Discontinued Pax Vaporizer by Ploom

[skippy]

I've just emailed australianvaporizers, asking them to inform me when they'll be stocking the Pax (and the Inhalater INH004). When I receive a reply, I'll post their answer. Meanwhile, I trust our lucky American and Canadian fellow vaporizer aficionados will spare a thought for us back-of-the-queue Aussies and Kiwis down-under.

Ubie Inavap iolite MFLB Arizer Solo

Mate I pulled this post from way back on page 26 and wanted to know if we can get it In OZ yet? Also anyone know just how little you need to load to get a good hit? I use a MFLB, I love it but this thing looks pretty good and from the feedback of the fist 20 odd pages I think I might like one of these myself.

 

[Hai_Rypo_T'head]

Mate I pulled this post from way back on page 26 and wanted to know if we can get it In OZ yet? Also anyone know just how little you need to load to get a good hit? I use a MFLB, I love it but this thing looks pretty good and from the feedback of the fist 20 odd pages I think I might like one of these myself.

Hi Skippy, I don't think australianvaporizers.com.au are stocking the Pax or the INH004 – yet. A Kiwi guy, FC name 'Elvis', got a Pax through a US forwarding service, www.shipito.com. You'll also need a voltage converter. There's more voltage info a few weeks back in this forum.

After reading posts on this forum and the Inhalater forum, I'm about to head back to the Inhalater forum to re-read what Centizen and others had to say in response to a recent post of mine. And then I'll probably order one, through a recommended guy called Taylor.

Happy vaping from Pacific Palms NSW

 

[willieR]

Do these batteries have solderable ends? Designed to take a solder joint? I realize the mod is compression connections, but in general just wondering if they can be soldered or if they ned a spot weld

 

[Espo]

That's awesome you guys are replacing the battery with a larger one! If I didn't want to keep the 10-year warranty I'd do it to mine. But honestly I have yet to get my Pax blinking red.

Only way I'll do this is if buy a second Pax and try a battery swap, just to have a 'modded Pax'.

 

[dudeeitsbrian]

Do these batteries have solderable ends? Designed to take a solder joint? I realize the mod is compression connections, but in general just wondering if they can be soldered or if they ned a spot weld

the battery i used had no solder tabs, as you do not need to solder to the battery at all

edit:
also, i want to recommend to anyone who performs this mod that they solder the battery spring onto the negative wire in your pax, i accidentally put it on the positive end and the results were not that great.

also, my guide should not necessarily be taken word for word; i made it while i was extremely medicated and there could be better ways of doing things that i didn't think of at the time, i simply created the tutorial as a guide for those who have absolutely no idea what to do and don't want to go in blindly (like i did ).

edit 2:
i have changed what i did slightly as i have had charging issues since performing the mod, however i'm not ruling out that my charger base caused the charging problem as i've had periodic problems with it since getting my pax, think i just fixed that too though.

one of the contacts on the charger base was slightly off-center, all i did was take some needle nose pliers and sort of bent it back in the correct direction. before when i would put my pax on the base and twist it side to side the orange light would flicker on and off, now it doesn't do that at all.

 

[JoeKickass]

in general just wondering if they can be soldered or if they ned a spot weld

Soldering to batteries is tricky, you need flux and a good iron. Preferably adjustable, and you want to turn your iron all the way up. You have to solder in cycles, you can only keep the iron on the battery for a second or two before you start transferring too much heat, so you need make sure it's hot enough to fully melt the solder quickly. I would recommend some other way if you haven't soldered a lot.


On a side note, I had a feeling the Pax was flashing red when the battery wasn't that low, so this morning when I clicked mine on and it flashed red (used it a lot yesterday) I opened it up and checked the voltage:
3.64V

And if you look at this graph of the ncr18650b, I think the Pax is pretty close to the dark blue line:

But remember we get cut off at 3.64v, 80 minutes, pretty much exactly what I got out of mine...

So it's a shame we can't get the full 3 hours out of the battery, but at least keeping it more than 50% full will prolong the battery life!

