New Juice Reviews and More to Come

I just got done adding about 15 new if juice reviews if anyone is interested. I'll be adding a few new mod reviews, most likely tomorrow. I've also added a few brick and mortar businesses in the vendor section for those of you who live in Minot ND, Dickinson ND, Marmoth ND, or Grand Junction CO.

New Sections

I've posted all of the information I've shared on the blog that pertains to battery safety in the new battery safety page of the blog. I have also added new pages for both new members and for cloud chasers.

Thermal Runaway: What it is and How Do I Avoid it

There has been plenty of talk of batteries thus far on the blog. Thermal runaway has been mentioned, but we have only really grazed the surface. For those of you who don't know, thermal runaway is a term used to describe what happens when a battery breaks down due to over discharging or because of a short. Depending on the chemistry of a given battery, thermal runaway will cause one of two different reactions. The common reaction of li-ion batteries is to vent hot gasses, flames, and sometimes blow up. Li-mn IMR batteries do not react in the same fashion during thermal runaway, but instead simply vent hot gas, minus the flames and explosions. Of course even with safe chemistry batteries there is still a very real chance of injury due to thermal runaway if the proper safety measures are not taken by the user.

Proper Venting

Proper venting is a must in all mods, regardless of what build you are using, or what type of battery you are using. Mods that lack vent holes are essentially just a pipe bomb waiting for chance to blow up in your hand, or somewhere else close by. If and when a battery does enter a state of thermal runaway, vent holes are used to direct hot gasses away from the user and prevent gasses from building up in the tube. A mod that lacks venting will likely fill with gases until the pressure finds a 

Shorts

Most shorts are fairly easy to catch, and either involve your atomizer or your battery. From my experience atomizer shorts in RDAs are typicality a product of bridging the positive post with either one of the negative posts or the deck which is also negative. This is sometimes caused by small gauge low resistance coils not being able to withstand high heat output, this typically results in the coil melting and making contact with the deck causing the circuit to complete without resistance. Shorts can also be caused buy tears, breaks, or holes in the plastic cover on your battery, which acts as an insulator between the negative body if the battery and your mod. Battery shorts are of this kind are often caught early, typically the user will feel a small zap when pressing the button of a mechanical mod if the negative body of the battery is making contact with the mod somewhere. If the tear, rip, or hole becomes bad it could cause a bigger problem. More often than not damaged batteries find their way to the trash, but if you are willing to put in a little bit of work you can re wrap old batteries, given they are still worth using.

Checking Voltages

Batteries that have been over discharged or over charged are sometimes culprits of thermal runaway. Batteries that have been over charged are especially dangerous, not only is the battery holding more energy than it is designed to hold, but in some cases a build that would otherwise be totally safe pulls more amperage from the battery than it would if the battery had not been over charged. 

Checking Resistance

Checking your atomizers resistance before use is essential, as is staying within a battery's specified maximum continuous discharge rate. It is also often times good practice to give your coil some wiggle room, should the coil shift in resistance .1 ohms. Keeping this wiggle room in mind, coils built for use on battery with a 20A raiting should be .3 ohms or higher and 10A rated batteries should be used with coils with resistances of .5 or higher. Some people ignore this wiggle room, or instead build their coil based on a batteries maximum pulse rating. If you choose to build your coils based on something other than the max cont. rating, that is your choice as a vaper, but often times this is a dangerous road if you happen to be in a situation where you have a button stick. If you end up with a stuck button and have built based on max pulse, you will likely end up with a short and a battery in thermal run away. Battery pulse ratings are based on the maximum amount of power it can deliver in a short burst (Normaly 10-60 sec.). Batteries are not meant to output their maximum for very long and although they can handle bursts of up to 60A sometimes, the same 60A being pulled for 1-2 minutes will more than likely result in a catastrophic battery vent.

Signs of Venting

Signs of venting are often fairly obvious, if your battery vented while in use you probably know it. However, thermal runaway isn't always catastrophic, especially if the cause if found before things get out of hand. It generally starts with the battery getting warm, sometimes even hot. For most users this is generally a sign something isn't as it should be. At this point thermal runaway often isn't a result unless the user ignores the signs that he battery is getting hot and obviously isn't handling something as it should be. However, sometimes venting and thermal runaway are a result of overcharging or insufficient load resistance causing a higher amp drain than the battery can handle. Regardless of the cause if you suspect that you have a battery that vented you can almost always tell by inspecting the small vent holes in the positive post if your battery. If there are any burn marks, liquids, or residue on the terminal, chances are that you have a battery that vented, and should discard of it immediately. NEVER USE A BATTERY THAT HAS VENTED!

