Couple things justcametomind ...
1. For cleaning, I make sure to quickly brush/wipe down the top with a little piece of paper towel and the chamber after each chamber full (thus keeping it almost perfectly clean as far as screen clogging and surface residue). As for the buildup in the cone, that's normal with pretty much all vaporizers and the cone does, I've noticed, do a good job of trapping most of the resin and not as much goes far into any tube/attachment that is connected. To clean the cone, simply poke out the screen, and clean in ISO (I use 99% as it's readily available). You can either do a short soak or just wipe them down with a dampened paper towel (roll up to get into the cone, corners, etc). To clean the main chamber, that's a little more complicated. You have to remove the main tube inside the chamber. They recommend using a teaspoon to "lift" it out ... I scratched mine up a little doing this the first time but it is a little easier now so haven't done further damage (replacement tubes/cones/etc will be available for purchase shortly if you look at the posts above). Under the main tube, there is the screen, then another ring the same diameter as the tube but only maybe a 1/4" thick, and underneath that 2 screens; a coarser than finer mesh one before the heater etc. All screens, and Teflon tubes/rings/etc can be removed and soaked in ISO although I really find that the bottom screen and chamber stay pretty clean so that I'll probably only do maybe once a week if I was using this vape exclusively (and I vape about 2-2.5g/day so that would be after vaping lets say 14-17.5g I'd clean the chamber whereas I'll clean the cone and silicone tube or GonG attachment or whatever I have connected to the top probably every 2 days (I'm super OCD about my cleaning though
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2. For your heatup/blinking issues ... this is what I do. Start your unit at green, and let it heat up until it goes solid (you can load your cannabis at any time as it doesn't heat up to much in the chamber prior to starting your inhale ... at least not to the point where you are losing the THC I wouldn't think ... I can stick my finger in the chamber when the units on without burning myself although I don't endorse this
). After my unit goes solid green, I'll turn it up to red for 30-60 sec to let it heat a little more because from cool I especially find the green a little cooler than I like. If you want much more dense vapor for milking through water then you might want to let it heat to red (and I find if you drop to green before, inhaling your flavor will remain better than just leaving it at red). Using this method, I usually will vape a chamber of .15-.2 in 2-5 hits depending how hot the unit is ... how much CBD I want to get (ie. higher temp cannabinoids) or if I just want the cleaner more awake/active buzz ... and whether I've preheated to red, or just green. Does that help at all? I feel I've been rambling a little ...
Anyways ... I really like my MiniVAP ... I do wish I had some temps between green and red ... but hopefully that will come or maybe just the silicone cone or the stainless decarbox ring will make the difference (the stainless decarbox ring will add some conduction to this vape so it might sacrifice some of the quality of the taste though ... hmmm ....)
(Please hire me. I am really good at electronics.)
I'd love to be able to help with the firmware programming/re-flashing as well ... it would be nice to spend some programming time on something fun like this as opposed to mainly just working on software for large business/enterprise (not that I don't enjoy that too ... but it would be nice to couple it with something else I'm quite passionate about
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