Cleaning Atomisers

[Chrissie]

As others have said, atomisers are the weakest point. There appears to be very little quality control about them & that must be a complete & utter nightmare for vendors.

When I bought my first e-cig over 2 years ago (a super-mini RN4081) the atomisers lasted for months. Moved on to the DSE901 & used to get at least a couple of months from an attie - but not now. No matter who I buy from or what attie, I'm now looking at a couple of days to a couple of weeks at best.

So what has gone wrong? Maybe the Chinese manufacturers have gone down the old light bulb theory? ie We could (& these days they have) made a light bulb that could last for yonks but where the heck is the profit in that? Can you blame them? - No not really, until vaping becomes mainstream it would be unprofitable to produce an expensive long lasting atomiser.

Back to cleaning them - IMHO, blow them out, drain them but forget the rest. Ever tried cleaning a light bulb to make it last longer?

Edit - I posted the above before reading the posts on page 2 of this thread, apologies for repeating more or less the same as some others have said.

[hissie]

I'm with Chrissie on this. I blow mine out at the end of a days use & them let them drain overnight. I always have at least 2 on the go, so I can let one rest.

However, at the moment I have 3 as I find I need a sperate one soley for vaping TW juices.

So far, after a few weeks of vaping, I have had one die completely & the other one on it's last legs.

I don't clean them at all, I think it's a waste of effort to be honest. I'm fairly happy to accept that once they've died then time for the bin.

Before I started vaping, I discovered, through reading this forum, that atties don't have a great lifespan & i got into vaping knowing & accepting that.

[ckc]

Agreed, i bought quite a stock of atties when i started. I admit to find 1 out of each multi-pack to be a bit wimpy, but i'm getting a good few months out of each of them. Now there seem to be loads of complaints about them not lasting so long. I don't clean them or blow them out,i don't even switch atties for different flavours,i just use nic liquid and flavouring with no colour or sugars etc

I always wonder if its the flavourings people use,in some cases it has been the culprit.

[hissie]

Possibly the flavourings. That's why I use a seperate attie for TW juices, as I find these clog the atties & the flavour overtakes any other juices I use.

[ckc]

Did anyone else see this?? This is where i think i'll be heading in the future

[ken]

Lisa, this is a part of the Q & A section of your site:

17. How long do the parts last?
The e-cig industry is still in its infancy and sadly, there has been and still is a lot of misinformation out there regarding the expected life-span of batteries and atomisers with some companies making impossible claims about the supposed longevity of what are actually semi-disposable items.
Here at Cloud 9, we aim to be totally honest with our customers so that the end result is the best vaping experience possible.
Although the basic e-cig atomisers and batteries are now being manufactured to very high standards, they are functional devices that by their very nature will be used fairly intensively and so they will degrade over time and eventually fail. This is to be expected and these parts should be considered semi-disposable.
You can sometimes extend the life of these parts by following some simple cleaning and maintenance steps, however, you should not expect either batteries or atomisers to last more than a couple of months of average use. If you are a heavy vaper, you can expect their lifespan to be considerably shorter than this.
We are completely honest about this so that you will not be disappointed when they do fail and so you can make sure you have adequate spares.

So where are the high standards and which atties last a couple of months of average use?

Ken.

[Chrissie]

Aug 29, 2010 21:19:04 GMT ckc said:

Did anyone else see this?? This is where i think i'll be heading in the future

That does look so interesting Ckc

Kenny, a while back I bought several 5 pack atties from TW - some lasted a few days, others a few weeks, a couple only a few minutes. I was gutted!. No warranty so I moved on & bought from elsewhere. But it seems at the moment no matter what I'm paying for my atties, or where I'm buying them from, they just aren't lasting as long as they used to.

[Chrissie]

Aug 29, 2010 20:08:35 GMT hopefulll said:

Aug 29, 2010 19:57:09 GMT @lisaf01 said:

As I said, I've tried it all, and you usually find that everyone starts off trying all the cleaning methods, but the longer a person has been vaping, the less likely you are to find that they use any kind of cleaning method at all.

Umm, got to call BS. You sell 5+ pound attys but expect us to throw them away as soon as they lack a bit of vape? A simple boil in a cup too hard?

Once again Hope, you are out of order criticising another vendors products. if this was ECF, you would be banned by now - in the meantime you have another official warning.

[Scylla]

James, what you said about the difficulty of expressing onself in print, and how it can easily be taken the wrong way, is so true! That's why I often spatter my posts with smileys but it does look a bit daft sometimes

Hopefulll - did you see the YouTube chap boiling his cartomisers? I keep meaning to try it.

