id like to know how this works. if the oil is heating up every rip it is def degrading. so i wonder how it only heats the dab you are taking and not the rest of the load...?
I'm very new to the Herc (about a week), but I'll offer whatever insight I can.
The ceramic rod in the middle of the chamber is what heats up in the Hercules. Surrounding it is a circular coil, roughly 1/4" tall, made of compressed grade 2 Ti. The ceramic rod in the center heats up, beginning to heat up the oil closest to it in the coil, vaporizing it.
After the hit, the user does a few "cool down" hits, where they continue to hit the Herc without the power on. This draws cool air over the coil, cooling the oil, and returning it to a solid or semi-solid state. The oil sort of "redistributes" itself throughout the coil, ready for the next hit.
If the cool down hits are not done, you will begin to slowly leak oil down into the reclaim chamber. The oil that drips down is recoverable, so it's not lost, just a hassle to have to deal with imo. The reclaim chamber is what ensures the continued great taste. It prevents the oil from hanging out in the Ti coil for too long, while hot and not being hit, thereby overcooking/burning it. Rather then continue to stick around and heat up, it drops out into the reclaim chamber.
If the user does the cool down hits, there will be no need to recover oil from the reclaim chamber.
That's my understanding of it, at least. Like I said, new to the Herc, but loving it so far. Definitely better then my Cera, not regretting selling that at all at this point. I've only run about .75g through it so far, but the taste now, is just as good as the taste from the first hit. Experienced no taste degradation so far, and definitely would have experienced it on a LayG style cart or anything else.
The flavor is just about equal to the Cera in the first few hits, but stays better then the Cera throughout the entire load.