If someone else has a voltmeter and feels comfortable opening their Pax, if you want to check your voltage when it flashes red and won't turn on I would definitely appreciate some verification!

If mine just cuts out early it might tempt me to get another Pax...

 

[CentiZen]

Do these batteries have solderable ends? Designed to take a solder joint? I realize the mod is compression connections, but in general just wondering if they can be soldered or if they ned a spot weld

In my experience solder just doesn't work very well. You can get it to stick if you clean, sand, and flux the area's really well but it breaks off easy; plus the battery will explode if you apply heat for too long. You really need to have some sort of spot welder, be it home made or legit. I'm in that dilemma right now since I need to find a way to spot weld the tabs for my new pack project.

 

[559stonerr]

well this is a tad bit annoying "okay so the onyx pax additional inventory should be coming in and ready to ship by the end of the week"

 

[JoeKickass]

In my experience solder just doesn't work very well. You can get it to stick if you clean, sand, and flux the area's really well but it breaks off easy; plus the battery will explode if you apply heat for too long. You really need to have some sort of spot welder, be it home made or legit. I'm in that dilemma right now since I need to find a way to spot weld the tabs for my new pack project.

It's a bit counter-intuitive but I think you need a hotter iron, usually when the joint breaks it's because it didn't get hot enough and different areas of the solder never fully bonded. You can make a good connection quickly if your iron is hot enough, and because you do it quickly you don't transfer as much heat as a cooler iron held for longer.

 

[dudeeitsbrian]

since performing the user-swappable battery mod, my pax will not show above the yellow battery status. @JoeKickass, you seem to be quite good at soldering, do you think i could have a poor solder point that is causing allowing less voltage to pass through at a time? please let me know, i know next to nothing about batterys/electronics.

other notes: still performs just fine, just as if i never performed the mod, just won't give a green battery status even when it shows green on the charger base.

 

[JoeKickass]

since performing the user-swappable battery mod, my pax will not show above the yellow battery status. @JoeKickass, you seem to be quite good at soldering, do you think i could have a poor solder point that is causing less voltage to pass through at a time? please let me know, i know next to nothing about batterys/electronics.

other notes: still performs just fine, just as if i never performed the mod, just won't give a green battery status even when it shows green on the charger base.

If it heats up well enough, it should be reading the full battery voltage, do you have a voltmeter? You could try charging it to green, then open it up to see if it went to the full 4.2v

The other thing is, you mentioned your battery was low when you first got it, if it was too low it might have been damaged, but you should notice that it wouldn't last as long between charges. Does it spend most of the time on yellow or red?

 

[dudeeitsbrian]

If it heats up well enough, it should be reading the full battery voltage, do you have a voltmeter? You could try charging it to green, then open it up to see if it went to the full 4.2v

The other thing is, you mentioned your battery was low when you first got it, if it was too low it might have been damaged, but you should notice that it wouldn't last as long between charges. Does it spend most of the time on yellow or red?

not sure yet, haven't got enough time to test it, however when it was soldered in it charged up to green when shaken on the first try.

also, i don't have a voltmeter. i will continue using it without charging it up throughout the day and see how long it stays on yellow/red for.

in either case, if the battery is damaged it doesn't matter because i've ordered a couple NCR18650B's off ebay, they were extremely fucking expensive and claim to be "new", easy to get my money back if they have been used

so i'll know in a few days when i get the batteries whether or not its my wiring or the battery, or something else completely unrelated. or maybe a couple weeks.... pretty sure the batteries are coming from somewhere in europe/asia. doesn't matter though, i'll have a brand new cobalt pax to play with tomorrow, so theres that to look forward to

edit: come to think about it, the battery life when soldered in was quite poor. in fact yesterday it went from green to yellow in the same amount of time it took for the stock 2600mAh battery to go yellow, then once it was red it died within 2 sessions for a grand total of like ~50 minutes of usage.

after 2 good long sessions battery still showing as yellow, i think i'm just gonna go buy a cheap voltmeter from lowes....

edit 2:
battery showing as red now, in order to rule out the battery as being the problem i'm going to put in the stock battery and charge it up.

