Could this work? Or is it a useless idea? Cheers

You need a BIG ih. I tried it with a good one only got it to 400f not hot enough

 

[666Honeybadger]

You need a BIG ih

BIG you say?
Does 'huge' qualify too?

https://fuckcombustion.com/threads/quick-vestratto-forge-induction-heater.55037/

 

[dtrdrk]

Ok, but it is possible in theory? There are some big induction coils on the diy market. If anyone has an idea of what wattage would be appropriate, i might give it a try. I live in germany and we have the highest energy prices on this planet so an efficient ball vape would be just awesome.

- would a ceramic housing also work?

- does anyone know of a product that i could use as a container for the balls? The qaroma is made for an attached induction coil… so not appropriate. I did find one made of zirconia ceramic by phase3. Would the ceramic allow the induction to happen? Or would it just heat the ceramic but not the ss balls inside?

 

[howie105]

I see some possible advantages and challenges, but being ignorant when it comes to induction heater rigs, I have questions. In terms of temperature accuracy and repeatability, do induction heaters and PID controlled coils compare well?

 

[TigoleBitties]

I think the idea is sound but I don't think you'd want stainless steel balls. I imagine you would only need stainless or some other ferrous material as a cylinder on the outside of a ceramic chamber that houses ceramic/ruby/boro balls. The outer metal chamber will conduct heat into the ceramic chamber and balls and this way you keep metal outside of the airpath.

@dtrdrk you might want to check out this post on an IH project vape that heats glass tubes. The principle is the same... you're heating something via induction but in this case instead of a chamber with ceramic balls, it's just a simple glass tube however one can imagine this glass tube containing ceramic balls for example.

 

[dtrdrk]

You mean the stainless steel balls would give off a bad taste? lots of vaporizers are all ss…
If a stainless steel container filled with boro balls would work as well, i guess i could just buy the
cloud connoisseur omega and build a induction heater for that. Id still have ss in the vapor path though

Honestly, it doesnt have to be the purest tasting vape. Just powerful and as energy efficient as
possible. All my vapes have metal somewhere and its fine. Even my superb tasting herborizer.
In case i go for the original idea of ss balls in a none inductive housing, it might be enough to
go 50/50 on ss and boro balls. Just an uneducated guess.

im wondering which of the both methods (none inductive housing with ss balls vs inductive housing with boro balls)
would heat up quicker…

 

[TigoleBitties]

You mean the stainless steel balls would give off a bad taste? lots of vaporizers are all ss…
If a stainless steel container filled with boro balls would work as well, i guess i could just buy the
cloud connoisseur omega and build a induction heater for that. Id still have ss in the vapor path though

Honestly, it doesnt have to be the purest tasting vape. Just powerful and as energy efficient as
possible. All my vapes have metal somewhere and its fine. Even my superb tasting herborizer.
In case i go for the original idea of ss balls in a none inductive housing, it might be enough to
go 50/50 on ss and boro balls. Just an uneducated guess.

im wondering which of the both methods (none inductive housing with ss balls vs inductive housing with boro balls)
would heat up quicker…

I have stainless steel vapes and they're fine so this wasn't my main motivation for a metal cylinder although some people do taste metal easily. It has to do with the physics of induced currents which is what causes the heating within metals.

The induced current decreases exponentially from the surface and around 85% of the power will be concentrated on the surface of the metal, therefore having a solid mass of balls wastes all the interior surface area with respect to active heating.

 

[dtrdrk]

Makes perfect sense. Thanks for educating me! Now hat about hollow ss balls?

When using an inductive housing i assume it should be rather small in diameter in order to heat the boro balls quickly? Guess the cc omega will be too wide. What do you say?

 

[TigoleBitties]

Makes perfect sense. Thanks for educating me! Now hat about hollow ss balls?

I understand your thinking but if you have a cluster of hollow balls within the field, the induced current, and therefore the heat will still largely all be generated on the exterior surface of the cluster. Hollow balls on the the interior carry little induced current. They'll still get hot, but via conduction from the heat of the outer surface.

