Subject: pot vapor On vaporizers... I've made a couple. They DO give the best high when used correctly. The problem is 'correct use', since they generally require more presence of mind to operate than a bong or a pipe. High heat DOES destory most of the THC in smoked pot (estimates vary). Vaporizers heat pot gently; the THC molexules decarboxylate and evaporate in a whitish smoke that feels like (aaaah) water-mist going down your lungs! A problem with vaporizers is that only leaves in contact with the heating element get hot. Most users, in an effort to heat-up curled leaf edges and higher layers of leaf, tend to overheat and consequently burn the stuff. This is not disasterous since you are now 'smoking' not 'vaporizing' the pot, releasing just as many carcinogenic tars as when you light up a bowl. Vaporizers sometimes fail to satisfy longtime smokers who associate burning lungs with getting high. They distrust the _incredibly_ smooth taste of the vapors, and they don't like waiting 20 seconds to 1 minute for each hit. ANECDOTE ON: My first vaporizer died after almost 4 hours of constant use at a party. After I explained the theory and operation of the device, people loved it! They were standing in line (!!) in the kitchen to use this thing. I sat in the corner of the room watching them, stoned out of my gourd and filled with happy engineering pride at my creation. ANECDOTE OFF... RECENT QUESTIONS > >a) must the heat source be electrical, or is it possible to >use a butane lighter or other flame source as the heat source? A butane lighter should work fine... Just build an enclosure around it that allows air-flow for the flame, and keeps the 'bowl' high enuf above the flame so that you don't begin burning the pot. The 'above-bowl' compartment should be sealed-off from the 'flame' compartment. A piezo-butane lighter vaporizer would be portable, and heat-up quicker than the car-lighter/electric devices. You could even conceal one inside a soda-pop can! Imagine pantomiming drinking in public while actually inhaling vaporized killer hydrobud! Would some Mech. E. major please try to pull this one off? > >b) will vaporization really work with leafy material directly >or must some oil preparation be prepared first. It works, but it is very difficult to heat all of the leaf parts; those that don't directly touch the heating element don't release their THC. Powdering the pot helps, but in the process, breaks the resin glands on the leaves, accelerating the oxidative degredation of the cannabinoids. (anyone know how quickly they decompose?) > >c) a previous poster suggested that it was MORE efficient than >combustion. if this is true, why would anyone still be smoking? Because A: Most homebuilt vaporizers are a pain to use when you're high. B: Vaporizers are less portable and concealable than pipes. C: You have to be MOTIVATED enough to build your own. D: Poorly designed vaporizers fail to heat 1/5 to 1/3 of the pot leaves, and lose even more to spillage. I believe that vaporizers are a tremendous business opportunity, and that they will explode in popularity as soon as they are com- mercially available. PLANS: I'd refer you to the High Times article "Dr. Lunglife Builds a Better Vaporizer", but your local library probably doesn't stock it. :-) Designing vaporizers is a lot of fun. It's a great exercise in dealing with basic design problems, and solving them with whatever materials are available. I'm working on my third device now, and if it works well, I will 'publish' plans. As for now, here are some tips you might find helpful in your quest. Typical Supply List: 120VAC to 12V(AC or DC) transformer rated at 1.5-2.0 amps spring-loaded push-on switch sealable plastic box (I used ones for displaying gemstone rocks) plastic/rubber tube (to inhale through) small alligator clips car-lighter element something on which to mount the car-lighter element Design principle: You want to heat pot/hash to a temperature where the cannabinoids evaporate, but where larger 'tar' molecules don't. This is well below the temp at which grass burns. You then want to trap those vapors and let them accumulate into a nice big hit before you inhale from your device. The car-lighter is mounted so that pot can be placed on it. The enclosure should be airtight except for two openings, a mouthpiece (or tube) and a 'carb' to let air in when you hoover-up the vapors through the mouthpiece. The device should be rugged, and easy to use. It is amazing how much of a buzzkill it is to have to re-connect shoddy wiring, or scrape-up bits of precious fallen pot due to shoddy design! Do it right! Design problems: ** You have to connect wires to a heating element that gets hot enough to melt solder (which you should NEVER use in a vaporizer (lead poisoning)). One solution is to use alligator clips to attach wires to the element, but this looks bad and makes for a flaky, breakable design. Another is to bend strips of metal to form a 'docking bay' for the lighter element that you slide it into. The metal strips should contact the + and - parts (sides and bottom) of the element and hold it tightly. Try salvaging a flashlight bulb-mount (slide in type) for gripping the sides of the lighter element. Another solution might be to braze wires directly to the heating element, but this makes for difficult replacement when the heating coil burns out. ** Heat from the element can travel far down the mounting base and connecting wires. Be sure that plastic parts that contact thest (like the enclosure) are adequately insulated. ** The top layers/sides of pot on the heating element often don't heat-up enough. A possible solution would be a spring-loaded metal or ceramic piece that presses the pot down against the hot element. I am building a plunger-type press into my next design. ** Most car lighter elements don't have a rim around the coils high enough to keep pot leaves from sliding-off. To prevent this, you could bend a strip of metal into a rim for the element, but you'd need a brazing torch (0, radio shack) or something similar to attach