Do you perhaps have some method within the vaporizer’s body to capture "the silent killer” before it reaches the herbs?
Using pure butane is not at all a solution. Butane does indeed produce water vapor and CO2 when combusted, but that's only true when enough oxygen is introduced, which is not the case with non-torch lighters that release the butane slowly.
The yellow flame is the easy indicator, pure butane burns blue. When not enough oxygens is introduced, soot (pure, carcinogenic carbon) and carbon monoxide are produced.
I have seen users mention this issue in the Odyssey thread, but it was never addressed....
Once it is established there is some filter (even if regularly replaceable), I'll probably be getting one myself
Sorry for not seeing your post sooner, things have been hectic at MagicStone. I appreciate your asking and will give you the most forthright answer I can. First, we haven’t sanctioned any scientific research regarding trace carbon from using the butane lighter, but we absolutely understand why some vape users have real considerations as to any potential compromise of purity.
From a simple process standpoint, after the warm air from the flame is drawn through the stone intake, it passes through a stainless steel mesh filter and then the cannabis before releasing the non-combusted essence into the mouthpiece. Regarding any soot, we have run a white cotton pipe cleaner through the draw lines of Odysseys & Alchemys that have had dozens of baskets and months of use with no other cleaning, and they come out without any hint of visible soot or residue beyond a bit of green kief (which is all that builds up in the stone chamber over time. You can leave that or wipe it off occasionally.)
With this conversation in mind, I can tell you that we've had some new prototypes made with a finer double mesh filter on the basket that holds the flower (below and surrounding), and we are just testing them.
We know and appreciate that FC forum users tend to be vape devotees/experts, and we totally respect their input and experience with virtually every non-combustible cannabis device on the planet. We developed the Odyssey and Alchemy as “hybrid” instruments, knowing that the whole concept of a real-time, direct-light, stone instrument is very different with different considerations, depending on the user.
For some context:
In all of our initial research and development of MagicStone instruments, discussing the concept with virtually every demographic of cannabis user, we started with a couple of basic questions:
How do you currently use cannabis? - for people who use flower the answer was almost always, “I use a bong, a one hitter, roll joints, etc.”
When we asked those people if they had used a dried flower vaporizer, many of them had, and many of them owned one but didn’t use it.
When we asked them why they didn’t use it, the answers ran the gamut of, “I don’t like batteries”, “too much maintenance”, “too complex”, “takes too long”, “I don’t like to wait”, “I can’t get a good enough hit”…and so on.
Obviously we’re happy that our no maintenance, convection instrument that lights like a pipe, and can be used simply and whenever you want, is enabling a lot of cannabis users to eliminate most all of the bad things related to burning and inhaling smoke.
Hey, there’s some degree of compromise with any cannabis use, and what we can say is that once you have the basic technique, it's easy, and fast to get clean and tasty hits that can range from terp hits to big billowy hits without ever combusting your flower with a MagicStone instrument. It’s all a personal choice.