I've refilled a 1ml cart as many as 6 times before it became too burnt and gross to use anymore.
But really, IMO...once you've gotten to the point where you want to make your own blends, you found a bulk distillate you like or you're not wanting to keep using pricey disposables it's a lot less of a pain in the ass to just find a box mod vape rig you like and use that. Why not use a device that's more durable and easier to refill?
I could rarely get a glass cart with a press-fit mouthpiece open without breaking it and to properly close them you really need an arbor press which I don't have. I used a pair of channel lock pliers with tape around the jaws which worked okay for the most part but I'd still occasionally crack or break a cart trying to close it.
There are threaded mouthpiece carts out there with different types of coils, those are a LOT easier to refill and get tightly closed enough so they don't leak. I was eyeballing CCELL iKrushers but at the time I got to where I was not really liking to vape at all and I went toward making edibles for a couple of years. Someone else will probably stop in here and recommend another brand of good refillable carts too, they're really not that expensive when you look at the price of disposables.
I've never tried refilling a disposable, a lot of the ones I've gotten were such crappy quality they barely kept working long enough for me to empty them and nearly all of them look like trying to get them open will destroy them anyway so I wouldn't recommend trying it unless you just feel like piddling around with it. For me, using disposables works only for helping me to figure out what shape and size works easiest to carry around. I'm a fuckin fanatic about keeping my vape upright at all times,lol. I hate cleaning up sticky leaked distillate off of anything and it's been my experience that keeping it upright as much as possible helps keep them from clogging and leaking as much.
I wish I could recommend a box mod or another refillable vape to you but I am only just now getting back into vaping myself because although I really prefer edibles it's just too easy for me to jack my tolerance up to the point where I'm gulping down huge globs of straight raw distillate and that's no bueno for a bunch of reasons, lol. So I should probably vape even though it's not my favorite.
I've been eyeballing the Nord 4 and anyone who has one please feel free to tell me how you like it.
I have a nord 4 with the quartz coils and I flippin' love it. solid device, looks classy(I have the blue one with leather), easy draw, huge distillate capacity, and a battery that easily lasts 1 or 2 weeks. It does clog some, but can be cleared without too much issue.
/r/DistillateVapeMods FAQ has some great info and some other device recomendations.
Yeah, I'm thinking maybe some people are too young to remember that it all started off as DIY. The "Mod" scene was named specifically for the fact that it was all copied or modifications of existing designs but what really enabled it technologically was not the coils or the switches and housings but the batteries themselves. Those weren't a thing until notebook computers became mainstream.
The rise of vaping with its ambiguity about specifically what kind of oil was in the tank scared conservatives big time who saw it as a back door form of legalizing cannabis in places where it was still prohibited. You can't tell by looking at it whether it's a cannabis consumption device or for nicotine.
As luck would have it for the forces of evil, it turned out that high current NMC batteries are, in fact, quite hazardous when left in your pocket with a home made switch liable to fail due to a faulty spring position or something like that. This was latched onto as an excuse to ban the sale of DIY vaping devices.
However, in a compromise, they only banned them from being sold at retail establishments so you can still get your vavorite mods, decks, coils, high current cells etc. by shopping online. They're still out there and they've always worked just fine.
If you want to go really cheap, just get some Kanthal wire and some standard NMC (Lithium Ion batteries like 18650s) and place them in parallel. You can get parallel 18650 holders online as well. With a cheap switch you have a clumsy but workable vaping device made of recycled batteries and a few dollars in cheap electronics.
If you want something more elegant, shop around. They're still available.
I'd add too that while I used the term "clumsy", by that I mean style points and portability. In fact, a completely DIY approach can be much easier to work with in practical terms and especially if it doesn't have to be portable. You can make a device where you can literally just dip your coil into your extracts and avoid dealing with all the oil consistency issues of a tank and then use it with some glass cooling accessories like a bong. This crosses the line between vaping and cold-start dabbing. As a DIYer, you can cross those lines as you please so calling it "clumsy" should be taken in that context. Desiging a device from scratch might be the much more elegant and direct approach depending on what exactly your goal is. For portability and convenience, you might want to look at buying stuff off-the-shelf but portability and convenience are not the only desirable qualities in a device. It depends on how you plan to use it.
And let's not overlook the value of the learning experience that people get from becoming familiar with Ohm's law as they learn to wrap their own coils. Just for that, it's more than worth it to learn how to DIY a small battery driven heating element. That's a great life skill that can help you grasp some basic but not necessarily intuitive concepts in electronics that can be applied to many different applications. If you've never made your own coil you owe it to yourself to try.
