Can the Zion be used with water tools?
The Zion is designed to be a handled vaporizer and has not been tested with water tools. Customers may choose to use the Zion with water tools but should be aware that there might be interference issues with the heater screen. Although the heater screen is robust, it can be forced out of position creating a crevice where debris can collect and potentially damaging the heater. Care should also be taken to not support the unit by the heater glass as undue stress can crack the glass. The heater itself has proven impervious to water spills but the electronics compartments, knob and switch should not get wet.
Basically,
@RastaBuddhaTao is saying that the things you see me doing those videos—basket screens, bubblers, inverted use—are not endorsed.
RBT has to define limits for warranty purposes, and it's prefectly reasonable to disqualify some practices. That doesn't mean you can't do them, it means that if your Zion fails as a result, he can refuse to cover it under the warranty. If you take proper care, however, you can do everything you see in my videos and the Zion won't ever need service.
Let's discuss the fact that the joint of ISO stems is too long. This will undoubtedly lead to some frustration since you probably never had to pay attention to this before. It's quite possible that the shoulder of the joint of your existing water tools and connectors will stand as much as 3 mm above the lip of the Zion bowl. Because of the slope, there will be a gap all around at the top of the bowl, which my gauge tells me is usually about .1 mm. The diameter of an ISO joint is about 13 mm at the bottom so there's an even larger gap all round there. Any part of the stem that contacts the bowl screen adds some pressure, and if this screen is dislodged your Zion is busted. Using an ISO joint means that the bottom of the joint rests on the screen. Add to that the fact that
RBT warns against having things rest on the bowl screen, and the prospects look dim—but not so fast!
In Pauahi, I am confident that the weight of a connector or stem is not risking or weakening the bowl screen. I've therefore done some testing to see how well ISO joints work. My theory was that the gaps shouldn't matter. Once you are drawing on the stem, all the air will flow through it and you are almost certainly drawing air down the bowl into the stem. The added air should not be enough to notice. Tests quickly confirmed this. All of my ISO glass performed beautifully. There is a down side: with a loose fit, you are vulnerable to lipstick pulling out the stem and dumping your load.
It's up to you to decide whether you want to take the chance of doing damage that might not be covered by warranty. I'm not encouraging anyone to do what I've been doing. I think many Zion owners will go ahead, however, since the 18 mm bowl is irresistible. If you do, take extra care to put the minimum pressure on the bowl screen.
Can basket screens be used with the Zion?
The Zion is intended to be used with the supplied fixed screens as prescribed. If a basket screen has a rim it will add pressure to the heater screen. Although the heater screen is robust, it can be forced out of position creating a crevice where debris can collect and potentially damaging the heater. The other danger of using a basket screen is that the ID of the load chamber is a smaller diameter than the rest of the mouthpiece thereby creating an unsafe condition allowing someone to inhale a screen. Therefore we only recommend using the supplied screens firmly fixed in position. The screen being fixed in place is useful when string and inserting the Zion mouthpiece.
The Arizer elbow screen has a rim that will definitely add pressure to the bowl screen. I don't use mine any more. The basket screens I'm using all came from
RBT. Some of them came with Jessica. These are slightly larger than the screens that will ship with production Zions, and they seat nicely wherever I position them in Jessica's stems. The production stems have a smaller ID: 8 mm instead of 8.5 mm at the tip of the stem. They also have a constriction inside the stem right at the shoulder of the joint. When the screen is inserted from the top, dome-style, it gets firmly lodged at this constriction. What
RBT is advising against is inserting it from the top, basket-style. If you do that, the screen might not stay in place and you could inhale it.
I don't have any basket screens in the production stems because I don't have any that will fit into the smaller diameter stem tip. Both of the stock Pauahi stems are fitted with dome-style stock screens. This creates a much larger bowl: I just measured .17 g without packing, so maybe .2 g packed. (In my experience, the Zions prefer loosely packed loads, but I digress.) If you don't fill it (I wouldn't) it is much easier to stir than my basket screen stems. That's because I usually position the basket screen just inside the tip of the stem. That means there is no added pressure on the heater screen, but it also means a smaller load limit and more difficult stirring. (There are ways to use the Zion that don't require stirring but I digress.)
I prefer the basket screens at the tip. I've told
RBT this and he concedes there could be demand for this style, but right now he's got much higher priorities than adding a second style of screen. In other words, it might happen but not any time soon.
I know that some of you will want to know why I prefer baskets at the tip. There are pros and cons to both types of screen, but Pauahi does not have a production heater so I really don't want to go into details. The differences are small enough to me that a production heater could change my opinion.
It's clear nobody excepted RBT could help you with money refund issues...
at the prospect of more betas (mine?!) going out soon, missing Zion-izing big time.
