'Puffing on it lightly' is the only way you'll get a strong hit. Very lightly indeed. Pull harder and you'll pull cold air in and stall it out like with MFLB. Please try this test:
From cold fire it off holding the base of the cart with thumb and forefinger of the other hand. At 10 to 15 seconds out you should go through 'I think it's getting hotter' to 'yes, it's getting hotter' to 'wow, this thing can really heat up hot' in about as much time as it takes to read. Maybe 4 or 5 seconds until you're ready to abort. At that point, full production is going on, you should be able to start drawing it off over maybe the next ten seconds.
Anyway, how fast is yours heating? Does it follow that pattern?
Another thought is charge weight. I'm thinking you need something close to .25 grams of oil in there (from clean) before it's 'conditioned' uniformly inside. From cold I load 100 mg and try it before adding another 50. At that point I usually get some fair production and hit it a few times and add another 50, melt it in and consider it 'ready to go'. In testing I've done this a dozen times or more in the last few months, it seems like a good guideline to me. This is using good grade wax or oil.
How much (in weight) are you loading?
OF
I too have been having what sounds like this exact problem.
It started with a normal REV and would not seem to work. Symptoms sound the same as Darb.
Now that particular REV went bad and sent back to TV for replacement. Unfortunately they sent me a LV as the replacement. I am expecting a proper replacement soon. Now I had the LV and lots of 3.7 volt batteries so figured WTF and proceeded to try it. Using the same lube as before I got into the same bind where only whisps while heating and diddly when try to take in. All indicators seemed like the dam thing just wasn't getting hot enough. Although both units gave nice glow before adding the lube. BTW, it is just cheap ISO oil.
Well as this LV was basically a freeby and I really don't what to be switching batteries around, figured time to play. My thinking was either the unit was stamped wrong with the LV stamp and was indeed running too cold OR the oil was just gumming it up causing element not to heat. I had already went through the cleaning boiling etc with the first unit and know this one was not flooded but had lots of lube. (at least it looked that way) So far with both units I was down 750 mg of lube and only a head ache from pulling gentle, hard, upside down, one hand behind my back, etc.
So I used my variable power supply to sneak up the volts a bit. At 5.3 volts I got it pulling nicely.
Finially it was working. Did not want to push my luck.
So this is where I was really confused,
Working nicely at what I would consider a little too much current. 3 Amp. Also, was an odd voltage and didn't know if maybe my assumption of wrongly stamped was maybe correct? But was so reluctant to try the 6 volt batteries. Would be close to 4 amps but thought the TV was close to 6 amps.
Well, again WTF and tried a couple half dead batteries and said bye-bye to the LV......yep, killed immediately. Well at least good for folks to know as I'm sure people wonder if they could pull that off or NOT.
So, is there a bright side here? Expecting a new HV REV but still have the same lube so I'm thinking I'm going to just go through the problems again. Is the lube to blame?
I dis-assembled the failed LV and the coil was burnt open in the center as expected and was very black but had much un-vaped lube around it.
Might just pack in the idea of the REV as the T1 is doing a very nice job for me.
(BTW OF, found excellent PS for the PA, let me know if your interested.)
:/