Figured I'd start this thread to facilitate discussion on a little something I've been working on. Many thanks to those who have already been following me along with this project, I really appreciate all the kind-hearted support, FC has always been an incredible place that many of us call home, and I couldn't think of a better spot to talk about my vaporizer designs.
I first started fiddling with this idea in 2017, after experimenting with aftermarket glass bowls for my Flowerpot, I was very intrigued with the smoother vapor from such a seemingly minor change. I wondered how the vapor would differ if the entire thing was made of glass. During this same time, the Glass Symphony was making strides here on FC, I was always impressed with Jojo's pure design, but always a little bit nervous of the form factor, unfortunately I never had a chance to try that awesome vape.
I sketched out a bunch of different concepts, attempting to condense the purity of the Glass Symphony into the size of a Flowerpot. The thing about glass is certain things that are easy to do with metal, are difficult to do with glass. One of my main problems was figuring out how to securely fasten the coil to a glass vape - the Flowerpot uses a screw and nut system to secure the coil, but to make something like that out of glass could be extremely cost prohibitive. This coil mounting issue stumped me for quite a while and I somewhat lost interest in the project for some time. In fact, after doing some beta testing for Dabpress, I pretty much lost interest in vaping flower altogether, transitioning full-time into dabbing rosin. I was greatly impressed with how affordable and commonplace it was when dabbing to have an all glass air path, for years it's pretty much been standard, and I found that smooth vapor hard to beat.
The thing about rosin is if the flower doesn't yield particularly well, you can end up vaping a weeks worth of herb in one afternoon... I knew I wasn't done with rosin, but I needed a way to vape flower again for those economic times that demand conservation! Largely inspired by the simple quartz banger, I tried to come up with a conversion kit that would work with my existing e-nail setup and turn it into a dry herb convection powerhouse. The problem with that idea is a quartz banger primarily uses conduction to vaporize oils, because of that, the airflow routing is not really optimal for convection. Inspired by Buildozer and Stu's Evo On A Stick thread, I built and posted my first sapphire powered prototype, fitted inside a simple male to male glass adapter, and heated with a 25mm barrel coil I was using for my banger. I started sketching vaporizer concepts again, wondering if there was an exsiting product I could already use for inspiration? I looked through a ton of lab glass and smoking glass apparatuses for anything promising and landed on the carbon filter adapter, a smoking accessory which uses activated carbon processed from coconut husks to filter the smoke.
The carbon filter adapter seemed like a great candidate for a heater housing, and for a while I strongly considered that as my new starting platform. The only issue with that was...
I took more inspiration from my dab rig, after a particularly inspiring dab
I looked over at my enail and thought "what if I had a rod attached horizontally to secure the coil, just like my enail setup." This was a major pivotal point for this design, finally I felt like I was on to something. Even more progress was made when I changed that rod to a tube, this could double as the coil arm and the air inlet - another issue I was trying to figure out. With this new design I could eliminate the old carbon filter concept entirely, saving almost an inch in height just by removing that extra glass joint which would be at the top of the carbon filter.
A few prototypes later and I've finally got something that I feel worthy of sharing, I'm still working out a few more little details and finishing touches, but I really just wanted to put myself out there (something I really struggle at) and share my work thus far.
If you've read this far I sincerely appreciate your patience and your time, thank you so much for following along!
I'd like to present a little video clip of a quick vapor session - I've since made a small modification which I believe improves performance further and I'm excited to share more about that!
I hope to post more usage videos, photos, theories, concepts, and renderings here and hope you'll follow along for the ride.
Much love, FC!
I first started fiddling with this idea in 2017, after experimenting with aftermarket glass bowls for my Flowerpot, I was very intrigued with the smoother vapor from such a seemingly minor change. I wondered how the vapor would differ if the entire thing was made of glass. During this same time, the Glass Symphony was making strides here on FC, I was always impressed with Jojo's pure design, but always a little bit nervous of the form factor, unfortunately I never had a chance to try that awesome vape.
