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The Wand.
Why: When I first began building the old city vaporizer, I had gotten countless requests and questions on how one can adapt the OCV to be used with an existing water filtration setup. This was generally done through food-grade silicone tubing, or a combination of MacGyvering the mouth end of the vapor stem into the down-stem of your existing glass water filter. Most setups worked great, us vaporists seem to be the tinkering types, but some seemed like they caused more liability to what I consider two relatively expensive tools then it might have been worth.
The original Wand {Mk1}: was an exposed variable temperature heating element with a wooden handle, that was adjusted and 'wanded' over a bowl to ignite or vaporize the herbs. I produced many of these locally and no matter the warning or instruction I gave many found themselves smashing heating elements into there own glassware, laying them in ashtrays during intermittent non-use, and so on. I'm not saying it was impossible to use properly, it was actually simple, it just seemed to work out a certain way. It seemed something could be changed about the construction to give the user a cleaner, safer & more controlled experience. I found it to work great if compared to a replacement for butane heat-source in standard combustion. However, It was lacking the proper foundation for me to consider it a full vaporizer, its design needed to control, it needed accuracy and precision in a more suitable environment. Later additions to The Wand {Mk1} made it more efficient by offering a glass enclosure that 'cupped' or covered the top of a bowl to create a more controlled environment but I knew the methodology and function could be tweaked just a little more in order to get more efficiency out of the unit.
The Wand {Mk2}: is now a fully enclosed vaporizer unit, its methodologies are also safer in juxtaposition to working with a purely open element and the efficiency is now akin to the Old City Vaporizer but only differs in its aesthetics and its methodologies [i.e.- its looks & how ya might use it]. It is also offered in a standard & larger capacity as well. Essentially the only Wanding you will be doing is transferring your unit from its resting stand to the Vapor Stem Adapter that is attached to your existing glassware, but "sits on top and does nothing" doesn't sound as cool as the "The Wand", so I'll just keep the name for now.
The Glass Heating Element Enclosure: The Wand housing is constructed of American made & ground borosilicate glass [COE 33]. I saw cut and flame work each enclosure in-house, each housing gets silk screened glass labels and is annealed in my computer controlled kiln. The housing is completely removable from the heating element, it is also cleanable and autoclavable. This vaporizer is offered in two sizes, our standard capacity 14/23 Vapor Stem Adapter {VSA} and our larger capacity 19/26 VSA. I try to have scientific labeling on all my products, if a customer is unsure or wishes to add something in the future - its as easy as glancing at the connecting side of ground glass joint.
The Heating Element Design: is based on a 120VAC - 30 watt pure alumina ceramic cylindrical heating element. By surrounding the heating element in a titanium heat exchanger [the coil lookin' thing] we have almost doubled the available surface area of materials that are able to transfer heat energy to the incoming air [compared to a stand-alone heating element]. In general, direct-draw vaporizers will have the tendency to create a Venturi Effect as you will be, ceteris paribus, drawing air from the atmosphere into a smaller chamber in hopes of predictably controlling a reaction [vaporization]. According to the laws governing fluid dynamics, a fluid's velocity must increase as it passes through a constriction to satisfy the principle of continuity. We have found that this action has the natural propensity to cause a centrally heated zone in the herbal material, especially in smaller or more isolated herbal chambers. The small amount of resistance caused by air traveling over the coils allows greater pre-mixing of heated air prior to reaching your herbal blends, which limits the potentiality of 'hot spots' or the occurrence of a more centrally-located heat-zone in the herbal chamber. This allows a more thorough penetration of heat due to its slightly increased heat capacity and thermal transfer rate. This 'pre-mixing' is a characteristic akin to the actual physical shape of the coil rather than an inherent attribute to titanium itself. The titanium coil is not the sole of our vaporizer but we believe it has aided in the efficiency of extraction and precision. We believe titanium's wide-use in both medical [because of its bio-compatibility] & aerospace applications has proven it to be a great material in the construction of a quality vaporizer. The titanium heat exchanger is removable & replaceable if you prefer the operation without it (removal when powered off & cooled).
Hello All & Welcome to "The Wand" thread!
