Cleaning Cartomizers Help

[Tagsanstuff]

I cleaned 2 of my used Cartomizers and now when I try to use them, I get no vapor..help please. I boiled them for 5 minutes. let the cool in the water for another 5 minutes. then let them air dry for almost 24 hours and now I do not produce vapor.

[Jeffb]

Are they making a sizzling noise? If not they may be toast.

[Tagsanstuff]

Are they making a sizzling noise? If not they may be toast.

1 sizzles. the other nothing.

[Jeffb]

I would guess water is still trapped in the filler material.

[juliery]

First of all boiling for 5 minutes won't clean them. You have to boil them for a total of about an hour, changing water periodically. Then you have to blow all the water out of them and then dry them for about 24 hours. In the year my husband and I have been vaping only about 10 have died....of many hundreds of them. Then when you fill them they take a good 20 drops usually...using the top fill method. I assume you took the top caps off of them before boiling? You have to do that too....then you blow from the top end until no water comes out. But 5 minutes wouldn't be long enough. I usually boil anywhere from 30-50 of them at a time. Obviously the more you boil the longer it would take to get clean water. But you would have to change the water at least once, because otherwise you just removed them from dirty water, and they were never boiled in clean water.

[Tagsanstuff]

First of all boiling for 5 minutes won't clean them. You have to boil them for a total of about an hour, changing water periodically. Then you have to blow all the water out of them and then dry them for about 24 hours. In the year my husband and I have been vaping only about 10 have died....of many hundreds of them. Then when you fill them they take a good 20 drops usually...using the top fill method. I assume you took the top caps off of them before boiling? You have to do that too....then you blow from the top end until no water comes out. But 5 minutes wouldn't be long enough. I usually boil anywhere from 30-50 of them at a time. Obviously the more you boil the longer it would take to get clean water. But you would have to change the water at least once, because otherwise you just removed them from dirty water, and they were never boiled in clean water.

ok I will try that one now...thank you

[juliery]

oh, and don't boil the tops of them. I wash the tops in an old pill bottle, I put them in there with hot water and a drop of dish soap. Put the lid on and shake them a bit....not too hard because the top will leak water. Then I rinse them and dry them on a towel or paper towel if you don't have a bunch of them. You will have cartos that die, because they aren't meant to last forever....but it is not most of them, it is very few. But it DOES happen. But it would happen even if you never boiled them. Every other time I boil them, I do the whole boiling process, then soak them in everclear/cheap vodka for an hour, and have even left them over night, (depends what I am doing, how I am feeling, how tired I am, etc) and then boil them again a few times to get the alcohol out. Then blow the water out, and let them dry. THEN they are like brand new, NO odor, NOTHING. With the boiling alone, you do get them pretty clean, but it doesn't clean out some of the really strong flavors, like grape and sour cherry. so I do keep an eye on which ones I refill with which liquid. After the everclear or vodka soak you can pretty much fill them with anything. That kills any flavor from them. I usually do the boiling while watching tv or being online, etc. I change the water probably every 15 minutes it has been boiling. I use a cheapo $10 electric hot pot because it goes from cold to boiling in under a minute, so it is a quick way to get them boiling over and over again. I just keep changing the water until there is NO odor anymore. Then I boil them one more time for good measure. Hope that helps

[DAYVAPE]

Wow, that sure sounds like a lot of unnecessary work on such an inexpensive little thing.

I know, everyone has their own ways of "makin' it happen" for them when it comes to vaping. I just know that I personally wouldn't/don't take the time to clean my cartomizers. Now, on the off chance I decide to use atomizers all of the sudden, I would certainly entertain the idea of cleaning them. I just don't think they were meant to be boiled for some reason... who knows, to each their own I suppose. As long as whatever you are doing is working... GO FOR IT! Thats whats crazy about vaping... being such a new thing everyone comes up with all sorts of crazy methods for doing different things. I love seeing some of the stuff people think up!

