1. heatsink and atomizer are one piece
2. posts no longer have the hole where wires tighten down.
5. flame polished quartz cup
Outstanding! That first (unexpected) improvement removes several contact points, and with them their
unreliability. In practice, no contact is as good as a solid conductor of the same cross sectional area since there are tiny, atomic level, flaws on the surfaces not in the bulk material. This, and more solid contact at the heater leads gives us lower overall resistance as you point out. Very cool, not only is this more reliable, but it's an automatic boost in battery life since that extra resistance is no longer generating heat where we can use it, and don't want it anyway. That approximate 15% drop in resistance (?) means a 15% boost in battery life and cooler units in use under the same conditions. The key is the resistance of the heaters (therefore the heat they generate) remains unchanged.
Ironically, since the mod can only sense total resistance the same power settings (say 55 to 65 Watts?) now needs to be reduced lest too much is delivered to the heaters (rather than elsewhere in the works) so this calls for reducing the power setting. Not 60 any more, but 15% less so the current (and therefore usable power) is still the same......
50 Watts is more realistic now! A true win/win here, if not all that apparent to casual readers. Our demands on the mods we press into duty, but also the special cells we need to run them at these levels have just been reduced with no loss in performance, in fact a modest improvement on 'self heating' in use. Bully! Bravo Matt!
Sadly, this means scrapping (at his cost) almost all the parts in the original issue. At this point only the MP can be reused 'as is'? And the q-tips. Not even the screwdriver and spare screws are useful in the new design. I guess the heaters are, but doubt we'll be expected to swap them over. Talk about putting your customers first.........
Change 2, back to a more traditional configuration, will no doubt pay off big time in terms of stability. Round bottom slots are fine, even preferred in many cases, for STRANDED wire. With stranded wire this improves the surface area available for contact, not so for solid wires like here. With solid wires, they can shift under use/cycling. Where such shifts are trivial with high strand counts, when there are only 2 strands, they can only contact each other in a single way? So a shift, no matter how minor, is a different contact in total than before. Slots that better capture the wires and prevent shifts are sure to be a big plus in this known problem area IMO.
Finally the fire polish step is an obvious improvement even if it again adds to the cost of production. Such steps aren't like bulk anneals and other treatments, they are very often 'hand operations' and at best 'only tie expensive equipment' with lesser labor needed for the extra steps and inspections. And rejected parts, of course. Again, raising Matt's costs to bring an even better product to market and offering it to us.
This is Valentines Day, IMO no question on how we should feel about our Matt and what he does for us...........
Regards and best wishes to all, and all those good folks we love and share our lives with.
OF