[Wiz-GB008]

If it has the shorter wick then it will only work when the fluid is at the end with the wick.
On mine I have it mounted so the tank is on it's side, that way the liquid is always sloshing around as I walk keeping
the wick wet, although if the tank is under 1/4 full it starts fading.

[thebigone2087]

Ahhh ok I gotcha. Probably didn't have enough juice in it. Thanks!

[Makuta]

I am having a hard time with the wiring/soldering for the e-cig.

I soldered one wire to the outer ring
Then soldered another wire to the inner middle hollow piece.
But this does not work, the wiring is shorting... Somehow I am not soldering to the correct + and - of the e cig, somehow I am soldering either to - - or + +
Eventually I had to just give up so I can go to bed.
Hopefully someone knows what I am doing wrong...

[jimfin]

I am having a hard time with the wiring/soldering for the e-cig.

I soldered one wire to the outer ring
Then soldered another wire to the inner middle hollow piece.
But this does not work, the wiring is shorting... Somehow I am not soldering to the correct + and - of the e cig, somehow I am soldering either to - - or + +
Eventually I had to just give up so I can go to bed.
Hopefully someone knows what I am doing wrong...

The process involves a very fine line between enough heat to make a reliable joint and too much resulting in damage to insulation or components

The soldering requires a fairly high heat setting and use of flux and I use a dremel on the inside piece very carefully to remove a bit of the chrome plating to get a good joint
I solder the wire on the outside 1st then let the ecig cool down before attempting the center joint
I put a little flux on the center pin and then apply a little solder to flow on to the pin avoiding the center hole
I put flux and solder on the tip of the wire and trim to a very short length
Then stick the wire through the enlarged hole previously drilled in the side of the cartridge and using as little time as possible allow the tip of the iron to flow the solder between the pin and wire
I then place a bit of heatshrink over the wire and through the hole
The only place I found that small heatshrink was in a kit of assorted shrink at radio shack, I'm sure I could get it on line if I tried

The high heat involved can melt the insulation on the center wire very easily resulting in a short to the outside casing or

The other point of concern is the very small bit of insulation on the center pin itself right under the tip of the pin

I have to use a lighted magnifier to see what I'm doing during the progress

Good luck and if it comes down to it PM me for availability of a prewired cartomizer

jimfin

[Carpeteria]

I think I mentioned it before, but my soldering iron was NOT doing the job, so I broke out my handy little kitchen torch, which has a really fine flame, so I could focus it where I needed. After about fifteen seconds of heating the metal portions on the e-cig, the solder stuck with no problems, and no need for flux.

You can find a torch like this for cheap in a lot of places - I've seen them as low as $10. They run on regular cans of butane. Sometimes they're called creme brulee torches.

[thebigone2087]

This demo features a push-button manual trigger located on the back of the motherboard that my father recently installed. This allows us to prime the cartomizer and vent independently from the vent sequence of the sound kit installed and for as long as desired. The vent effect can also be triggered without the light/sound kit being powered on as it uses its own 12v battery. This demo also shows the same manual trigger being used with the GBFans sound/light kit with relay board.

So is it just a standard SPST push button that is wired into the relay on top of the two other wires already in there?

[jimfin]

This demo features a push-button manual trigger located on the back of the motherboard that my father recently installed. This allows us to prime the cartomizer and vent independently from the vent sequence of the sound kit installed and for as long as desired. The vent effect can also be triggered without the light/sound kit being powered on as it uses its own 12v battery. This demo also shows the same manual trigger being used with the GBFans sound/light kit with relay board.

So is it just a standard SPST push button that is wired into the relay on top of the two other wires already in there?

exactly

jim

[Wiz-GB008]

I've had a few people asking for more details on my setup so here is what I have.

I'm using a Kanger Pro Tank 3 which is a bottom loading tank (I guess most of them load from the mouth piece end?
I'm not part of the cool vaping crowd so I don't know a lot about them)

This is how it sits in my shell.




Close up of the Protank.




Here it is disconnected.



I heated up some rubber tubing and fit it around the protank then let it cool. the other end fits snug on the plastic elbow
so I can just pop it off when I need to refill.


Closeup of the wiring.





For me the easiest way to get the wire out of the air supply was to find a piece of tube that was tight on the threads, poke
a hole in it to feed the wire out and slip another tube inside that from the air source.


