Induction Dabbing

[hardboiledfrog]

First off thanks to all for your amazing contributions to the cannabis community, I have learned a lot from all of your forum posts.

I love dabbing concentrates but I wasn't thrilled with using a blazing torch in my livingroom or tripping over e-nail wires as I am often clumsy.
Plus e-nail setups are kind of a kludge and you have to plug them in.

I'm a tekkie and I have some experience with pcb design so I designed a small Zero Voltage Switching driver based on an open source circuit I found here:
https://markobakula.wordpress.com/power-electronics/500w-royer-induction-heater
Thanks Marko!

The board is glued to a 2" x 1" aluminum disc heatsink with thermal epoxy and bolted to a tank circuit of multiple 1uF caps and a work coil which makes up an induction heating module.

The module and a lithium battery pack can fit in a flashlight form factor. With 4 26650 size cells it can do over 700 watts, with the smaller 18650 cells about 300 watts.
The caveat is a short duty cycle since there is no water cooling for the work coil and mosfets plus it's a very high current drain on the battery pack. And of course it only works with metallic nails.
This works out pretty good though for soldering, brazing, and heat treating small parts and tool bits.
And my favorite application, dabbing. I've been dabbing with these and various prototypes daily (when I'm not out of dabs ) for over 3 1/2 years and loving it.
No flames, no leaky torches, much less of a fire hazard, no running out of butane in the wee hours of the morning and it's portable.

Here's my youtube channel showing a modifed Sky Ray King flashlight and flashlight host body I machined from common aluminum pipe. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXQuHq1qPXiN0dIDZ4BBZw

This is open source, the pcb design files (in Kicad format) and BOM with part sources are hosted on github here:
https://github.com/hardboiledfrog/smt-zvs-driver
imgur album:
https://imgur.com/a/7MlHF

I hope that other tekkies and diyers will give this a try and find it as useful as I have.
And be sure to exercise all the applicable safety precautions that apply to induction heating and lithium batteries.

Regards,
hbf

 

[heady blunts]

whoa! love it!

 

[HellsWindStaff]

That is awesome!

 

[Melting Pot]

Can you shape coils?
Might be an awesome heater for supreme v3

 

[hardboiledfrog]

Yes you can shape the work coil somewhat. I wasn't familiar with the supreme but after looking it up I would take a different approach. I have thought about vaporizer applications before and would go with a coiled titanium tube as the work piece, possibly stuffed with rolled titanium mesh if more resistance was needed in the air path.
Personally I don't like aluminum in the air path and it's not a good load for induction heating as it's too conductive.

 

[Jaydubya710]

Ok so first and foremost I don't have the know how to do this. I have been searching for a home heater for my Dynavap Vapcap (if your not familiar take a quick look in portables, pretty simple concept) and my search keeps bringing me back to that induction coil. But with the vapcap we need much less heat than a nail. Could this be scaled back and or sized down. Also since I'm obviously not building one myself, what kinda price would I be looking at in just parts?

 

[hardboiledfrog]

I'm not familiar with the vapcap but from what I can gleam from their website I would advise not using an induction heater due to their temperature indicator mechanism and all of the warnings against over heating.

That said the induction coil could be scaled down in power easier than scaling up. It would have no problem heating the metal caps, and with the proper work coil and tank design it could heat just the metal cap and not penetrate deep enough to mess up the clicker. I would consult with the maker of the vapcap first.

There's a Bill Of Material on github with single piece part price estimates.
With a battery pack but not a charger, about $150.