Results from IR temp probe testing for many popular BHO "vaping" methods

VladFromOG

Active Member
"TL;DR:
I took temp readings from a bunch of popular BHO "vaping" tools. Nails burn or waste. Skillets burn or waste. Ecigs (PVs) burn. Of the methods tested, only oil bowl and wand setups produce pure vapor, and then only when the wand is the appropriate size."


Some while ago I had purchased an infrared temperature probe with a laser guide in order get accurate temperature readings from several popular methods of vaporizing BHO to see if truly only vapor was produced or if smoke was being made as well as or instead of vapor. I've my suspicions that most methods just burn, based on the amount of throat hit they create (vapor doesnt hurt to inhale, period) and some common sense (glowing hot metal burns oils if it touches them), but I figured I'd test it properly to be sure. Cannabinoids vape at ~380f and start to burn around 500f, though various terpenes and lighter essential oils that are minor constituents of BHO will burn much lower. For my purposes I am concerned with the vaporization of the cannabinoids, so do not consider the vapor "burned" until 500f, but a scorched taste from burnt terpenes and essential oils start to occur IME at about 440f.

I tested nails: A domed quartz nail and a domed titanium nail and a domeless titanium nail. I also tested ecig based designs: A micro-g pen, an unbranded "nail and dome" glass lamp ecig, a VaporCone brand 510 direct drip ecig, and a ce4 tank, all on a standard 3.7v ego battery, with 50/50 BHO VG in the tank and 50mg BHO for the others. Finally, I tested an oil bowl with three different sized wands for comparison, and a hood and slide style bowl, with 50mg dabs BHO. I am including links to examples of each product I tried. These are not suggestions of good retailers nor endorsements, just examples to illustrate the type of hardware used.


The nails:
This is similar to the glass domed nail rig I used but mine is quartz:

http://aqualabtechnologies.com/conce...apor-pipe.html
This is the style domed titanium nail I used:http://aqualabtechnologies.com/conce...-75-14-mm.html
And finally the domeless nail:http://aqualabtechnologies.com/conce...nium-nail.html

The dabs used were 50mg waxy BHO. For the first test I heated the nails up to gradually higher temps (starting at 420f) then dabbed, noted the temp after the dab was gone and if any was left unvaped, and repeated, increasing the heat by 5-10 degrees until the whole hit was vaped. All the nails suffered the same flaw: when the heat was too low to burn, only a little would get vaped before, in the case of the domed nails, running down the side, or in the case of the domeless nail, just sitting at the bottom of the nail. When the heat was hot enough to vape the whole 50mg (what I consider a small hit, others may need less or more) the oil would end up burning. For the second test I had a friend who is a self proclaimed nail expert heat the nails blind (with no temp readings) as he would while preparing a hit for personal use. He uses exclusively nails so I thought itd be interesting, if unscientific. I should note his method is to heat the nails until they glow, allow to cool until the glow is gone, then dab. For these I also noted temp after heating just prior to dab and heat after dab was gone.

..................................Temp required to vape full hit...............Temp after "normal" amount of heating
..................................After Heating.......End of Dab...............After Heating....................End of Dab
Domed Quartz Nail................550f.................537f..... ....................667f.......................... .....624f
Domed Titanium Nail..............630f.................584f....... ..................723f............................ ...750f
Domeless Titanium Nail..........540f..................383f.......... ...............680f............................... 626f

Conclusions: These nail designs all burn or waste the oil. Maybe tiny amounts of BHO (~10mg) could be vaped without waste, but man that would be a lot of work just to catch a buzz doing 10mg at a time. My buddies idea of "normal" heating levels was waaaay too high (and seems to be the norm judging by youtube videos), but even armed with an IR probe that gives precise temp readings I couldnt get them to vape with neither waste nor scorch. The closest was the domeless nail, which has more mass and keeps the melted oil in place and so imparts heat more effectively, meaning it doesnt have to be heated as highly to vape the whole thing. Even then, it had to go far above the burning temp to do so. The domed nails were just worthless, in order to get the bho to vape in the tiny window before it liquified and spilled down the side I had to crank the temps far far above the combustion point. I dont know who thought nails up but I suspect theyve never actually used hash oil before, given the glaring failure to account for waxes melting when subjected to heat, something thats obvious the very first time you try to use these devices.