 

[willieR]

THanks for keeping us in the loop guys.

 

[mattstermh]

So my temperature button was stuck up, and now it is stuck pushed down. I just want it it work properly.

 

[jambandphan03]

hoping to wake up and find some kind of info from Ploom waiting in my email, still nothing... placed my order Sat night, sent them an email asking about it's status yesterday, so hoping to hear something... I wish I had found this a bit sooner, before the stock was all sold out. Looks like temp buttons sticking is one of the main issues here. It it because it's so close to the air path?? is it getting resin building up on it?

 

[willieR]

Temp buttons and mouthpiece issues

 

[dudeeitsbrian]

hoping to wake up and find some kind of info from Ploom waiting in my email, still nothing... placed my order Sat night, sent them an email asking about it's status yesterday, so hoping to hear something... I wish I had found this a bit sooner, before the stock was all sold out. Looks like temp buttons sticking is one of the main issues here. It it because it's so close to the air path?? is it getting resin building up on it?

no, it doesn't build up resin in that area (at least in my experience). the sticking button happens when you get iso alcohol in it, and is easily fixed by scraping around the edges of it with a knife/razor and wobbling the button back and forth carefully (it has happened to me one time, hasn't happened again since).

instead of using iso to clean the vapor path, why not just clean the device with a pipe cleaner when its hot so you don't even need to use iso in the vapor path, then just scrub down the oven with iso, soak mouthpiece and screen, whipe down oven lid and you're good to go.

 

[willieR]

Is there a good pipe cleaner available in the world? The ones sold for crafts are awful

 

[JDSupreme]

Is there a good pipe cleaner available in the world? The ones sold for crafts are awful

lol I bought the awful craft ones too, then I got these...

 

[dudeeitsbrian]

i just use the awful crafts ones, but they're not so awful? cheap, effective, both things i like

i bend one in half and floss the hell out of my pax with it, works great.

edit: my pax just finished charging with the user replaceable battery mod and stock battery, indicator light is showing as GREEN

looks like the mod worked and the battery i purchased was bad, go figure, i thought i screwed something up

now i need to test to see how long the battery lasts with the mod to see if there is a difference between user replaceable and soldered in battery in terms of battery life.

video:

 

[JoeKickass]

i've ordered a couple NCR18650B's off ebay, they were extremely fucking expensive and claim to be "new", easy to get my money back if they have been used

Yup that they are... I bought mine from: http://www.cnqualitygoods.com/goods.php?id=1624

Battery cost $10, but express shipping from China was $20 extra and took a week lol

now i need to test to see how long the battery lasts with the mod to see if there is a difference between user replaceable and soldered in battery in terms of battery life.

There should be very little difference as long as you have shiny metal pressing against the battery

 

[jambandphan03]

is this a good find? http://www.airyear.com/panasonic-36-v-3100-mah-18650-battery-green-p-31723.html says free worldwide shipping, guessing it's over seas, might be slow, they take paypal.

 

[559stonerr]

hoping to wake up and find some kind of info from Ploom waiting in my email, still nothing... placed my order Sat night, sent them an email asking about it's status yesterday, so hoping to hear something... I wish I had found this a bit sooner, before the stock was all sold out. Looks like temp buttons sticking is one of the main issues here. It it because it's so close to the air path?? is it getting resin building up on it?

i emailed them yesterday and never heard a reply.. i chatted with them through their website. maybe try that.. i wont be getting mine till around monday...this is for onyx

 

[jambandphan03]

excellent suggestion 559, I chatted and found out mine shipped yesterday. Still is not in the USPS system yet, so it might still be a few days, but at least I know it's not backordered. Very relieved.

 

[JDSupreme]

i just use the awful crafts ones, but they're not so awful? cheap, effective, both things i like

i bend one in half and floss the hell out of my pax with it, works great.

the ones i got from wally world started shedding when i ran one through my fingers lol