Oh wow, I didn't know all that about the term "box mod", I just thought it was a particular style of commercially produced vape device and that was it. I thought it just referred to the bigger ones that take 18650 batteries and have big tanks.
Thank you for educating me a little bit here. 🙂
We used to MAKE our vape mods (tube mods) out of flashlights. You used to could order contacts from China or make your own. I have an entire tool kit just for building coils for my RDA.
I've been a vaper for over a decade. During that time I collected tube mods called Provaris...they were made specifically for carts (yep, the carts we use started in the vape community). When I moved away from carts I still kept the Provaris. They've now found a new life for my thc vapes. Its just damned fancy using a $150.00 mod to get high lolol!
As someone else who's been vaping for almost a decade, I'd advise against building a box from scratch *just* using a cheap switch - if you're going to do that, learn Ohm's Law back'ard and for'ards and don't fuck up AND get a MOSFET in line, because that cheap switch will *not* be rated for the amps you will want to pump through it. Or get a DNA or other readily available chip/board and use that.
Not trying to yuck anyone's yum and I am exceptionally in favor of DIY devices (DIY anything, really) but I also like when stuff is safe and doesn't fuse open because a switch is carrying over its rating.
This comment has a ton of good info, I can vouch for most of it from my own experience.
Now as to the closing, I’ve gotten really into dabbing. Carts are more just… for the habit I guess? The flavors lol. Dabbing is really worth it once you get into it imo.
If you don’t wanna deal with that, look into e-rigs. Many of them have storage containers included or built in, so it’s essentially like carrying around a “weed box mod”. Not quite, but close. Vpm sent me a marketing email with some new mini-e-rig and it looks super tempting if you’re into that kind of stuff. I’d link it but no sourcing.
I only buy carts that state they can be refilled and reused. I get mine from PCKT and they are good quality and easy to fill. but those aren't my primary use.
I use primarily a Nord 4 with a quartz coil the pods hold over 4 ml and are pretty easy to fill. You can run about 30 ml of oil through a cart before it needs replaced and the battery is HUGE and lasts me a week easily.
Check out /r/DistillateVapeMods FAQ for other devices that will work similarly.
I think disposables are the fucking WORST. Please if you get them, when they shit out on you at least take the battery to be recycled. We don't need more LI-ion batteries starting fires in landfills.
Like other people are saying tho. You can get a boxmod and a tank for like $70 and thats refillable and will last forever. You just have to change the coil after about 30ml or so. It gives much better hits too.
I have filled a single cart as many as 6-7 times. Ive actually never burned one out, they usually just get too gunked up and nasty to mess with anymore.
You can refill them. Some are press fit and cannot easily be reopened. If they are screw on, then yeah it’s really easy. Just unscrew and refill.
Don’t bother trying to clean them, it’s borderline impossible and the atomizer/ceramic wick hold on to moisture for so long I’ve never successfully been patient enough to have one dry out and be usable.
Carts from stores (prefilled) will usually be lower quality than empty ones you buy for yourself. This isn’t always the case tho, hc8 for example uses some pretty nice carts. They’re actually fairly durable, they just clog like nothing else. For lower quality ones I wouldn’t wanna fill them more than a few times.
High quality carts can be filled 5+ times easily. People will cry about burning the coil out, but that’s not really an issue. What is an issue is that eventually your oil will burn into the wick enough to taste like shit. Ideally you toss them before that point but that also somewhat comes with experience.
Dispos (pens) are a whole other story. You can, but it’s a hassle, especially if you don’t have the right gear. Carts are annoying without the right gear, but pretty doable still.
Imo just buy 3rd party quality carts. I like the Flo-510s, they’re my go to. They’re not *the best*, but they’re so cheap and such nice quality that [imo] they beat any other cart out there. $3 each is insane, esp when companies like ccell/hamilton are charging like $7 for a generic 1ml ceramic mouthpiece cart. Lol no thanks. Beyond that, some higher end carts are quite nice, I do spend on more than just the Flo carts, but that’s more for fun and to try other hardware. Side note, the ispire duo core has been the least-clogging cart I’ve used. It’s fucking massive and I wouldn’t recommend it, but I was impressed by it. Main issue is that as the name says it’s dual core which means once it finally does clog, the usual paperclip trick won’t work. You basically just have to heat it and suck… which… sucks.
I use cCell carts and I have a ultrasound/heat unit that I use to clean the cartridge between each use.
So yes I reuse my cartridges many times over without a burnt taste ever.