Speaking of air source.





It had plenty of air pressure but not a lot of volume so I used some micro drill bits to slowly make the ports
larger, but you have to be careful not to get any shavings inside because they might get stuck in the little reed valves,
and that helped increase the flow a little.


And finally the elbow.



This was a barbed plastic elbow i got at the hardware store but I cut off the barb so the rubber tube
I put on the tank would slip on and off easily.


The Pro Tank 3 is a dual coil so it can actually handle more voltage than standard ones (It works amazing at 6v
but I'm running it a 4.2V) and I'm running a 50/50 mix of glycerin and smoke juice which is working great.
I also found that you don't need very much airflow from the fan to push the smoke out of the N-filter, even the
little fan I have is almost too much volume and it drowns the smoke with too much air but you can dial it in
by blocking the fan until you get the right amount of air to smoke mix.

Hope that helps!

[Makuta]

ok it seems that my soldering was actually fine.. i think..

when i unscrew the mouthpiece cap, then unscrew the metal/silicone piece that has the cotton wicks THEN re-attach the UBEC wires (to the spots mentioned in my earlier post) now the UBEC acts normally as if the wiring is not done (little red light turns on).

but once i reattach the whole piece with the cotton wicks ect and attach the UBEC, the UBEC will make a feint high pitched noise and the red light will flicker then not light up....

so there seems to be something wrong with the wiring of the filament i guess?

edit: added some videos of my issue








just to clarify the squeal comes from the UBEC when the light goes out

[jimfin]

ok it seems that my soldering was actually fine.. i think..

when i unscrew the mouthpiece cap, then unscrew the metal/silicone piece that has the cotton wicks THEN re-attach the UBEC wires (to the spots mentioned in my earlier post) now the UBEC acts normally as if the wiring is not done (little red light turns on).

but once i reattach the whole piece with the cotton wicks ect and attach the UBEC, the UBEC will make a feint high pitched noise and the red light will flicker then not light up....

so there seems to be something wrong with the wiring of the filament i guess?

edit: added some videos of my issue










just to clarify the squeal comes from the UBEC when the light goes out

OK, a couple of things 1st, I don't think a 9 V battery has enough amps capacity to make the circuit work right, 8 AA's will actually work much better for testing or a 12VDC wall wart capable of delivering at least 2 amps

The LED should not have flickered but been solid, and if there is not a resister in series with that LED it should have burnt out at 5V if there was any current present as white LED's voltage capacity is not much over 3V

2nd, if you put power to the filament without fluid soaked into the wick the filament is probably damaged
It has to soak for 3 to 5 minutes before you apply power

Do you have a multimeter? If not get a cheap 1 from radio shack or walmart and measure the voltage on the output of the ubec
to make sure you have 5 or 6 volts depending on the jumper
also measure the actual resistence of the coil out of the cartomizer and then screwed in, should be no change, around 1.8 to 2.2 ohms for the default stock wick
I have gotten a couple of bad filament wicks out of the 30 ecigs I've bought so far

[Wiz-GB008]

Yeah I had tried using a 12v to 5v usb adapter to power mine and it didn't have enough amperage, turns out
my smoke setup pulls almost 2 amps at 4.2v so the max 1amp of the usb adapter wasn't going to cut it.

[Makuta]

OK, a couple of things 1st, I don't think a 9 V battery has enough amps capacity to make the circuit work right, 8 AA's will actually work much better for testing or a 12VDC wall wart capable of delivering at least 2 amps

The LED should not have flickered but been solid, and if there is not a resister in series with that LED it should have burnt out at 5V if there was any current present as white LED's voltage capacity is not much over 3V

2nd, if you put power to the filament without fluid soaked into the wick the filament is probably damaged
It has to soak for 3 to 5 minutes before you apply power

Do you have a multimeter? If not get a cheap 1 from radio shack or walmart and measure the voltage on the output of the ubec
to make sure you have 5 or 6 volts depending on the jumper
also measure the actual resistence of the coil out of the cartomizer and then screwed in, should be no change, around 1.8 to 2.2 ohms for the default stock wick
I have gotten a couple of bad filament wicks out of the 30 ecigs I've bought so far

Hmm maybe the battery is the issue? How would a ubec act when the battery is too low?
Also I never saw the inner filament light up so I am very certain that so far it has not even been "lit"

The led was flickering because it's a "flickering led", not because of the ubec or battery, I don't recall what the rating for the led is, it was something I got off eBay.

