Can anyone recommend a battery that will always 100% stay in temp mode with the DC atomizer? I had a Kangertech that worked but the charging port malfunctioned and made it stay on .. and I've heard of a few others, but i still have not found a mod that will support Temp mode on the DC 100% of the time.
Hey Matt! Coincidental that you are asking this now, because I have been playing around some more trying to "TC the DC" and I've had some success. I'll credit erka for posting her solution for TC use with the pico for "piquing" my interest in your DC atomizer again.
erka was warming up the DC in watts mode around 25w, for several seconds, then switching to TC-Ti mode to function in TC mode. I tried this and it did not work for me; would trip back into VW.
Now...I tried my pico in TC-SS mode @ 32W. It warms up and hits temperature, and stays in TC mode, but TC-SS is cutting off the wattage too sharply and too soon after it reaches protection to actually get any significant clouds, even when up to 600F.
But....after I have warmed up the atomizer by several 10 second button presses in TC-SS mode, 32W, around 400F, maybe 30-40 seconds at least...
Then switch to TC-Ti mode, 390F-420F seems to make decent clouds, and it is staying in TC mode throughout the whole session. It's working in TC mode! I've done this 4 session in a row now and vaped the bowl to completion more or less. If you try to start the session in TC-Ti mode, it will not work, it will trip to VW always. Pre-warming in TC-SS mode seems to work.
This atty does seem to be rather fickle, so I can't guarantee it will always work this way for all people, even if you have a pico. I'd like to see this process repeated in an evic VTC or a cuboid, but there's only so many scientific experiments I can conduct in a single day
The mouthpiece still gets way too hot during use for my poor lips. Maybe they're damaged from my reckless youth smoking too many roaches, but I've taken care of that by slipping over a silicon hose, same as I'm using on my elbows now. You could probably get away with a smaller piece of silicon, but this is what I have.
A stainless steel mesh cut and bent into the shape of a bowl keeps the flowers tight in place during vaping.
The flavor of the vape is pretty good as the session starts, but I think alot of terpeney goodness is being wasted during the initial warm-up period.
After a few pulls the vape quickly gets pretty hot and harsh, but it's bearable. And I have a sensitive respiratory tract, so that's saying much. Not much flavor after the first few draws, get that generic burnt-popcorny taste you get with any flower vape, mid-session. But it seems to go on and on kinda long, with these marginal flower vape clouds.
The TC is surely not displaying accurate temps of your flowers, but at least it is throttling the wattage and controlling the temps to some helpful degree. I'm taking a few seconds break in between puffs so the ceramic doesn't overheat and I don't combust my flowers. When everything's really hot you can get puffs without pressing the power button. All this heat soak is putting alot of strain on the poor little pico, too. The battery meter reads lower when everything's all hot, seems to gain charge when cooled down again. Power hog for sure, only 3-4 sessions on a single VTC5 2600mah battery. I'm not entirely comfortable with all this heat, this could be testing our mods and lithium cells. Alot of juice vape guys are pushing much higher wattages, for sure, but they are pressing the button for a few seconds at a time, not for minutes on end like the DC. And I don't think there's any other 510 threaded atomizers of any sort that get anywhere near this hot.
I tried to vape my load to completion, and it took alot of marginal hits. My flowers looked super dark and crumbly (maybe because of the kief i put in the middle) but at least it avoided combustion, but not by much probably. I packed the bowl tight, maybe too tight. Perhaps a slightly looser pack would improve the session. I seemed to have to pull very hard on the mouthpiece to get those big clouds I seek. Sippy hits result in very little.
Well, the DC is no crafty, that's for sure, but for an all-ceramic flower vape that can be set up in entirety for aboutr ~$60 or so, I don't think there's anything that comes close. And of course, you can twist off the DC from your mod and replace with a donut instead, can make for a potent switch hitter combo for a single mod (if you can keep the battery charged
)
I'm very curious, how many tokes from this gets you to where you want to be? And so as long as there are clouds there is "valid" oil in there? BTW, thank you for answering all my questions and even others who may not thank you. ;-)
Any chance you can tell me exactly why temp control really matters. I'm not finding the reasons why matters compared to watts only
Those extra marginal tokes that you get after a reload, when the donut looks empty, can go on for many hits. It gets wispier and less each hit, but it can take forever if you want to vape it and see nothing come out at all. That's why some people pass on those reclaimy hits and just heat clean the donut after just a few hits.
If you actually care about not combusting your oil, and maximizing the flavor and terpene content of your oil, and if you want to minimize the crusty buildup on your donut, and also if you want to chase the biggest clouds, there is no substitute for temp control.
If you're ok with crappy smaller marginal hits with combustion, don't bother with TC.
Without TC, you must carefully throttle the power button "pulse it" to avoid getting the donut too hot so that it combusts the oil (burns it, not just vapes it) Burning oil rather than just vaping will naturally leave more ash and crust and kills the flavor in your concentrates.
Some guys, with pride and bravado, think TC is unnecessary. They think they can match/exceed TC performance by timing their button presses. Well, you really can't. Maybe if you use higher than approved watts in VW like 15-20w, you can get the bigger clouds, but you're putting your donut life at serious risk and will be constantly riding the ragged edge of overheating and burning and breaking the donut.
You can set your TC mod to 25w (or 20w) and it gets it right hot right away and backs the watts down to a safe level so you can vape in "idiot proof" mode. Others like fernand and OF prefer 12w in TC. That will keep your vape safe and sound, but I don't like waiting 4 seconds to hit temperature. The benefit of TC @ 12w is not as substantial IMO, and you could almost match this performance with careful button clicking at 12W VW.
Just my opinions here, hope it helps. When I have time, I try to help out you guys who are new to the DT donut and TC mods since I've gotten so much help from some of the other guys here.
I'm thinking here, between me and OF, we are like Matt's hype-man, or forum sidekick, or free customer support reps.