Hey tribal vape friends,
Gentle friends, if I may submit for your consideration, as OF might say
As we await our free upgraded parts for the new QQ which will hopefully solve all the sporadic contact / firing / performance issues that some of us have dealt with, if you haven't solved it already, I have come up with a reliable crutch, or band-aid solution to keep the current QQ models firing reliably:
additional little snips of conductive wire stuffed in to the wire holes and clamped down with the ceramic rods' lead wires
This is the same trick I've been using on my V3 posts for a long time to keep the donut leads super tight and torqued into place inside the posts with the screws maxed out but also not crushing the donut wire leads too much. This allows you to vigorously swab / scrape / touch the donut while loading and cleaning without worrying about the integrity of the contact being compromised, even after dozens of uses. This is a much more significant issue on the current QQ, so by adding 2 little strands of wire cut from some loose donuts, the Ω of the atty stays much more stable and low, and I've had dozens of sessions in a row, no problem with the wire lead contacts, since adding wire snips!
Even with adding little wires, after many sessions, you may need to re-tighten the screws for the leads a little bit, and the contact between the 510 pin on the QQ and the separate heat sink may become loose after repeated use, so you just need to un-screw the parts, tighten the pin and put it back, then 0.23-0.24Ω all the time now! No need to fully rebuild any more.
OF, your repeated, rapid advice and help and TCR explanations are much appreciated by many, no doubt. But on the specific point of the QQ "needing" 60 watts, we clearly don't "need" that much wattage to get a nice session going.
You can read that Archvape, FMSQ, Maxvapor710 and many others are vaping just fine with the QQ with much lower watts, 30-40 watts is ok. I was using 50-60w with the ceramic rods myself as I started with the QQ, but I was having difficulty avoiding burned/overly hot hits with such high watts; using high power requires greater judgement and moderation on the fire button to avoid overheating. So I've followed the recommendations of some of these guys, and I've been set on 40w for my QQ for a while. Even 30, 33, 35w was working for me, but just taking too long. 40w gets me to vape in about ~20 second and gives me more leeway to control the heat.
That's fine if anyone want to use 50, 60, 70 watts on their QQ. (in TC mode, but not power mode) The only benefit will be a quicker warm up time if 15-20 seconds is too slow for you with lower power.
Even with a modest 30-40w on the QQ, your advice to source quality batteries to power this thing is sound. Running 10-20w lower than the "official" settings still pushes the batteries pretty good, partially since they go at "max watts" on your TC settings for many seconds at a time, for repeated bursts, which is far different from typical e-cig vaping or even V3 battery discharging patterns.
I can't help but find it ironic that I'm recommending lower power levels for the QQ than OF, when for years OF had been advocating using the
most minimal usable watts figures for the V2.5 / V3 while I had always been recommending high watts for the donuts!
Aha...you like it hot don't you?
I usually don't pay the live Ω much attention during a QQ sesh, but since you listed this, I checked that the rods on my QQ only reach about 0.37-0.38Ω during use, from a cold 0.236Ω locked in, TCR 225, 526F at the moment.
You clearly like it much hotter if your rods reach 0.46 at whatever TCR / preset TC combination of settings you dial in. That's fine, nothing wrong with that. I guess it matches your preference for higher watts too.
That kind of settings are likely to choke me out on the QQ, even with my dab rigs attached, and my settings might feel a bit wispy and unsatisfactory for you?
I'm probably one of the more sensitive, wheezy-throated guys in this group, and I need my vapor to be the coolest, but my QQ can still put out nice clouds with my modest settings. It's usually testing the limits of my respiratory comfort, though, and coughs me out a little bit near the end, or by the 3rd puff on a QQ bowl. I still find it much easier to get a big, cool , smooth cloud with the V3, despite the extra loading / cleaning hassle with the donut.
Tradeoffs, these are.
Pretty nice setup tyler! I've been enjoying my QQ on my dab rigs with my simple glass elbow / silicon tube adapters and it works great, but a hydratube like that, which fits right over the metal base on the QQ with a directional cap that you can swirl around, that seems like it's taking the fun and the efficiency / potency of using the QQ with a water piece to a new level!
That's great how that piece just randomly happens to fit the QQ. It's quite tempting to me, but I'm on a "glass moratorium" right now. VAS, and it's related diseases, CAS, GAS, MAS, I'm trying to keep those in check right now. Maybe if one of my rigs gets broken or sold, I might consider a glass setup like that dedicated for the QQ.
Does the directional carb cap come with that hydratube, or did you get that separately, elsewhere? (if not included, a link? thanks)
this seems rather mundane, but I guess I could post this as it might be helpful to you?
I'm pretty sure a bunch of other V3 people are doing something just like this, I only got the idea from an anonymously submitted V3 user manual that Matt posted many pages back.
I swab at (a real, actual) 350F. Full vaping temp is not needed to swab.
Why don't you try holding the rolled up paper with a small tweezer? wooden tweezers could be better than metal or ceramic to avoid scraping. Holding the paper roll with a tweezer really lets you smoosh it into the warmed donut to absorb that reclaim oil.
I even take it a step further and cut the oily fouled tip of the roll with a scissor and use the rest of the clean paper roll, but that's more about lazyness and the desire to stretch out the use of a single roll as much as possible, so I can cut a power towel into some squares and have enough to swab donuts for a few weeks, at least.