ted

I got this idea years ago when the penlight-sized soldering irons first came out. The point is made of a ceramic that instantly heats up when a small current is passed through it, and immediately gets cold when the current is off. But I haven't the technical knowledge to pursue this. So let me - using a term a young friend introduced me to a few years ago, which means to contribute a bud to the pipe going around - let me throw this up on you. Oh, I love the language. If you ain't twisting English, you ain't usin' it right!
If a person could make two mesh-shaped half speres out of this ceramic - some experimentation would be required, and maybe two flat or lens-shaped plates would be better - with one mounted on a spring so it could be snapped open for loading and then shut with enough force that the 'mousetrap' would close tighter as the material was roasted, you would have a pipe that would bake the goodies only when it was on, and take away the heat immediately when it was off. This *should* make it possible to convert the THC to gas without burning the stuff, thus without particulates, which would be a good thing; plus not waste THC through the stuff continuing to burn after you've puffed.
I see this thing as having a wind-sensor - flaps or a fan in front of the toasting area, something like that - hooked up to the wiring, so that the ceramic is turned on by sucking on the pipe, and turned off as soon as sucking stops. (Though I'm old enough to know that the sucking never really stops. Sigh.) The advantages that I see to this auto-lighting pipe would be a reduction of particulates, a saving of material as more of it went into your lungs instead of the air, being able to smoke right in front of pigs without they should know what you are doing, and the tremendous advantage of not having to drive with your knees while lighting up.
I'm curious about whether or not those 'electric cigarettes' can be used for this. Anyone out there with engineering experience want to comment on this? Ideas? Remarks? Thoughts? Reflections? Naked pictures? (Okay, naked pictures is a leetle off-topic. Hey, I'm an old fag; have some sympathy, damn it! WHEEE! )

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dubtrice

put the flap on backwards and call it a chinese lung trap

idk man I think you need an actual plan, I have an idea of what your trying to accomplish, but thats about all you can get out of your post. I can't picture what your trying to create.

ted

I'll see if I can use Inkscape to do a drawing I can put here. Then after all the homophobes have gone ballistic, I'll put a drawing *of the pipe* online. Oh, I do loves to make me some trouble!

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kamikazi89

wind sensor sounds pretty tricky(you're trying to create an on demand vacuum, is that the idea?

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Flamingnun

Right firstly, clarify what you want, because right now it sounds like you want a pipe with the ability to vaporise the weed, but you keep referring to it as smoking, which is confusing. And regardless, why would cops not notice you (unless you're on the vape tangent, and even then that's not odourless)? Is it invisible? Because otherwise it just sounds like a regular pipe, filled with regular weed, which would be pretty recognisable.

Secondly, you'd need some sort of thermostat to limit how hot it burns, or you'd be as well sticking to a lighter. I'd also consider removing the fans/flaps in favour of a button, or "pad" area of the pipe which triggers ignition, considering the fans/flaps would be in an ashy/tarry environment around the bowl, there's a lot to go wrong.

Thirdly, have you factored a power source into this? Is it feasible without making the pipe 80's tv style remote control sized?

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ted

Actually, I don't really need a drawing, because the parts of this so far are just conceptual. So a sort of flow diagram will work. I had to put in all those periods to get the Yahooka editor to align thing correctly. Try this:
.................... ..<-----------tube---------------->
.
.................... .................... ......<-oven door->
.................... ..------------------+-------------+--
.outside air --> airflow sensor->ceramic oven-> happy camper
.................... ..-----------------------------------
.................... .. | battery compartment |
.................... .. ----------------------------
The airflow sensor would react to the suckage of the happy camper by connecting the ceramic oven to the battery, and as soon as suckage stopped the ceramic oven would be turned off. The idea of a spring-loaded two-piece oven would be so that as the material was roasted on the outside, the spring would mash the oven halves down onto the unroasted parts. Experimentation would have to be done, though, as perhaps the pressure would be unnecessary and the oven would roast the bud all the way through.
This would accomplish several things that I see as shortcomings of other pipes. If you have to shred the pot, as in many vaporizers, right there you are losing a big chunk of THC to the air as the vessicles are broken. Vaporizers that fill a space, such as a bag, before being smoked lose THC to molecules grabbing onto the surface of the bag; THC is very reactive, which is why we smoke it. Ideally, you want to rapidly heat the unbroken bud to the point that the THC is converted into a gas, but at less than the heat at which it is destroyed, and to stop the conversion as soon as inhaling stops. You then want it to go into your lungs immediately by the shortest route - any kind of air-storage is going to reduce the gas quickly as it is deposited on any surface it strikes. This idea seems pretty good to me, at least conceptually.

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kamikazi89

couldn't you just use a rubberband

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ted

The penlight soldering iron that got me started thinking about this worked with AAA batteries, so I figure they would power this idea too; but perhaps not. But the goal would be a tube about the size of a small cigar. The ceramic has an optimum heat level depending on the exact formulation, which should - but maybe not! - eliminate the need for a thermostat. Having an 'ignition button' is possible, of course, but probably no harder to construct than the 'air flap' sensor; the advantage to the sensor would be that the oven would turn on only when suckage commenced, and stop immediately with suckendage. But of course that does introduce a moving part, so a contact-activated on button with no moving parts might be the way to go. The question of tarring up the flaps (or turbine or windmill or whatever) would be eliminated by having the air-sensor trigger in front of the oven.

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kamikazi89

& a tiny fan

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Mydriasis

ted it sounds to me like your trying to build a pocket vaporizer?
Whats going to be the power source for the heating element?
How are you going to get it to cool down instantaneously without some sort of gas cartridge(perhaps c02 or n20)?
What is the bowl going to be made out of?