Battery Chargers

           I know for a fact that I've talked about battery safety and batteries here already, but like always little attention ever seems to get devoted to battery charges. Battery chargers can in some cases mean the difference between a freshly charged stable battery, and an overcharged battery that could go into thermal runaway.
           Cheap Chinese no name chargers are something to avoid like the plague, some of these chargers have no cut off voltage for charging, and rely on the battery having some kind of over charge protection built in. For vapers using IMR batteries this is a major problem, as IMR batteries have no overcharge protection. This means that you will likely end up needing a good quality charger that has a charge cut off of 4.2V. This might cost a bit more than a cheap Chinese piece of crap but in the long run, the battery charger will last longer and you wont chance over discharging your batteries.
            In order to practice proper battery safety all vapers should own a digital multimeter not only for checking atomizer resistance, but also for checking battery voltage before and after using a battery in a mechanical mod to check for over discharge and for over charging. However if you do not own a multimeter and use a 510 threaded ohm meter or have a mod that reads resistance, there are a few battery chargers on the marked that read the voltage of the battery when from the time you first put it on the charger until it is done charging. These kind of chargers are often not too much more than standard chargers.
           Currently I am using on of the Nitecore D4 chargers, and I have to say it is a solid unit that does it's job, and does it very well. Although the charge time is slightly below what I would say is fast, I know that the battery will be charged properly. If you are using a mechanical mod and do not have a digital multimeter I would highly suggest picking one up.

Batteries

I recently ordered eight 18650 batteries for use in my various mods. Today I received the four Samsung INR 25R batteries today, and man, I gotta say they are some of the best batteries I have used thus far. My review of the Samsung INR 25R can be found on the battery review page. The other four batteries I ordered, MNKE 1500 mah 18650, should be here in the next few days. A review will be posted shortly after.

New Sections

Tonight I will be adding a couple of new sections to the blog. One will be a dictionary for commonly used vape terms. The other will be a page dedicated to new vapers... I will likely get started on the Diy E-Juice Section in the next couple of days as well.

Battery Safety

Battery safety is a big thing in vaping. As vaper's we use batteries all day every day, so it is very important to have at least some basic knowledge of how they work and what their operating conditions are. Using poor quality batteries can result in poor performance in some cases shorts or thermal runaway happens far before the supposed operating perimeters. For the most part, vapers that use regulated mods see far less performance issues from lower quality batteries than users of mechanical mods.

Amp Limits
If you are a mechanical mod user, knowing your batteries amp limit is absolutely necessary. Depending on the kind of build you typically use you can better choose a battery with an amp limit to suit your needs. Mechanical mod users that sub ohm are more likely to have misshapes with their batteries as a result of over stressing their batteries. Another very important thing to consider when using a mechanical mod is using or switching to "Safe" Chemistry high drain IMR batteries. These safe chemistry batteries are better used in situations where thermal runaway might happen, these batteries DO NOT explode or catch fire when shorted out. This does not mean however that they don't vent hot gasses like most batteries, but unless it's trapped in a mod with no vent holes it probably won't explode. As far as I am aware the Sony VTC5 batteries remain the holy grail in vaping, partly due to them being the only battery with a true 30 amp continuous rating. Sony VTC5 batteries are no long made, so chances are you will have to deal with one of the batteries listed below if you are in need of a sub ohm battery.

LG HE2 20A
Samsung 25R 20A
MNKE 1500 MaH  20A
Efest Purple 2500 Mah 20/35A

Charging/Over Discharging 
When dealing with batteries in an environment that has no safety precaution (Mechanical) it is very important to make sure your batteries are maintained properly, charged properly, and swapped out before they reach 3.5 volts. Batteries being used with a voltage of less than 3.5 volts have a higher chance of reaching thermal run away due to over discharging. Batteries that have been over charged often suffer the same fate as over discharged batteries. Over charging is often a sign your battery wearing out as a result of stress and should be discarded immediately. A multimeter will be your best friend, and could save you a nasty accident. Another option is a battery charger that monitors and displays battery voltage. The only charger I know of like this is that Nitecore D2 & D4 battery chargers, I own the D4 and love it.

High Wattage Box Mods
Many of the new high wattage box mods hitting the scene require 20A and sometimes higher rated batteries. This is because of the much higher amount of power required from the battery to produce 100 Watts or more. Typically speaking 20A batteries are perfectly reasonable for use in mods below or at 100 watts. That I know of there are only two mods around at this point in time that may require true 30A batteries, the SMY GOD and the Vicious Ant Variant. In these cases it may be wise to attempt to find some VTC5 or equivalent.

Standard Wattage Regulated Mods (10-20 Watts)
The use of high drain IMR batteries is not necessary in a majority of lower wattage mods and can be an unnecessary expense for some vapers. I have had plenty of success using standard 10A rated Li-ion batteries in these kinds of mods with no noticeable performance hit. If you are in a circumstance where you are using multiple mods,having some with higher power requirements, I would recommend using IMR batteries in all mods and eliminating the possibility of mix ups.

Hopefully I have provided enough information to at least start people off in the right direction. Thermal run away is not a pretty thing. The more of us who practice safety when using our vaporizers the better. If enough of us fuck up and blow up our mods, they'll find a way to outlaw vaping for good. None of us want that. So, with all that being said,

Be Safe,
Keep Calm,
Vape On!

P.S.
This post will likely end up in the sub ohm / Mechanical section, along side some other materials that will help make things a little bit simpler.