I don't even move the screen. I have one stem about 5 years old, original screen. Never moved it except to adjust the depth. I scrap out the AVB with the enano tool, blow out what's left, and drop it in a jar of 92% ISO for about 20 seconds, rinse it with hot water and blow the water out. Other than topping off the ISO in the jar, it is the same ISO for 5 years. If I had used Everclear, I'd have a pretty good tincture by now. I think as long you stay on top of it and clean the stem every 4 or 5 uses, you'll never need to do anything else.
I've seen a number of posters who say they dislike the stems because they're so hard to clean. They apparently remove the screen AND the silicon ring each time. Just don't. It tears up the screen and the silicon. A brief ISO immersion won't hurt anything, at least in 5 years. Just get a new stem if a decade of cleaning impacts it.
I like your approach: very minimal. I use Everclear myself, and I had originally hoped to re-use it as tincture, etc. … but it turns out that without my gall bladder, I can't really process edibles, at least as best I can tell. (Neither commercial edibles nor the "tinctures" I've made from ABV / AVB have done much for me.
) But I still use the Everclear on general principles, just in case of any contamination. Plus it's cheap enough: somewhere around $5-8 per bottle, and I only use about a bottle per year for cleaning (and that includes several other vapes, plus tons of glass vials, utensils, etc.).
Lest you think I must have pretty dirty stems: I actually clean pretty often, maybe a three times a week. A bit more bother than your approach, but what I do is this: pop the screen out with my tamper rod, brush it off, then clean the stem by plunging a little folded/rolled half-a-tissue through the stem, after just dipping the end of the roll in Everclear, using the tamper rod again to plunge. The wet end of the roll picks up most of the residue, and the dry end dries behind, along the way, and keeps the tamper rod from getting wet. Less often, I also soak the screens in a vial with salt and Everclear, shake a lot, then rinse. In either case, I then use the tamper rod to re-seat the screen and I'm set to go! (I've never had any problem with the screens being hard to seat/re-seat, even the older "scraggly" ones). I too leave the silicone rings on: they stay tight and stable enough for me to use them to gauge the distance by eye—I've double-checked at times, and I get a surprisingly consistent 13mm from top of screen (cup-style) to the end of the stem, which seems to be optimal for me. (My "cups" start with the herb between 3/4 and full-up-to-the-top-edge, though they sit a bit lower after tamping.)
Getting the tissue roll just right was a bit tricky at first, but now it's just second-nature (if anyone is interested, I could post details … and I'll try not to make an infographic out of it, to everyone's great relief, I'm sure
). I even got a sample dental roll from my dentist once, to try those, but the diameter was off and they have a kind of plastic mesh covering, as it turns out, so not quite as effective.
So my technique is a bit more "fussy" than yours, but I can clean a couple of stems without standing up or leaving my desk, and in about a minute per stem, I think.
Anyway, the point is: there are lots of quick, easy, inexpensive, and effective ways to clean one's Nano stems. In the end, it's the easiest of my vapes to keep sparkly clean, with minimal effort, on a regular basis.
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