Edited January 28, 2011 by DAYVAPE

[juliery]

Wow, that sure sounds like a lot of unnecessary work on such an inexpensive little thing.

I know, everyone has their own ways of "makin' it happen" for them when it comes to vaping. I just know that I personally wouldn't/don't take the time to clean my cartomizers. Now, on the off chance I decide to use atomizers all of the sudden, I would certainly entertain the idea of cleaning them. I just don't think they were meant to be boiled for some reason... who knows, to each their own I suppose. As long as whatever you are doing is working... GO FOR IT! Thats whats crazy about vaping... being such a new thing everyone comes up with all sorts of crazy methods for doing different things. I love seeing some of the stuff people think up!

I was buying prefilled cartos and vaping 5-8 of them a day....that exceeded the expense of smoking. I accumulated HUNDREDS, with my husband around a thousand cartos VERY quickly with ordering all different flavors. I knew there HAD to be a way to clean them and then I found lots of videos on you tube about the various methods. Of course they aren't intended to be boiled. The people selling them would LOVE to be selling me $12 a day of cartos and throwing them out. It isn't anything hard or any real hands on work. I use a hotpot in my master bath, while watching tv.....about every 15-20 mins I go in there, pour out the water...there is a slotted spout so you can do that without opening the lid or anything, no cartos can fall out, and open the lid refill and it is boiling again in under one minute. I do it a few times till the water no longer smells, probably about an hour of boiling, then I just fill it with cool water, and they cool instantly, then I blow the water out and set them to dry for a day or till I need to fill them. I actually dry them in the little plastic tray that was the insert from my cell phone box, perfect size, will hold about 100 of them. It is MAYBE ten minutes of hands on handling. Most of the time they are just in the water boiling which requires no effort on my part. But then again I refill ink cartridges in my printer too, and a lot of people think that is stupid. Anyone who direct drips spends way more time doing that than I spend cleaning cartos. In this entire year MAYBE 10 cartos have died, and none of them immediately after boiling. Just using them and they stop working when the atty finally burns out. So it sounds like some big production, but it really isn't. Now boiling in a pot, that would require far more time, only because it takes awhile for water to reach boiling temp. The hotpot I have was $10 at walmart, they sell them everywhere, any place that sells small kitchen appliances. I used to use it to heat water for tea. Now I use it ONLY for cleaning cartos. So hey, anyone who is throwing away 808 cartos, don't, send them to me....I will be happy to take your trash, LOL. For me, with as heavy a user I am, it is not an inexpensive little thing. I go through way too many to throw away a device that is working fine. Plus I have done it when I have gotten prefilled cartos where I hated the flavor, was able to clean them and use them for liquid I did like.

[Tagsanstuff]

I was buying prefilled cartos and vaping 5-8 of them a day....that exceeded the expense of smoking. I accumulated HUNDREDS, with my husband around a thousand cartos VERY quickly with ordering all different flavors. I knew there HAD to be a way to clean them and then I found lots of videos on you tube about the various methods. Of course they aren't intended to be boiled. The people selling them would LOVE to be selling me $12 a day of cartos and throwing them out. It isn't anything hard or any real hands on work. I use a hotpot in my master bath, while watching tv.....about every 15-20 mins I go in there, pour out the water...there is a slotted spout so you can do that without opening the lid or anything, no cartos can fall out, and open the lid refill and it is boiling again in under one minute. I do it a few times till the water no longer smells, probably about an hour of boiling, then I just fill it with cool water, and they cool instantly, then I blow the water out and set them to dry for a day or till I need to fill them. I actually dry them in the little plastic tray that was the insert from my cell phone box, perfect size, will hold about 100 of them. It is MAYBE ten minutes of hands on handling. Most of the time they are just in the water boiling which requires no effort on my part. But then again I refill ink cartridges in my printer too, and a lot of people think that is stupid. Anyone who direct drips spends way more time doing that than I spend cleaning cartos. In this entire year MAYBE 10 cartos have died, and none of them immediately after boiling. Just using them and they stop working when the atty finally burns out. So it sounds like some big production, but it really isn't. Now boiling in a pot, that would require far more time, only because it takes awhile for water to reach boiling temp. The hotpot I have was $10 at walmart, they sell them everywhere, any place that sells small kitchen appliances. I used to use it to heat water for tea. Now I use it ONLY for cleaning cartos. So hey, anyone who is throwing away 808 cartos, don't, send them to me....I will be happy to take your trash, LOL. For me, with as heavy a user I am, it is not an inexpensive little thing. I go through way too many to throw away a device that is working fine. Plus I have done it when I have gotten prefilled cartos where I hated the flavor, was able to clean them and use them for liquid I did like.