If you draw some schematics than it'd be a bit easier to see how feasible the idea really is and the differences between this and a pocket vaporizer such as a vapir.

It sounds to me like a flash-light might be a decent "Casing" for your device, already with battery holding. The hardest part in my opinion is going to be battery conservation. I tried making a vaporizer using nichrome wire as a heating element and a 9 volt battery. 15 seconds of it being on resulted in the battery being completely drained. Now that I know more about electronics this is solvable but still a problem.

The second hardest part in my opinion will be the bowl structure. Because you can't have flakes of hot weed falling into your electronics but you want a fan of sorts and a tube for auto-hits, while you still need to be able to heat your product evenly, and idealistically your machine should be totally clean-able to avoid paraphenalia charges.

I think your air-flow sensor will be a little complex and expensive. Let's put it this way my car doesn't even have a MAF.

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Mafoo

try n find a "phedor" its a ceramic heating wand about the size of a pencil point used for hitting bowls without a lighter. i bet you could build your own.

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PLUR
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return

ted

I guess you could say that a 'pocket vaporizer' is the goal. I hadn't thought of it that way but I guess you are right. One of the things that made those penlight soldering irons so safe was the nature of the ceramic; it instantly heats up when a tiny current is passed through it, and returns to room temp right away when the current is off. That's why the bowl would be made out of this stuff; and I understand it is an easy ceramic to mold, but really I know nothing about engineering, as perhaps this whole idea shows. I'll have to look up 'vapir'. I didn't know there were pocket vaporizers, so perhaps this wheel has already been invented. But your experience with trying to make a vaporizer would certainly suggest difficulties in the area of power supply. It would be nice to figure out a way to mock this thing up, just to see if it is actually advantageous in any way. It's easy to imagine some device like this, but if it doesn't give an actual benefit over other choices, it's pointless. Still, it's just an idea . . .

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zerodown

Sounds like a rough home made vaporizer idea...

Mydriasis

I'm interested in this idea as well. I'm no engineering expert either. I'm gonna do some research today and see what I can come up with.

The idea here isn't to invent something new, but rather make a LEGIT 30-40 dollar vaporizer that we can put schematics up for the rest of the maguyvers out there.

Nothing is pointless if your exploring something new. I didn't mean to sound like a debby downer I was just trying to share some of my experiance.

I didn't realize ceramic heated up so well and cooled so fast, but I believe it.

The bowl probably shouldn't be made of ceramic but rather a meshy substance or perhaps a shallow test tube. and have the heating element not directly exposed to the cannabis, or maybe a ceramic bowl would work hmm. I'll have to look into it all.

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ted

Wow! That lighter is excessively cool! I don't have $150 for a friggin' lighter, but what a neat idea - and I bet it's well worth it if only not to be inhaling all that butane (for which reason I prefer using wood sticks for ignition, but one still gets carbon in the gas.) If they get the price down, this is a very smart solution - and if you can afford it, this ought to be commonly used as a solution to all those benzene rings we inhale with the butane. But thanks for the hint. It ought to be easy to use the phedor lighter as the base for mocking up something just to see if this is a worthwhile idea to pursue.
The vaporizers the Phedor websight shows have the classic shortcomings (at least as I see it) to others I've seen and used. The idea is good - to improve our health by eliminating excessive heat and the resulting, and unnecessary, particulates. But the mess, the expense, the grinding up of the pot which wastes some THC, the storage medium which wastes much more.
But the search goes on, puff by puff. Soldier on, fellow potheads!!!

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Mydriasis

A lot of people don't realize that using an alcohol lamp is probably the healthiest way to smoke(when using ignition). After it combusts it leaves behind only c02 and h20

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ted

No downers, Debbie! This is exactly why I threw this gantlet down (unless I mean 'gauntlet': one is a glove, the other is a test of manhood in the military, and I never remember which is what. I meant the glove; dude, I left all my manhood behind me *long* ago. I THINK I've got it right, though . . .)
But you are right. An inexpensive way to smoke pot through something that one can carry around, which requires as little handling of the Source of Kindness as possible, and in which the resultant smoke or vapor or whatever is immediately sucked into the lungs by the shortest possible route. I have assumed, but perhaps not, that the ceramic would have to directly contact the glorious green to work, and also that's why I thought it would need to mash down somewhat upon the bud in order to keep 'burning' through it.

Geez, though, I WANT one of those Phedor lighters!

And, again you are right. Working out some way of making this, if it in fact has any advantages, that we could post here would be very cool. Vive la revolution!

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Flamingnun

The only way you would be inhaling butane is if you're sucking from an unlit lighter with your finger on the gas.


As does a butane lighter... unless you've got some super shitty cheap one with a crappy gas line, you should be able to wave a butane lighter under say, a piece of wood, without it leaving any soot, if it's burning as it should.


And I'm still curious about this part;

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Mydriasis

Flamingnun I guess I didn't realize butane did the same thing. The weird thing is all the goop bic lighters leave behind.

Ted - this video may help you better understand a working schematic of such a device.

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Mydriasis

Here's some real rickidy idea I just came up with. about making a vaporizer using a piezo electric lighter as a heat source.



The casing would have to be WELL insulated, and it would need a ventilation system so the lighter could light.
The fan would rotate on it's own by the heat in theory.

There would be no fuel residue on the product and if you were skilled enough you could get your product to vaporize. But it'd definetly take some skill.

One major flaw with the design I can see if that if the lighter didn't light you'd have NO idea, until you realized the thermometer wasn't going up.

Now I don't know if this would work at all but it's an idea.

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