The Ecig based designs (pen vapes, personal vapes):

These all function the same way, despite changes in shape and differences in marketing: they use a
small coil of metal wire as a heater and have it touch the wax or liquid directly or use a silica, polyfill, or cotton wick to wick liquid to the heater. The specific ones I used were:

The micro-g pen: http://www.grencoscience.com/products/microg
The direct drip 510 atty: http://www.themedstick.com/ProductDe...ductCode=VC-2K
The CE4: http://www.vaporbeast.com/kanger-ego...er-1-5-ml.html
The "nail and dome" http://puffnuggs.com/vapor-dome-wax-vaporizer.html

To test these I decided to record the temp while "dry", unloaded with no wax or oil or liquid, and while loaded as per the manufacturers instructions with either 50mg BHO or a 50/50 VG/BHO solution in the case of the tank. Both tests were done after 4 seconds continuous heating, because my average hit through one of these devices is 9 seconds, the maximum my battery will allow for continuous powering. I used a standard 3.7 v ego battery for these tests. The readings were from the center of the coil with the mouthpieces removed. For the CE4 I tank aimed the laser down center air tube until highest temp was read. The laser aiming sight in the IR probe makes things a lot easier.

......................Dry Temp...........Loaded Temp
Micro-G...............630f....................584f
Direct Drip 510......626f....................575f
CE4 Tank.............623f....................597f
"Nail and Dome"....712f.....................635f

Conclusions:
No surprises here: the red hot metal coil burns your oil. The registered temps are all similar which is expected as their heat source is identical, though the one in the "dome and nail" may be lower resistance as its hotter. That ones visual glow was much more noticable during use. I actually repeated the experiment with a variable voltage battery to see if I could dial the temp down below the burning point, but when I got the temp to be below 500f (less than 2.3v with my battery) no vapor was produced bc the heating element is so small it just cant impart much heat unless it is burning hot.
E-Cig smokers should note that these (and its a safe bet every other ecig that uses a tight metal coil like these for heat) get well above the 305f required to turn glycerine into acrolein, the major carcinogen in cigarette smoke that is very toxic besides ("The WHO suggests a "tolerable oral acrolein intake" of 7.5 μg/day per kilogram of body weight" -wiki). The other major eliquid base option is PG (propylene glycol), which is vaporized to induce emphesyma in mice and is strongly linked to causing asthma in adults who are exposed to but a few ppm vaporized daily. Though every major ecig marketer claims their liquids use water as a base and their ecigs emit only water vapor (who believes this? What warm water vapor behaves the same as dense PG fog from a fog machine? Has anyone actually seen hot steam behave like that?), all currently marketed eliquids use a mix of vg,pg, nicotine, and flavor. As such, they (while being non toxic orally apart from the poison nicotine) are all harmful to inhale via an ecig. Maybe not as bad as burning a cigarette, but still a far far cry from vaporizing a safe substance.
The hash users dont necesarrily mind a little burning and I can see the value for smokers who want
a stealthy electric wax burner, but the poor folks using these as an "healthy" alternative to smoking cigarettes are really screwing themselves with the PG and VG liquids. marijuana users should stay away from glycerin or pg tinctures if their intent is to use them with heat based vaping methods. PG is unsafe inhaled in amounts as low as few parts-per-million and VG turns into poison at well below the temp needed to vape cannabinoids.

The hooded sliding "skillet" bowl:
This is not the same brand but the design and construction is the same:

http://aqualabtechnologies.com/conce...pad-18-mm.html

To test this I used the same method as the nail, started heating to 420f then increased until it was able to vape a whole 50mg dab. I took the temp right before dabbing, right after dabbing. the titanium skillet was heated evenly and then a 50mg dab placed in the center.