When using an inductive housing i assume it should be rather small in diameter in order to heat the boro balls quickly? Guess the cc omega will be too wide. What do you say?

When I experimented with heating the Vaponic using the iSpire Wand and a metal sleeve at the tip of the glass tube (about 14mm diameter?), I was able to generate enough heat within the tube to easily combust flower within 10-15 sec.

I'm guessing if you made something like the VHB Slide and stuck a metal sleeve on the tip where the glass balls are, you could get them hot enough if you had an induction heater coil wide enough and powerful enough to fit the tip into. I wanted to do this at one point but could never find the VHB Slide in stock. I think it fits just barely in the Wand.

 

[rizlafreak]

I don't think it could work. induction needs another coil, appropriately aligned to the inducting coil, or you won#t have induction. If you'd take a large cylinder with a hole in the middle instead, it would technically work (at least i think so). and probably many cylinders (coils) stacked... but I'm not electricity expert however.
Me 'd rather think about using microwaves with some kind of stone material as heat akku.

 

[General Disaster]

Being new to this thread (thanks for the link @TigoleBitties ) I may have misunderstood the idea in discussion. But my thoughts on heating the balls in a ball-vape type heat capacitor, would be make the housing in Ti only to avoid any induction, then use a mixture of steel (or other IH usable metal) and some other material like ruby or boro, whatever (but not an IH compatible material). It would take some experimentation, and simply mixing balls of same size (steel and ruby, for example) could cause uneven heating, and likely even the shape of the matix filler would matter.

But the principle of heating right inside the capacitor would speed up the equilibrium of temperature in the head. It ought to be more efficient too as not losing so much heat to the outside (via a sleeve). But in the end, to get the perfect distribution, it may be better to insert some thin steel probes vertically into the container of rubies (whatever) to act as the heat receivers, as then they could be anchored in place to distribute the heat exactly as required (once the positioning has been determined from testing). One question maybe whether that would work better than just putting a heating element in the matrix, though I suspect it would be rather bulky for the amount of power that could be put in, compared to the IH.

 

[dtrdrk]

Thanks guys!
ill try around. Guess i will buy one of the cheap injectors off alibaba for experimenting. Its made of titanium.
If it doesnt work, ill just get a pid and run it with that.
Talking about pids. Is anyone capable of telling me, if the linked pid would work for a regular enail?

https://tde-instruments.de/en/artikel/temperaturregler/emko-esd-9950-n/

 

[howie105]

Thanks guys!
ill try around. Guess i will buy one of the cheap injectors off alibaba for experimenting. Its made of titanium.
If it doesnt work, ill just get a pid and run it with that.
Talking about pids. Is anyone capable of telling me, if the linked pid would work for a regular enail?

https://tde-instruments.de/en/artikel/temperaturregler/emko-esd-9950-n/

There is no “regular” just a couple of commonplace configurations. So, what you have to do is match the choices for yourself before purchase, be careful. Good Luck.

 

[Grass Yes]

Talking about pids. Is anyone capable of telling me, if the linked pid would work for a regular enail?

https://tde-instruments.de/en/artikel/temperaturregler/emko-esd-9950-n/

This is not a complete enail PID controller. You'll have to wire it up to an XLR connector etc. I am not certain from the rest of this thread if that is your intention, but it is definitely something one could do. You'll want to wire it up in a way that matches your enail coils of course.

 

[badbee]

Thanks guys!
ill try around. Guess i will buy one of the cheap injectors off alibaba for experimenting. Its made of titanium.
If it doesnt work, ill just get a pid and run it with that.
Talking about pids. Is anyone capable of telling me, if the linked pid would work for a regular enail?

https://tde-instruments.de/en/artikel/temperaturregler/emko-esd-9950-n/

I'm trained in building electronics and like to play around, I would not go that route. This is a "naked" core PID brain but it needs to be matched up with temp sensors and a coil that are fully compatible. It would be very easy to get that wrong. An inexpensive PID with coil package from AliExpress would make more sense.