CKC - what nimble fingers that chap has, and he's rather neat himself Not my type of course, but he startled me a little

scylla... plus xxxxxxxxxxxxxx to all

[lisaf01]

Aug 29, 2010 21:29:17 GMT ken said:

Lisa, this is a part of the Q & A section of your site:

17. How long do the parts last?
The e-cig industry is still in its infancy and sadly, there has been and still is a lot of misinformation out there regarding the expected life-span of batteries and atomisers with some companies making impossible claims about the supposed longevity of what are actually semi-disposable items.
Here at Cloud 9, we aim to be totally honest with our customers so that the end result is the best vaping experience possible.
Although the basic e-cig atomisers and batteries are now being manufactured to very high standards, they are functional devices that by their very nature will be used fairly intensively and so they will degrade over time and eventually fail. This is to be expected and these parts should be considered semi-disposable.
You can sometimes extend the life of these parts by following some simple cleaning and maintenance steps, however, you should not expect either batteries or atomisers to last more than a couple of months of average use. If you are a heavy vaper, you can expect their lifespan to be considerably shorter than this.
We are completely honest about this so that you will not be disappointed when they do fail and so you can make sure you have adequate spares.

So where are the high standards and which atties last a couple of months of average use?

Ken.

I absolutely don't know what you're getting at here. Some of my customers have indeed reported a couple of months out of atomisers I have sold.

However, as you have nicely demonstrated by copying some of the text from my site, I have been more honest about this than many vendors. I fail to see how it's possible to be more honest than this about these parts. Anyone who claims to sell magical longer lasting atties is just claiming, they are all fundamentally the same parts in essence.
I am on the case of my manufacturers day and night about quality control, and I test EVERY single atomiser I sell, know anyone else who does that?

We have to be serious here, it's basically a very very small wire that extreme heat passes over on a regular basis - more regularly than they were originally designed for.

The inherant weakness is in the nature of the product and there is no changing this. Certainly if people really feel they can get a longer life out of them by their cleaning method of choice, then it would make sense to continue with it. I have seen no actual evidence that it helps and have seen evidence that it can actually shorten their life.

[foxy9212]

I actually boiled one of my 901 atties - I held it with kitchen tongs and poured boiling water into it directly from the kettle - I blew it through and left it on a radiator all day and it WORKED!! LOL.

I generally blow the atties out every day or so but I don't know if it makes a difference or not.

I do have one magic atty that came from Liberty Flights about seven months ago and it works with my SDII perfectly. It seems to be immortal.

My biggest gripe with atties these days is that they don't accept the carts as well as they did when I first started vaping. Some have carts that are miles to tight and others that are far too loose. I always use the empty carts that come with the atties (I simply add Fluval), so there's no excuse. On a couple of occasions I've had to use pliers to crack the blank off a new atty as it's been far too tight to use.

Another gripe is that I like to use a drip tip and recently I bought a 901 chrome atty from Health Cabin (cheap as chips) to go with my SDII and the tip doesn't fit at all. Irritating!

I will marry the first guy to come up with an everlasting atty that fits everything!!

Fox

[hopefulll]

HC I think it was that had two types of DT, A and B. A fitted better from memory, B required effort and didn't click in. Maybe the metal one they have it stock is a B type.

I prefer plastic TBH.

And yep, I've also boiled Cartos, take a long time to dry though but are great cheap attys in an AVS. I'm a heavy vaper @ 6.4V but Cartos do usually last a week. So less that $1 a week sure beats HV Attys that last from seconds to two weeks.

It does appear quality is going down on attys. I have old normal attys from last year lasting longer than new HV attys on the same voltage

[foxy9212]

Thanks for the advice re drip tips from HC Hope - I'll take care next time I buy. The bright shiny atty I got looks the mutz on my SDII though, so much posher than the satin finished ones - I just lurve my bling!

Fox

[Scylla]

Aug 30, 2010 2:53:45 GMT hopefulll said:

I'm a heavy vaper @ 6.4V but Cartos do usually last a week.

Let me get this straight, Hope - ONE carto could last me a WEEK? I thought I was abusing them making one last a DAY!

Do you use the centrifugal method to fill? Or what?

I do like using the carto with D-T but have lost the knack with filling, I used to like to use the condom method on the mouth end with the carto cap still on. Doing it at the screw end means I have to spend time blotting the juice out of the recesses in the fitting, so darn fiddly >

Any advice appreciated.

scylla