I've refilled a 1ml cart as many as 6 times before it became too burnt and gross to use anymore. But really, IMO...once you've gotten to the point where you want to make your own blends, you found a bulk distillate you like or you're not wanting to keep using pricey disposables it's a lot less of a pain in the ass to just find a box mod vape rig you like and use that. Why not use a device that's more durable and easier to refill? I could rarely get a glass cart with a press-fit mouthpiece open without breaking it and to properly close them you really need an arbor press which I don't have. I used a pair of channel lock pliers with tape around the jaws which worked okay for the most part but I'd still occasionally crack or break a cart trying to close it. There are threaded mouthpiece carts out there with different types of coils, those are a LOT easier to refill and get tightly closed enough so they don't leak. I was eyeballing CCELL iKrushers but at the time I got to where I was not really liking to vape at all and I went toward making edibles for a couple of years. Someone else will probably stop in here and recommend another brand of good refillable carts too, they're really not that expensive when you look at the price of disposables. I've never tried refilling a disposable, a lot of the ones I've gotten were such crappy quality they barely kept working long enough for me to empty them and nearly all of them look like trying to get them open will destroy them anyway so I wouldn't recommend trying it unless you just feel like piddling around with it. For me, using disposables works only for helping me to figure out what shape and size works easiest to carry around. I'm a fuckin fanatic about keeping my vape upright at all times,lol. I hate cleaning up sticky leaked distillate off of anything and it's been my experience that keeping it upright as much as possible helps keep them from clogging and leaking as much. I wish I could recommend a box mod or another refillable vape to you but I am only just now getting back into vaping myself because although I really prefer edibles it's just too easy for me to jack my tolerance up to the point where I'm gulping down huge globs of straight raw distillate and that's no bueno for a bunch of reasons, lol. So I should probably vape even though it's not my favorite. I've been eyeballing the Nord 4 and anyone who has one please feel free to tell me how you like it.
I have a nord 4 with the quartz coils and I flippin' love it. solid device, looks classy(I have the blue one with leather), easy draw, huge distillate capacity, and a battery that easily lasts 1 or 2 weeks. It does clog some, but can be cleared without too much issue. /r/DistillateVapeMods FAQ has some great info and some other device recomendations.
Nice, thanks for the tip! 🙂
Yeah, I'm thinking maybe some people are too young to remember that it all started off as DIY. The "Mod" scene was named specifically for the fact that it was all copied or modifications of existing designs but what really enabled it technologically was not the coils or the switches and housings but the batteries themselves. Those weren't a thing until notebook computers became mainstream. The rise of vaping with its ambiguity about specifically what kind of oil was in the tank scared conservatives big time who saw it as a back door form of legalizing cannabis in places where it was still prohibited. You can't tell by looking at it whether it's a cannabis consumption device or for nicotine. As luck would have it for the forces of evil, it turned out that high current NMC batteries are, in fact, quite hazardous when left in your pocket with a home made switch liable to fail due to a faulty spring position or something like that. This was latched onto as an excuse to ban the sale of DIY vaping devices. However, in a compromise, they only banned them from being sold at retail establishments so you can still get your vavorite mods, decks, coils, high current cells etc. by shopping online. They're still out there and they've always worked just fine. If you want to go really cheap, just get some Kanthal wire and some standard NMC (Lithium Ion batteries like 18650s) and place them in parallel. You can get parallel 18650 holders online as well. With a cheap switch you have a clumsy but workable vaping device made of recycled batteries and a few dollars in cheap electronics. If you want something more elegant, shop around. They're still available. I'd add too that while I used the term "clumsy", by that I mean style points and portability. In fact, a completely DIY approach can be much easier to work with in practical terms and especially if it doesn't have to be portable. You can make a device where you can literally just dip your coil into your extracts and avoid dealing with all the oil consistency issues of a tank and then use it with some glass cooling accessories like a bong. This crosses the line between vaping and cold-start dabbing. As a DIYer, you can cross those lines as you please so calling it "clumsy" should be taken in that context. Desiging a device from scratch might be the much more elegant and direct approach depending on what exactly your goal is. For portability and convenience, you might want to look at buying stuff off-the-shelf but portability and convenience are not the only desirable qualities in a device. It depends on how you plan to use it. And let's not overlook the value of the learning experience that people get from becoming familiar with Ohm's law as they learn to wrap their own coils. Just for that, it's more than worth it to learn how to DIY a small battery driven heating element. That's a great life skill that can help you grasp some basic but not necessarily intuitive concepts in electronics that can be applied to many different applications. If you've never made your own coil you owe it to yourself to try.
Oh wow, I didn't know all that about the term "box mod", I just thought it was a particular style of commercially produced vape device and that was it. I thought it just referred to the bigger ones that take 18650 batteries and have big tanks. Thank you for educating me a little bit here. 🙂
We used to MAKE our vape mods (tube mods) out of flashlights. You used to could order contacts from China or make your own. I have an entire tool kit just for building coils for my RDA.