 

[dtrdrk]

Thanks guy. I do lots of electronics. Isnt wiring a pid just soldering an connector and a SSR relay? I solder for a living I have looked at the ready available ones and they are death traps from an electric standpoint. Here in the eu this is highly illegal - for good reasons. Take a look at the pid from CH flowerpot for instance. No ground to chassis connection. No isolation of high voltage lines with dubious soldering. In a metal chassis. A deathtrap. Illegal in the eu. Let alone running 230v through a XLR connector its all totally crazy. Ill start a thread on safety soon, as i was shocked doing my research yesterday But i would certainly never run a 230v coil with that kind of rubbish.

 

[dtrdrk]

Ignoring my rant the pid i linked should work as a starting point right? Thermocouple K input and output to a SSR relay. Or is there any other feature it would need?

 

[BreadStick]

Here's a cool video I found demonstrating the skin affect on induction heaters. The original idea of a ball vape full of metal balls would probably work but you would want a appropriate controller for the induction coil that's switching at a lower frequency than what we'd probably see in most the induction heaters discussed on this forum.
Edit: thinking about it more the video is demonstrating the heating of a solid pipe, I'm not sure how the skin affect would impact the strange structure of all the balls sitting in a tube but I imagine it might still be vaguely similar.

Ignoring my rant the pid i linked should work as a starting point right? Thermocouple K input and output to a SSR relay. Or is there any other feature it would need?

Yeah I think that PID controller could work. How are you planning on powering the coil via the SSR relay? Use the PID's SSR driver output for the coil and the PID's relay output through the SSR contacts? Maybe think of what connectors you wanna use as well if you're gonna try fit it into an enclosure of some kind? Deutsch connectors are the ultimate connectors imo and I'm pretty sure they can handle 7A @ 250V

 

[Radwin Bodnic]

@dtrdrk
I'm not comfortable either to run 230V into an XLR.
You can find PIDs and coils with GX16 plugs (5 pins are rated for 240V @ 10A).
There also are 12V pids and coils.

If you're going to DIY your housing you could also go without any connector. Especially if it's for a wireless ballvape.

 

[dtrdrk]

Thanks Radwin,
i feel the same. The risk of electric execution is way too high for my taste. I was thinking of running the whole thing at 110v. Still hurts but maybe not certainly deadly if anything goes wrong. But 12v sounds even better. Can these coils achieve the same power as the 110/230v ones? If so, do you have a link maybe?

 

[Pukka]

You mean the stainless steel balls would give off a bad taste? lots of vaporizers are all ss…

I have a DDave Incredable Extraction Machine which uses stainless balls. They don't taste of anything wierd to me but that may just be me. I will say that my ZX (in ruby) tastes mo betta, it tastes purer, if thst mskes sense.

 

[dtrdrk]

Thanks Pukka,
i ditched the induction idea, due to the problems with temperature indication. I will just use a coil and pid. But i want it to be safe with 230v. I will try to change the threads topic.

Back to safety: best idea i can come up with is using a 230/110v transformer before the coil. This should protect me by galvanic separation as well as working with a lower voltage. Im just not certain, if the transformer will be ok with the constant on/off by the ssr (zero crossing) and also if a 110v coil runs happily on 50hz instead of 60hz. Guess i should consult a electronic forum for this….

Still, if there is a 12v/24v coil please let me know.

 

[Radwin Bodnic]

Can these coils achieve the same power as the 110/230v ones? If so, do you have a link maybe?

I can't speak for the power but they are sold to work for enails.
I assume you're in Europe. Then Aliexpress is your best bet.
I know g-spot used to sell 12v PID+coils but they are rebranded from aliexpress.
And maybe graveda units are 12v as well but you should ask them to be sure.

Edit : coils are commonly called "formable coil heaters" and there are a lot of industrial manufacturers in Europe. I don't know the price for one unit but it shouldn't be too much expensive. It will be custom work so you can choose the shape, type of temp sensor, voltage, material, etc...
Exemple

 

[dtrdrk]

Actually CH produces a 12v version and does sell the coils… its called the „tailgate edition“.
Its made for 12v car batteries as far as i understand. I wrote them a mail.
In the reviews someone complains that its slow to heat up and recover heat… im wondering if this is due to
Them running it off battery, or due to the low voltage.