I've refrained from posting much here since the product launch, as I got an embarrassing confession to make: in the end I missed the boat because I waited too much (I was concerned it would be delivered when I was away) and it turned eventually out of stock... and well, since then I must admit I'm really concerned by everything I've been reading afterwards.
This was supposed to be a finished product, but I feel I'm teleported back in time to the early BULLI and Project days! And oh boy did we hack and tinker back then in the DIY section! But that's absolutely not what I expected to find in there.
Some users, and I don't blame them, everyone has to start somewhere, seem to be completely clueless about all the subtleties and practicalities of those bloody 510 attys and their myriads of mods, firmware and what not, as well as the art and pitfalls of coil crafting. I see the same attempts and mistakes repeated again, but that's perhaps because we failed to direct them to the right sources of knowledge. It's all there on the forum, albeit sadly scattered in many places and in a not very easy to digest form...
First we got the mandatory Lithium battery safety thread >>
https://fuckcombustion.com/threads/18650-battery-safety.18527/ ... Never forget how dangerous these cells can be. And if you start moding your coil(s), never ever do that on unregulated mods (ex: mech mods or using a mod in bypass mode) You really need to have over-current and short-circuit protections in place.
If you switch materials, be very careful if you use Nickel wire, many people can develop a sensitivity to it, and never ever use Titanium in power mode, this metal should be used in TC mode only. It vaporizes explosively and you really don't want to inhale those fumes.
Then we got a good resource about Mods, firmware and settings in the form of this thread >>
https://fuckcombustion.com/threads/tc-box-mods-firmware-discussions-and-customizing.23742/
For those using single cell mods, do not exceed 50W unless you are really using special high discharge rate cells (i.e. higher CDR than the usual 25R/HE4/VTC5 and much higher than the 30Q/HG2/VTC6 etc) You'll be putting a lot of stress on your cell, shortening its service life and making it run hot etc. Plus 50W is already a lot of power. If you really need more, use a dual-cell mod.
For those interested in the history of how we got there with refurbished e-cigarette gear, the threads of interest in chronological order would be:
BULLI,
the Project (in the DIY section), then
Splinter and
iHeat (sharing a thorny common history),
Stempod,
the Glow,
the Imp then
Impcognito,
Musa 510,
the SHAMMER more recently... and of course the
Herbie v1. I probably forgot some, but those were the major stepping stones for 510 dry herbs vaping. The concentrates vapes took a parallel route with notably the
Divine Tribe range and the
Saionara.
(sorry I'm lazy those are not links but a search using the keywords in bold restricted to thread titles should find them easily)
If I were to give you just a few pieces of advice for the Herbie v2, it would be:
1) in power mode you don't need a lot of Watts, 20-30W is plenty already. The more you use, the harder it will be to control. You will have to feather the trigger exactly like on the Milaana/MistVapeTouch/etc. In theory you should find a sweet spot where the temperature rise is exactly countered by the drop induced by your draw, allowing you to keep the trigger engaged the whole way without charring.
2) TC mode is utter crap by default on most mods excepted DNA ones. Installing a custom firmware does not fix that until you manually enable PI(D) control which is often disabled by default (excepted maybe in tubo_evic) In all cases you will have to tweak the values as the ones good for e-cig or the ones in tubo_evic are for different devices than yours.
3) do not try using the old finer SS mesh like you can find on fasttech etc, it can self-vaporize partially in no time and again you don't want to inhale that deeply. You need beefy wire, be it mesh or simple coils. Current will slowly eat away fine strands and that's not good. SS316L 20awg is a good choice, 18awg is harder to form and requires more space, 22awg works too. If you want to go Nickel-free you can test SS430.
4) contact resistance is a bitch, and even more with woven meshes. For TC to work properly, you need a rock-solid reading. Clamp your coils/mesh hard. Lock your resistance value on a cold mod at room temperature. Hammering down (literally) your mesh before folding it can improve the strand to strand contact resistance somewhat, but overall it will be harder to TC than standard coils. The 510 center pin to mod connection is also very important. Clean your contacts thoroughly and don't swap attys too often.
5) keep experimenting! Good luck!
