Whip Convection Vaporizer

Step 6 Final check, tuning, and operation.

You should now have everything pictured in the manner pictured. Your heating core should have a spiral piece of coat hanger holding it inside of the neck of the bottle with the tip no more than 1/2 an inch away from the end of the neck. the cord should be running out of the large end of the bottle. Your whip should be assembled with a screen, and all exposed wires should be taped up. Plug in your vaporizer. Let it burn anything off that's going to burn off for about 30 minutes.

After the initial burn off, your vaporizer should take from 10-15 minutes to heat up.

Pack your bowl with your herbs. Compress them against the screen.

Put the copper end of your whip in your mouth and put the other end against the bottle. At this point bend the thin copper tubing in such a way that its comfortable for you to sit and hold of the bowl against the frame. You may need to cut the pipe. If you do so make sure to wash it before using it. Again don't make bends that are too sharp because it will kink your tubing.

With the copper tube in your mouth and the bowl full of herbs and the whip pressed against the heating frame; inhale slowly. You should be able to taste the herbs, but they should not taste smoky. If its hot enough you should be able to see vapor if you exhale toward a light source (it will be faint).
If you don't see vapor you might not have been paying attention. If you were paying attention and exhaling toward a light source the air passing over the herbs was not hot enough. Wait a few more minutes to see if your vaporizer gets hot enough. If that doesn't work, Moving the heating core closer to the end of the bottle increases the heat of the air. Inhaling more slowly also increases the heat.

When your herbs taste popcorny it's time to put new one's in.

If your smoking tobacco, don't bother saving the left overs. They may look only slightly used, but almost all of the psychoactives have been used.

Comments

[vov35]

Let me begin by complementing your build quality. superb, simple, effective.

That said, I'd like to figure out a way to get the bowl to stay in place on it's own, and perhaps mount the bottle vertically so convection will happen passively (rather than letting the heating coil burn out)

Ideas on making the bowl stay? I guess you could modify the cap, but it seems like a pain...

[AcerRock]

In keeping with the convection method, is it safe and effective to use a hair dryer instead of a soldering iron?

[student.mckinney]

As far as effective, no, the hair dryer does not reach the temperatures necessary to vaporize most chemical that are in herbs (or in herb). However, if you were to open up the blowdryer and locate the cutoff sensor, (it is a bimetallic strip that turns off the heating element at approximately 140 degrees) then it would reach much higher temperatures. THC and similar cannaboids vaporize at around 200-220 degress Farenheit. The upside of a blowdryer is that you could lower the motor speed and have it fill a bag like the Volcano vaporizers. As far as safety, it would pose no great threat to your health, the element is made of nichrome which does not oxidize at high temperatures and doesn't produce harmful toxins to my knowledge. Good luck, I think I'll try this.

[student.mckinney]

Scratch that part about removing the sensor, you would need to bypass it. A heat gun woul suffice, and require no modification, those are available at hardware stores at reasonable prices.

[rebeljedi]

since there's only so much air one can pull in through the tube, it would be best to also make sure that the fresh air passing through the element isn't excessive and just allow just enough air in at a time, takes the need to inhale slowly since there's only so much you want to stress your lungs on anyways.  Also, one could easily attach a temperature sensor to the midpoint between element and herb receptacle and just have a dimmer switch regulate the power to it.... then again the price jumps up about $50 if you don't have any of these already lying around. It's still a good hands on project, screw the pre-fabs!

[Reggiostar]

Could maybe work, without fan these things can get really hot, but I would first test if it can make a temperature you need, that would be at least 200-300°C. Then check if it can hold the temperature when you are smoking, this depends on the amount of Watt it has... I think that's the main problem, it can become hot, but not keep as hot when the air moves, additionally the heat source surely is not made for that high temperatures. Finally I suppose that it wouldn't work well...