I just purchased a Thermovape Evolution and I'm so disappointed with it that I've come here to rant.
The problem is that this vape simply doesn't work.
I'm sorry you're not having the success you want but I too strongly suspect it's not because your unit is defective; for sure the design is solid, thousands are happily using theirs. If you want to rant, by all means do so. If you want to learn how to use it I'm happy to try to help you do that.
Your call.
If you want to use it as designed you'll need to understand the beast. It's a convection vape, like Volcano, but unlike Volcano it doesn't have a huge amount of power available. You have to store what heat is produced before the hit. Then you need to transfer that heat up to the load to get vapor. It does not matter where in the bowl the herb is, the entire bowl is supposed to make temperature.
Start out by looking into the empty bowl with fresh charged batteries. Key it on and watch the heater below the grid. After maybe 10 seconds or so it should start to glow, getting brighter over the next several seconds so by say 20 seconds it's stable at full temperature. Let it cool and try a few times until you develop a feel for the preheat time since you won't be able to see it in use. This is
step 1, you have to do it each hit, if it's hot already the time to working temperature is shorter but you have to get the entire core hot or it won't heat the air properly.
Now fill it, full seems to work better for most guys, don't pack it in we need free air flow. Smaller charges will work but will (of course) produce vapor at a lower rate.
With fresh battery charge and a load ready to go, key it on for the time required for your unit to reach full temperature, a complete step 1, if not sure, go a few seconds longer. Don't worry about battery life, you can refine that later when we get vapor going.
When step 1 is done, start
step 2. This is a long slow steady draw, maybe 15 seconds or so to fill your lungs. Don't go too fast or you'll cool the core too fast although it moves a lot of cooler air, too slow and you 'don't get there in time'. Try to taste the vapor starting, with practice this is pretty easy to do. When you think you have vapor, take a 'test puff'. Blow a bit of whatever is in your mouth, hopefully solid vapor. If it's not there, stay with step 2. If you don't get going in say two breaths, give up and go back to step 1 and preheat again. It's part of the learning curve. It's easy to do once you sort it out.
Once you get a solid 'test puff', you're there. Time for step 3. Done right there should still be plenty of heat in the core (more has been added all along which helps). Dump the wimpy hit in your lungs completely and
hit it like you mean it. It's finally ready to go. You've generated and stored the heat, transferred enough up to warm the bowl and load to get it up to temperature, now all the air you draw through the core picks up heat to support vaping on it's way through (it has to be glowing in there for this to happen), within limits the harder you pull the more heat and more vapor.
Unless you do steps 1 and 2 completely you'll never get large vapor production. If you do, it happens. The guys on this forum are living proof. It takes understanding, experience and some skill. It's not automatic like Volcano.
Edit: I notice Brother Haywood suggests you remove the heat shield and otherwise change the way it's designed. He and some of the other 'power users' are having success here, but my advice is to stick with the drill and try to use it as designed first. It will work that way, you can improve on it once you get some results to work with which it sounds like you're not right now?
Good luck.
OF
Well, I am not going to chase the rabbit down the hole just yet, as I don't want to spend a bunch of $ just to experiment right now.
I still send ya to the right person
Since you have the HP version of the Evo, you might want to discuss whether PTFE is a requirement.