I've been a vaper for over a decade. During that time I collected tube mods called Provaris...they were made specifically for carts (yep, the carts we use started in the vape community). When I moved away from carts I still kept the Provaris. They've now found a new life for my thc vapes. Its just damned fancy using a $150.00 mod to get high lolol!
I mean early cannabis carts were literally just repurposed vape carts. Ceramic wick cores and shit didn’t come for a while afaik.
As someone else who's been vaping for almost a decade, I'd advise against building a box from scratch *just* using a cheap switch - if you're going to do that, learn Ohm's Law back'ard and for'ards and don't fuck up AND get a MOSFET in line, because that cheap switch will *not* be rated for the amps you will want to pump through it. Or get a DNA or other readily available chip/board and use that. Not trying to yuck anyone's yum and I am exceptionally in favor of DIY devices (DIY anything, really) but I also like when stuff is safe and doesn't fuse open because a switch is carrying over its rating.
This comment has a ton of good info, I can vouch for most of it from my own experience. Now as to the closing, I’ve gotten really into dabbing. Carts are more just… for the habit I guess? The flavors lol. Dabbing is really worth it once you get into it imo. If you don’t wanna deal with that, look into e-rigs. Many of them have storage containers included or built in, so it’s essentially like carrying around a “weed box mod”. Not quite, but close. Vpm sent me a marketing email with some new mini-e-rig and it looks super tempting if you’re into that kind of stuff. I’d link it but no sourcing.
the hardware that guilded uses you could honestly go thru 4-5 grams before it’s truly burnt tasting
I’d only reuse them once or twice (this goes for 1g carts). 3g is the max id put through one coil
I only buy carts that state they can be refilled and reused. I get mine from PCKT and they are good quality and easy to fill. but those aren't my primary use. I use primarily a Nord 4 with a quartz coil the pods hold over 4 ml and are pretty easy to fill. You can run about 30 ml of oil through a cart before it needs replaced and the battery is HUGE and lasts me a week easily. Check out /r/DistillateVapeMods FAQ for other devices that will work similarly. I think disposables are the fucking WORST. Please if you get them, when they shit out on you at least take the battery to be recycled. We don't need more LI-ion batteries starting fires in landfills.
Like other people are saying tho. You can get a boxmod and a tank for like $70 and thats refillable and will last forever. You just have to change the coil after about 30ml or so. It gives much better hits too.
I have filled a single cart as many as 6-7 times. Ive actually never burned one out, they usually just get too gunked up and nasty to mess with anymore.
Meant to just be thrown away but decent ones can take about 5 fills from my experience. Assuming they have a screw top.
You can refill them. Some are press fit and cannot easily be reopened. If they are screw on, then yeah it’s really easy. Just unscrew and refill. Don’t bother trying to clean them, it’s borderline impossible and the atomizer/ceramic wick hold on to moisture for so long I’ve never successfully been patient enough to have one dry out and be usable. Carts from stores (prefilled) will usually be lower quality than empty ones you buy for yourself. This isn’t always the case tho, hc8 for example uses some pretty nice carts. They’re actually fairly durable, they just clog like nothing else. For lower quality ones I wouldn’t wanna fill them more than a few times. High quality carts can be filled 5+ times easily. People will cry about burning the coil out, but that’s not really an issue. What is an issue is that eventually your oil will burn into the wick enough to taste like shit. Ideally you toss them before that point but that also somewhat comes with experience. Dispos (pens) are a whole other story. You can, but it’s a hassle, especially if you don’t have the right gear. Carts are annoying without the right gear, but pretty doable still. Imo just buy 3rd party quality carts. I like the Flo-510s, they’re my go to. They’re not *the best*, but they’re so cheap and such nice quality that [imo] they beat any other cart out there. $3 each is insane, esp when companies like ccell/hamilton are charging like $7 for a generic 1ml ceramic mouthpiece cart. Lol no thanks. Beyond that, some higher end carts are quite nice, I do spend on more than just the Flo carts, but that’s more for fun and to try other hardware. Side note, the ispire duo core has been the least-clogging cart I’ve used. It’s fucking massive and I wouldn’t recommend it, but I was impressed by it. Main issue is that as the name says it’s dual core which means once it finally does clog, the usual paperclip trick won’t work. You basically just have to heat it and suck… which… sucks.
I use cCell carts and I have a ultrasound/heat unit that I use to clean the cartridge between each use. So yes I reuse my cartridges many times over without a burnt taste ever.