I sketched out a bunch of different concepts, attempting to condense the purity of the Glass Symphony into the size of a Flowerpot. The thing about glass is certain things that are easy to do with metal, are difficult to do with glass. One of my main problems was figuring out how to securely fasten the coil to a glass vape - the Flowerpot uses a screw and nut system to secure the coil, but to make something like that out of glass could be extremely cost prohibitive. This coil mounting issue stumped me for quite a while and I somewhat lost interest in the project for some time. In fact, after doing some beta testing for Dabpress, I pretty much lost interest in vaping flower altogether, transitioning full-time into dabbing rosin. I was greatly impressed with how affordable and commonplace it was when dabbing to have an all glass air path, for years it's pretty much been standard, and I found that smooth vapor hard to beat.
The thing about rosin is if the flower doesn't yield particularly well, you can end up vaping a weeks worth of herb in one afternoon... I knew I wasn't done with rosin, but I needed a way to vape flower again for those economic times that demand conservation! Largely inspired by the simple quartz banger, I tried to come up with a conversion kit that would work with my existing e-nail setup and turn it into a dry herb convection powerhouse. The problem with that idea is a quartz banger primarily uses conduction to vaporize oils, because of that, the airflow routing is not really optimal for convection. Inspired by Buildozer and Stu's Evo On A Stick thread, I built and posted my first sapphire powered prototype, fitted inside a simple male to male glass adapter, and heated with a 25mm barrel coil I was using for my banger. I started sketching vaporizer concepts again, wondering if there was an exsiting product I could already use for inspiration? I looked through a ton of lab glass and smoking glass apparatuses for anything promising and landed on the carbon filter adapter, a smoking accessory which uses activated carbon processed from coconut husks to filter the smoke.
The carbon filter adapter seemed like a great candidate for a heater housing, and for a while I strongly considered that as my new starting platform. The only issue with that was...
- How was I going to mount the coil to the heater? I knew from my experiences with quartz bangers if a coil was fitted too tight, it could crack the glass on the cool-down as the coil contracts.
- If a pre-existing carbon filter wasn't the perfect diameter as-is, then I'd probably have to source a custom heater. The problem with that is I knew wanted to use an existing coil to keep things simple. KISS!
I took more inspiration from my dab rig, after a particularly inspiring dab
I looked over at my enail and thought "what if I had a rod attached horizontally to secure the coil, just like my enail setup." This was a major pivotal point for this design, finally I felt like I was on to something. Even more progress was made when I changed that rod to a tube, this could double as the coil arm and the air inlet - another issue I was trying to figure out. With this new design I could eliminate the old carbon filter concept entirely, saving almost an inch in height just by removing that extra glass joint which would be at the top of the carbon filter.A few prototypes later and I've finally got something that I feel worthy of sharing, I'm still working out a few more little details and finishing touches, but I really just wanted to put myself out there (something I really struggle at) and share my work thus far.
If you've read this far I sincerely appreciate your patience and your time, thank you so much for following along!
I'd like to present a little video clip of a quick vapor session - I've since made a small modification which I believe improves performance further and I'm excited to share more about that!
I hope to post more usage videos, photos, theories, concepts, and renderings here and hope you'll follow along for the ride.
Much love, FC!
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this post is gonna be kinda long so you might wanna load the vape. 
But seriously, I'm curious how many people would be interested in a true 100% glass bowl with a glass screen that actually works for ground herb, assuming that there might be a little bit more draw restriction, and you might need somewhat of a more course grind? It would work for a lot of other vapes that use the same 18F connection so I figure that's a plus, maybe herborizer or elev8r peeps or whatever might want one too? 
!
That's my new "holy grail" - 
but the low yield makes it extremely difficult to be more than a rare treat for me. I always liked raw flower, it's just the convection wear and tear that always caught up to me! I'm trying pretty hard with this one, but still getting nothing but smooth vapor! 
Kinda trips me out honestly, especially since I'm mostly using my small oil rig for glass.
various wax pen concepts, Quartz concentrate adapter for Arizer vapes, mini rosin press idea, a butane powered vape, oh yeah, sapphire inserts for quartz bangers... In 2017 I came up with the idea of using a sapphire wafer to cover the floor of a quartz banger cause I wanted the purity of a Sapphire Halo without the titanium base... Gosh I'm an idiot for not seeing that one through, I could be selling $1000 inserts 
). I can see how a ready to go, right out of the box, all glass dry herb vape would be very desirable.