Starting Temp. Temp after dab. Was 50mg used up completely?
.....420f..................343f................... ...........no
.....450f..................357f................... ...........no
.....480f..................379f................... ...........no
.....520f..................382f................... ...........no
.....550f..................400f................... ...........no
.....600f..................427f................... ...........no
.....637f..................433f................... ...........yes

Conclusions:
This method has all the problems of the nails but amplified. The metal skillet is so thin and has such little thermal mass, it loses a ton of heat the instant the oil touches it and a ton more every moment that goes by. It wasnt until preheating to 637f that it imparted enough heat to vape the whole dab, and even then it was just barely 390f when the vapor production stopped. Bottom line is these things cool down way too fast making overheating a necessity. Combined with the difficulty of keeping boiling oil on a perfectly smooth flat surface and these are items to be avoided.

The oil bowl and wand setup:

The bowl is similar to this: http://aqualabtechnologies.com/conce...l-bubbler.html

Mine has a 3/4 inch wide bowl and is an inch1 and a half deep.
The three wands I tested were a rounded rod type 1/4 inch wide, one was the type with a ball on the end, the ball was just a few mm shy of 3/4 inch wide, and the last was a very thick rounded rod with a general width of just a few mm shy of 3/4 inch.Now these bowls never vape a whole portion at once, but the unvaped portion isnt lost or burned it just stays in the bowl until the next hit. When you load it you dont load individual dabs you load a whole sessions worth. Then you heat up a wand and rub it up and down in the bowl, vaping the oil at the bottom. As such my bowl was loaded with 250mg of BHO, the wands were heated, and I took timed 30 second hits, measuring the initial temp and the temp after the hit was done. The following were the minimum required temps for each type of wand in conjunction with my bowl to produce vapor for 30 seconds. Then, for funsies, a few days later I heated them blind (no temp readings until finished heating) to see how hot I get them during normal use. The rod with 3/4 inch ball is my go to vaping solution, being the smoothest vape experience IME, and I wanted to see if I was doing it right without the ir probe to tell me (bc no one, not even me, wants to juggle an ir probe, a wand, a torch, and a bong during a regular session).

...........................1/4 inch Rounded Rod.............Rod with 3/4inch ball............3/4 inch Rounded Rod
Starting Temp...................550f....................... .............445f................................. ...420f
Temp after hit...................382f........................ ............397f.................................. ..393f
Temp after blind heating......603f................................. ...480f....................................520f

Conclusions:
Thermal mass is key. The thin rod produced anemic vapors because it wasnt able to impart any heat to the bowl, and as such had to be overheated, scorching the hit. The giant 3/4 inch rod imparts a ton of heat bc it has a large thermal mass and cools slowly and so can make amazingly smooth hits if you are monitoring the temp, but without the ir thermometer, bc of the large amount of time for this to heatup (~60seconds) I overshot the temp and burned or undershot and got no vapor nearly every time. With the rod with a 3/4 inch ball, the thermal mass was just perfect for my bowl, it imparted enough heat to vape and cooled slowly, but the initial heating is quick enough that I am able to judge a good temp without the ir probe (though it helps). This is the only method tested that doesnt burn (though not tested I suspect ball pipes dont burn at all either), but only when the bowl is paired with a good matching wand! Too small and it has to be overheated and will burn, too big and its easy to overheat bc of long heating times. IME the rods with balls on the end work much better than the straight rods.


Final notes: A lot of work in this field is needed. Every single method reached burning temps in order to vape a whole dose, with the exception of the bowl/wand setup, and then only with the right sized wand, and wand users know how hard it is to find the right sized wand locally (impossible). I know that rains on a lot of enthusiasts parade (esp the ecig and nail lovers), but the numbers dont lie. If you think my readings are in error I would suggest that you get a cheap IR probe and take some readings yourself. You can get a $5 probe from amazon that is accurate to within .5f and is good enough for this, though if youre ocd like me you can spring for a laser guided high accuracy one. I'm hoping with some actual testing and research we can all move towards methods that truly create vapor as being the standard, instead of the current scene where anything that burns wax/oils is called "vaporizing". Hell I couldnt care less if nails and ecigs and etc were called wax/oil burners in general but theyve been so consistently misrepresented by their manufacturers as "vaporizers" that everyone just accepts it (despite being clearly wrong), which causes a great deal of confusion to new users and patients seeking info on true vaporizing options. Not to mention the horrible toxic carcinogenic harmful shit eliquid and the horrible "pen ready" tinctures dispensaries sell for ecigs turns into the moment its subjected to heat and aerosolized.