Using a video posted on one of the eariler pages of this thread I took apart the wick and took out the cotton and inspected the wire that is wrapped around the cotton, it looked ok fine... So I put it back together like In the same video, one wire end of the filament grounding to the outer casing/threads, then the other end going through the rubber separator, to the inner piece that would create the + connection.

Maybe I should make a jumper from my 12v 9800mah battery inside my proton pack, to the ubec and try it then?

I appreciate all the help, I have about a week before my next paycheck to try and figure this out

[jimfin]

OK, a couple of things 1st, I don't think a 9 V battery has enough amps capacity to make the circuit work right, 8 AA's will actually work much better for testing or a 12VDC wall wart capable of delivering at least 2 amps

The LED should not have flickered but been solid, and if there is not a resister in series with that LED it should have burnt out at 5V if there was any current present as white LED's voltage capacity is not much over 3V

2nd, if you put power to the filament without fluid soaked into the wick the filament is probably damaged
It has to soak for 3 to 5 minutes before you apply power

Do you have a multimeter? If not get a cheap 1 from radio shack or walmart and measure the voltage on the output of the ubec
to make sure you have 5 or 6 volts depending on the jumper
also measure the actual resistence of the coil out of the cartomizer and then screwed in, should be no change, around 1.8 to 2.2 ohms for the default stock wick
I have gotten a couple of bad filament wicks out of the 30 ecigs I've bought so far

Hmm maybe the battery is the issue? How would a ubec act when the battery is too low?
Also I never saw the inner filament light up so I am very certain that so far it has not even been "lit"

The led was flickering because it's a "flickering led", not because of the ubec or battery, I don't recall what the rating for the led is, it was something I got off eBay.

Using a video posted on one of the eariler pages of this thread I took apart the wick and took out the cotton and inspected the wire that is wrapped around the cotton, it looked ok fine... So I put it back together like In the same video, one wire end of the filament grounding to the outer casing/threads, then the other end going through the rubber separator, to the inner piece that would create the + connection.

Maybe I should make a jumper from my 12v 9800mah battery inside my proton pack, to the ubec and try it then?

I appreciate all the help, I have about a week before my next paycheck to try and figure this out

Try the higher amp battery source and make sure the filament is seated tightly when it is screwed into the cartridge.
a replacement pack of 5 long wick filaments is less than $10 here in GA, might have to replace the 1 you have now

[Hoot]

While I mixed up my fluids today and got some marginal success, im finding its sputtering fluid both top and bottom.... any ideas?

[jimfin]

While I mixed up my fluids today and got some marginal success, im finding its sputtering fluid both top and bottom.... any ideas?

Haven't run into that problem on any of the 25 ecigs Ive put together so far, but I can think of a few possibilities
make sure the rubber cap is tight in the pump end of the ecig and that you use rubber tape to seal the entry holes in the sides of the cartridge and the cartridge to the rubber cap so air is forced to go through the small center pin hole and can not leak out else where
on the tip end make sure the inner wick/filament assembly is securely screwed into the cartridge,, removing the tip for filling can loosen the filament
don't over fill the cartridge, I put fluid to just under the 2.5ml marking and then let it sit for 3 to 5 min before putting voltage to it

jim

[Makuta]

i feel like a dummy now but good news.
i used my proton pack battery and the ecig worked fine

thanks for helping me out!

[Tyrael]

Anyone got a good way to silence the air pump? I'm considering throwing it in a project box from Radioshack, lined with computer foam but I don't want to stifle the amount of air getting to it.

[Adorkable Eric]

Okay, got my kit today and I have a few questions. It works great, by the way.

1) Since I didn't get the manual shutoff option, what will happen if I run out of fluid in the reservoir? Nothing will be damaged, right? The strobe will just continue to work, without smoke, right?

2) How long/many vent cycles should a full reservoir last, on average? I'm just wondering how often I'll need to refill it.

3) HOW do I refill it?

[jimfin]

Okay, got my kit today and I have a few questions. It works great, by the way.

1) Since I didn't get the manual shutoff option, what will happen if I run out of fluid in the reservoir? Nothing will be damaged, right? The strobe will just continue to work, without smoke, right?

