Anyway, for a school project for my electronics class, my friend and I are going to build an "incense burner." Now I've looked at vape plans online, and I see a few problems, the biggest of which is the lack of control.

Since I've been working in electronics, I was intrigued by the vaporizer plans available online that use a soldering iron as a heat source. The biggest problem is that soldering irons are designed to melt certain types of metal, and get really hot (and I have the burn scars to prove it).

So I was poking around on the internet and I came across this: A soldering iron temperature controller. Now I'm pretty sure that anyone who's running a soldering iron vape could greatly increase the usefulness of their vape for $20 and a little experimentation to find the right temp.

So that takes care of the biggest problem for the vape. The next step: how to get that heat to the "incense."

The easiest solution is to heat the incense directly: fab a large tip for the soldering iron, place it at the bottom of a tube, fill the tube with a good heat conductor, say mineral oil, and place a bowl at the top. That would allow for easy and direct application of heat to incense, but, vapes work better by pushing air through the incense. So how do we accomplish this efficiently? The only reason most soldering iron vapes aren't total failures is because they are so inefficient in transferring the heat to the incense that it doesn't burn too much.

Since I've already been working on the oil bath heat transfer technique, I'd like to keep that for the vape so I'm thinking of this design: put a deep bowl in the oil bath, run a bit of air tubing into that, and seal around the edge with something (100% silicone?). place inside the first (large) bowl, a smaller bowl, that hangs from the silicone lip without touching the bottom. Place a fine brass screen in this, to function as the bowl for the incense. punch a lot of small holes into this small bowl, so that air can pass through it. In this manner, almost all of the heat should either radiate directly to the incense, or be picked up by the air, then pass through onto the incense. Hook up the air line to an aquarium bubbler with a line crimp (so airflow can be adjusted accordingly) and viola! A homemade vape with full control over temperature and airflow. Pick up an IR thermometer to measure the surface temperature of the incense, and it shouldn't take long to figure out that prefect 380* mark.

Final cost will definitely be under $100, I'm aiming for under $50. I'm still looking to make sure I have a solid design before I start building, but if you guys can help me figure out something that seems legit, I'll get to work and document the whole process.

Peace,
B-worm

Well, today I picked up the soldering iron with temp. control, the air pump, and a hummingbird feeder for the main body. Pics up later.

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you can just use a normal light swich dimmer to adjust the temp of the soddering iron.

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yep yep. lots cheaper and lots easier

rig a thermostat to it and ill start paying attention though. lol

well, it won't be automatic, but I am rigging up an LCD thermometer to monitor the oil temp.

Since the two-bowl design was getting tricky, I'm using a standard bong bowl for the material, and running the air up through the oil itself, should look pretty bomb with a curtain of bubbles rising up through it.

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I dunno. my soldering iron has a temp control on it.

As does my SMD rework station.

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