All in all, these tests paint a pretty dismal picture of the BHO "vaping" scene and the "personal vaporizer" scene in general.

Please note I didnt test a ball type pipe bc it was impossible to get accurate ir readings since the flame had to be in use at all times, but it is likely these vape cleanly as they leave no scorch or residue when used skillfully. Also not tested were digital vaporizer options that include a temp probe (volcano, arizer) as these were presumed to be accurate and generally dont work with BHO anyway.
 

potsnoberry

Active Member
what you are missing is an understanding of what the physics are of oil hitting a red-hot surface. the oil ends up floating on a fluid bed of superheated gases which insulate the majority of the material from combustion. it's only when the surface cools to a subcritical temp that the mass of oil can actually "fall" onto the material and begin to enter combustion chemical processes. always leave the dregs in the bowl.
 

sketchyas

Member
what you are missing is an understanding of what the physics are of oil hitting a red-hot surface. the oil ends up floating on a fluid bed of superheated gases which insulate the majority of the material from combustion. it's only when the surface cools to a subcritical temp that the mass of oil can actually "fall" onto the material and begin to enter combustion chemical processes. always leave the dregs in the bowl.
Why does my erl smoke instantly no matter how hot my nail is than? I mean that sounds cool but if my nail is red hot my hit will be gone b4 nail cools to subcritical temp... Any better explanation? Wat is dregs ?

thanks for post op, thorough indeed...I need to get a pen n oil bowl... N volcano fuuuuuu



oyea as for the e nail why is it any different? Don't peeps set me to like 800 anyway which is hot right? Do they work good lower? I wanna make1
 

Sirdabsalot462

Well-Known Member
A red hot Ti nail will actually resemble the way water reacts to a hydrophobic material...
The oil never actually doesn't touch the nail until the temp drops considerably.

It will sizzle and ” dance” like a mexican jumping bean directly hovering above the red-hot nail.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong...
As I mentioned..

I'm just coming out of the haze of anesthesia...and I'm on a .6 mg drip of Dilaudid every ten minutes.
Comfortably numb for now.
:-s
 

VladFromOG

Active Member
I know, weve all heard the "it never touches the metal it floats on vapor" theory. Its true for a 500f hot cooking pan and water, but the physics of water don't apply here for two reasons. For one, bho is much heavier than water. For another, water cannot burn or scorch, and bho can. These two facts mean that yes, for a moment the heavy sticky oil touches the metal briefly before popping back up, and since both the metal and the air immediately around the metal is higher than the bhos combustion point, it burns. Water on the other hand cannot burn and cannot hold on to more heat than its limit (water can never be hotter than its boiling point, so it is impossible to burn it, bho however can absorb heat beyond its boiling point and combustion point, which makes it burn) You can tell me Im wrong and that the same physics as un-scorchable water apply to a thick lipid with a low combustion point and heat capacity greater than that point, but, if you're a nail user, your darkened, scorched reclaim will betray the truth ;)
 

VladFromOG

Active Member
A quick thought - if oil did just float on vapor in a nail, the flat glass nail users would never get a hit without gyroscopic stabilization to maintain perfect flatness of the nail head, BC it would immediately slide down before any real vapor was produced (as opposed to what we see which is that only half slides down and a still sizeable amount of vapor is produced) Think of an air hockey table - tilt it a little and the puck goes flying. Granted, ti and cup shaped nails have rims that would prevent this, but the flat headed quartz etc nails do not. If the floating on vapor theory was correct a dab would just slide off the side immediately, pushed off by a tiny cone of vapor on top of the tiny flat surface.
 
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