it. Remember, solder is poisonous and won't hold. (a little bonus if you buy the brazing torch is that you can use it to dispense nitrous oxide canisters :->) The easiest solution is to simply search for a lighter element with enough of a rim built-in. I know some auto stores sell a type with a 1-2 mm rim, which is just enough. Another solution is to take the metal cap from those tiny testors model- paint jars (1/2in diameter), clean it, and use it as a bowl which contains the pot and sits on top of the lighting element. I tried this but got poor results because the cap dispersed too much heat. ** Vapors displace air, therefore as they begin to fill your enclosure, they begin to creep out of cracks in box-hinges, etc. This wastes pot :-( The only solution I can think of is to make your enclosure air-tight, and to keep your mouth on the tube or mouthpiece as you let vapors build. Seal the box by lining the edge of your box-cover with rubber. Thin rubber tubing that has been slit open along its length makes a wonderful liner. That should be enough info for any creative, intelligent, self-motivated pothead to work from. I hope to see postings from people who read this and build their own lung-saving vaporizers! It's not that hard; Just DO it! D. S. L. ============================================================================= From: simon@lsupoz.apana.org.au (Simon Rumble) Newsgroups: alt.drugs Subject: Vapouriser: How I did it! Date: 8 Nov 1993 01:41:46 +1000 Message-ID: <2bj4vq$d3@lsupoz.apana.org.au> Well I've been talking about it for ages but always put it off as 'too much hassle'. You know what procrastination did for Hamlet so I finally got off my bum and did something. I made my Vapouriser Mark 1. It's quite primitive but has shown me very dramatic results. First of all, I find a vapouriser hit is perfectly smooth - it's almost as if you're taking a toke of nothing - but not quite. The smell is very pine-ish, not as dope normally is, that heady, sweet smell. The vapour is a pure white smoke that rises up. A vapouriser hit is also MUCH more efficient than a normal hit from a bong, I found. Out of the dope I normally smoke in one session, I have had 4 sessions - which is great! More potent, no lung burn and no carcinogens. Just good, clean fun :) So where did I start? Okay - the first thing I did was steal the standard cigarette lighter from my Mum's car. This looks like this : ---- | | | | -------- || /__\ You push the little bit on the bottom to push it up and a little element pokes out. This is the standard lighter as fitted to most non-Volvo cars (in Australia at least). The Volvo ones have a slightly different design. Okay so the next thing I did was work out how to power the thing. I got a 12 Volt transformer which was used for my train set in my younger days. This is great because it has a variable power slider but you could always buy/use a normal transformer and attach some sort of knob to regulate. At 12 Volts it's quite safe to play around with. Okay now here is a picture of what it looks like with wires attached. I used 4 core telephone cable and just spun two pairs together so I had two outputs. /------ + or - 12V ---- || ---- | | | ---|------ + or - 12V -------- || /__\ Note how the element bit is poking out. I did this by taping it poking out on the handle. + or - doesn't matter, just so long as you have one of each . The metal 'skirt' around the bottom must touch the wire down there. The element prong should be bent down and placed as close to the edge of the element as possible - with it still sticking it. Because you can't use solder or anything, this can be tricky. Make sure the wire is twisted and ready to insert. Push the elements (they're flexible) aside and stick it in. When the go back into place, they trap the wire inside. I used 4 core wire so I was able to put one wire on each side of the element - for greater reliabilty. Now we have to make an enclosure so those precious vapours don't go sailing away for the insects to enjoy (ever noticed mozzies always come around when you're smoking? :). I used a "Mount Franklin" mineral water bottle which turned out perfect. It has a mouth-piece where the lighter fitted in perfectly. You tape it into place. with the wires dangling down through the mouthpiece (can be tricky because it's such a snug fit. I then cut the top section from where the bottle starts to have straight sides. Next trim the edges so that the bottom (mouth end) fits inside the top. Ascii art time again. __ | | / \ | | Now the mouthpiece of a Mount Franklin water | | bottle is exactly the same size as that on a | | normal 1.25 Litre bottle of soft drink - this | | is important for a snug fit of the lighter. |______| Okay so you cut off the top bit which leaves you with: /---------- hole to suck through --- --- | | | | | | |\_ _ _/| |-| | <----- lighter with wires dangling down to transformer - Okay so there you have it. You place your pot (only a small mount, finely chopped so that ALL the pot is in contact with the element) and turn on the voltage. You know it's hot enough when a pure white smoke comes out of the pot in a thin stream. If it starts burning, wait 'till it goes out and try again. Oh yeah, you see the top is detachable so you can put the pot in :) Okay so as I said, this is only the Mark 1 so in future I will make it more air-tight (possibly through use of kitchen plastic ware) and get hold of a decent thermometer to calibrate it to the precise temperature required (someone said 97 degrees C?). Another advantage of this type of setup is it doesn't stink out the entire place. The smell is very localised and doesn't spread much. It isn't even really an unpleasant smell as stale smoke can be. Okay students: questions? Well I'll see you all in vapouriser102 - coming soon to a newsgroup near you :) L E G A L I S E -- //___///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /|___ Open mouth. Insert foot. Transmit internationally / / ___| H E R M simon@lsupoz.apana.org.au / //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////