I'm back again, wasn't on a hiatus from Old City Diffusers but just from public-life. This is the place I got my start though in 2010, the criticisms {support} I received here help me shape what has become of a series of semi-specialized vaporizers, but all based off very similar parts and platforms. In the long run, there had been many issues and details that I wanted to continually refine until the vaporizers were where I needed them to be and this just took me some time. I still consider all my ideas fluid, there will always be room for change and betterment. I'm more of a behind the scenes kind of guy, I enjoy working with materials and problem solving, and occasionally creating some art. So, I have natural propensity to assume the caveman life with my feverish passions but though this process I'm hoping I can bring into the light some new 'creations'. I always feel like I should explain who I am and what I do but whenever I write out even something from the heart it inevitably feels like a sales pitch, but I digress. I will try to keep this impersonal, so if you want to talk about anything of those matters just send me an email or pm, I'm always down to jibber-jabber with good folk...
The Wand.
Why: When I first began building the old city vaporizer, I had gotten countless requests and questions on how one can adapt the OCV to be used with an existing water filtration setup. This was generally done through food-grade silicone tubing, or a combination of MacGyvering the mouth end of the vapor stem into the down-stem of your existing glass water filter. Most setups worked great, us vaporists seem to be the tinkering types, but some seemed like they caused more liability to what I consider two relatively expensive tools then it might have been worth.
[I personally prefer water filtration in addition to standard direct-draw vaporizing, as it generally removes the harshness to the throat during heavy draws and I have a strong preference for art glass, its a beautiful craft.]
The original Wand {Mk1}: was an exposed variable temperature heating element with a wooden handle, that was adjusted and 'wanded' over a bowl to ignite or vaporize the herbs. I produced many of these locally and no matter the warning or instruction I gave many found themselves smashing heating elements into there own glassware, laying them in ashtrays during intermittent non-use, and so on. I'm not saying it was impossible to use properly, it was actually simple, it just seemed to work out a certain way. It seemed something could be changed about the construction to give the user a cleaner, safer & more controlled experience. I found it to work great if compared to a replacement for butane heat-source in standard combustion. However, It was lacking the proper foundation for me to consider it a full vaporizer, its design needed to control, it needed accuracy and precision in a more suitable environment. Later additions to The Wand {Mk1} made it more efficient by offering a glass enclosure that 'cupped' or covered the top of a bowl to create a more controlled environment but I knew the methodology and function could be tweaked just a little more in order to get more efficiency out of the unit.
The Wand {Mk2}: is now a fully enclosed vaporizer unit, its methodologies are also safer in juxtaposition to working with a purely open element and the efficiency is now akin to the Old City Vaporizer but only differs in its aesthetics and its methodologies [i.e.- its looks & how ya might use it]. It is also offered in a standard & larger capacity as well. Essentially the only Wanding you will be doing is transferring your unit from its resting stand to the Vapor Stem Adapter that is attached to your existing glassware, but "sits on top and does nothing" doesn't sound as cool as the "The Wand", so I'll just keep the name for now.
The Glass Heating Element Enclosure: The Wand housing is constructed of American made & ground borosilicate glass [COE 33]. I saw cut and flame work each enclosure in-house, each housing gets silk screened glass labels and is annealed in my computer controlled kiln. The housing is completely removable from the heating element, it is also cleanable and autoclavable. This vaporizer is offered in two sizes, our standard capacity 14/23 Vapor Stem Adapter {VSA} and our larger capacity 19/26 VSA. I try to have scientific labeling on all my products, if a customer is unsure or wishes to add something in the future - its as easy as glancing at the connecting side of ground glass joint.
Influences on enclosure design: Well its a bit odd. Over the years I have become increasingly interested in functional glass art. I got to thinking that combustion is sometimes stuck retroactively trying to make something a 'better' or more objectively a different experience brought about by the infusion of water, diffusion of smoke, all swirled, mixed and recycled in this great symphony, I admired that. It got me thinking, what can I do to mix things up? I started to do 'smoke tests' to see how the air was traveling in through the orifice of my heating element enclosure and to see how it exited through the vapor tube. What I was seeing was a propensity for the smoke to cluster together in a stream inside the unit. With the addition of the titanium coil I was able to manipulate the flow of incoming air with the shape of the coil and with the thermal properties analogous to titanium it lent well to transferring the heat to the incoming air more efficiently due to its increased exposed surface area. The titanium will reach an equilibrium with the ceramic heating element as you adjust the power and will act as an extension of the element itself.
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and ease my suffering 
