max said:
You can transfer heat to SS, ala the PD, but how would you get plain SS to produce heat?
A piece of stainless steel with the proper electrical resistance could be used.
I still have what I recall was called a Pneuma, a small capped steel tube with an inner tube, with this having two side rods allowing it to connect to a Radio Shack soldering gun. The inner tube is the heating element and composed of metal (austenic steel, as I recall), obviously selected for its resistance value (Ohms/inch), length and probably low mass (e.g., thin vs. thick tube). This was manufactured and sold for a while (mid- 1990s?) by Bob, best known for the Eterra (the predecessor of modern convection vapes, such as the PD and MZ). Press the trigger on the soldering iron, and 25 seconds later it's ready for use as a source of hot air, much the same as any other convection vaporizer (e.g., use the same vapor tubes).
Directly heating metal tubes, plates or other pieces of metal large enough to be a heat exchanger is actually a pretty ideal way of heating air -- theoretically, better than using a resistance heating element to secondarily heat a heat sink/exchanger. So, if this desktop model is actually using stainless steel or other metal that is also serving as the heater, that sounds like an innovation to me.
Otherwise, we could be misinterpreting when they refer to a "stainless steel heating element." This could simply be referring to a cartridge heater, commonly encased in stainless steel. If that is the case, other than fancy design elements, I don't see anything innovative with this vape. In fact, it's rather primitive with an exposed heater mounted within a cylinder (rather than the usual box).