2) How long/many vent cycles should a full reservoir last, on average? I'm just wondering how often I'll need to refill it.

3) HOW do I refill it?

1) the filament will probably overheat and burn out if you run it without fluid

2) I tested over 100 2 to 3 second consecutive vents and still had fluid left, my finger got tired of pushing the button after awhile lol. The battery will probably run down before the ecig gives out
My son went through 2 parades and 2 weekend cons and testing much at home and still had fluid left

There are details on filling the cartridge in the tutorial farther back in the thread, but an update for the new kits for refilling is
Pull the clear tube on the tip of the ecig out of the PVC fitting, it's a snug fit
Tilt the ecig upright and unscrew the black tip with the clear tube still attached, set aside
Make sure inner wick/filament assembly did not loosen and unscrew with the tip
Insert needle from provided refill bottle and squeeze fluid into wick area up to the 2.5ml mark
Replace tip, fine threads so be careful of cross threading
Insert clear tube back in PVC fitting and wait several minutes for fluid to soak back up wick

BTW the Kanger 2 long wick replacement filaments are available in a 5 pack if you do happen to burn 1 up and the ecig forums say that they eventually need replacing but we are still using the original wicks in our pack and ghost trap that were installed over 4 months ago

[Adorkable Eric]

Alright, sounds good. How would I go about putting in a manual shutoff option myself, if I decided to. I mean, wiring schematic wise.

[jimfin]

Alright, sounds good. How would I go about putting in a manual shutoff option myself, if I decided to. I mean, wiring schematic wise.

Eric, For the kits I supplied, instead of the black wire going to the 12V power supply ground terminal directly I spliced in a wire to go to the kill switch and then back up to the power supply. This interrupts the ground to the module

I had not thought until you mentioned about the strobe working all the time about cutting the power to just the ecig and pump
For that it might be a little trickier for you, either pos red or neg black to the input of the UBEC regulator would have to be cut and the switch spliced in
I didn't leave much wire from that input to where it joins the 12V wires going to the fan and strobe

[PssdffJay]

What was the gage of wire we should be using on these? I don't want to catch on fire...

[thebigone2087]

What was the gage of wire we should be using on these? I don't want to catch on fire...

I used 22 gauge solid core for mine. No problems.

[PssdffJay]

Roger, thanks!

[jimfin]

What was the gage of wire we should be using on these? I don't want to catch on fire...

I used 22 gauge solid core for mine. No problems.

I used 22 ga stranded stripped from shielded audio/control wire from Home Depot for more flexibility

[Wiz-GB008]

I was playing around with some different clearomizers and found that a small fan has enough pull to draw
smoke out,

Here is a 30mm fan taped to the end of an e-cig.



And just sitting inside the shell.




The smoke doesn't show up very well in the photos but it's a decent amount, it may not have enough airflow to simulate
high pressure venting but it could work well on a trap.

I ordered some more clearomizers and a few 50mm fans to experiment on, I want to try and print out a bolt on fan
shroud that will have ports to plug two smokers into.

[jimfin]

I was playing around with some different clearomizers and found that a small fan has enough pull to draw
smoke out,

Here is a 30mm fan taped to the end of an e-cig.



And just sitting inside the shell.




The smoke doesn't show up very well in the photos but it's a decent amount, it may not have enough airflow to simulate
high pressure venting but it could work well on a trap.

I ordered some more clearomizers and a few 50mm fans to experiment on, I want to try and print out a bolt on fan
shroud that will have ports to plug two smokers into.

Have you checked out our trap build with dual ecigs and functioning fan and exhaust grills on the cartridge sides?

[Wiz-GB008]

Yeah that trap it really nice, I still need to build a trap but I'm not sure if I'll fully working one or just a static trap with some smoke and lights.

[PssdffJay]

Ok, 1 more stupid question. I got this battery but it didn't m come with a charger.



Can I just use any charger that fits the round connecter? Like the blue brick chargers? I haven't tried to see if it will fit yet.

[jimfin]

Ok, 1 more stupid question. I got this battery but it didn't m come with a charger.



Can I just use any charger that fits the round connecter? Like the blue brick chargers? I haven't tried to see if it will fit yet.

I have used the blue brick charger on 1 of those