I will try that when i have more on hand. right now, 3 of the 5 carto`s I got from the people I got my liquid from did not work at all.( They are also sending me 2 free carto`s) Thank goodness I have a couple new atomizers left to hold me over til they get here in the mail.

[DAYVAPE]

Well, hell yeah Juliery, if I was going through 5 - 10 a day and THROWING them away, then I'm sure I would have been looking for some way to lengthen the life of them. Just too bad you got swindled into having to buy new/prefilled carts every damn time! That's a total ripoff if you ask me, just my opinion here though. I never once purchased the prefilled ones since I was rather sure I wouldnt like the crap juice they were putting in them. I wanted to have control over what I was putting in my cartos!! At least you have found what works great for you... THATS what it's all about around here.

Edited January 28, 2011 by DAYVAPE

[juliery]

Well, hell yeah Juliery, if I was going through 5 - 10 a day and THROWING them away, then I'm sure I would have been looking for some way to lengthen the life of them. Just too bad you got swindled into having to buy new/prefilled carts every damn time! That's a total ripoff if you ask me, just my opinion here though. I never once purchased the prefilled ones since I was rather sure I wouldnt like the crap juice they were putting in them. I wanted to have control over what I was putting in my cartos!! At least you have found what works great for you... THATS what it's all about around here.

See, THAT was the problem. It wasn't so much getting swindled, but that is how we were trying to figure out what flavors we wanted to vape. We bought prefilled cartos from many different vendors. Then we started buying from V4L because they have more flavors than most other places and bought pretty much every flavor they sell except ones we really thought we would hate. Fortunately they would toss in several other single prefilled cartos of flavors we hadn't tried, and that was actually how we found a bunch we did like. THEN we finally started just buying the liquid of the stuff we did like. THEN I did some logo work for someone and they sent me liquid as payment....and I got into mixing various liquids together. NOW, after vaping only cappuccino for many months I finally decided to branch out, I wasn't sick of it or anything, but just some other stuff started sounding kind of good. It took SO long for me to find ANYTHING I really WANTED to vape, as opposed to just being okay or tolerable. But if we hadn't bought the prefilled cartos we would have probably just ended up with a ton of 10ml bottles of liquid we didn't like and still be out 8 bucks plus shipping. EVEN as it is, we have more bottles of liquid we DON'T use than what we do. Simply because some of the prefilled flavors we liked, but the liquid from the same exact vendor, which supposedly was what the cartos were filled with tasted TOTALLY different than what has been in the cartos. We even tried them side by side, and it clearly didn't taste the same. So we ended up with heaven knows how much liquid we didn't like. It is a lot of trial and error, finding what flavors you like. But EVEN with all that expense is it still WAY less than we would have spent on cigarettes, especially between two people. My husband smoked like only a 1/4 what I was smoking, but still, it adds up. I have problems with my hands and legs shaking, so believe me, if cleaning the cartos was labor intensive I couldn't do it. It is really no big deal at all, and really it is no different than everyone cleaning their atty when it gets gunked up. It is essentially the same thing, only with filler. The hardest part, if you want to call it hard at all, is blowing the water out when you have dozens of cartos.....then I make my husband do it. But we are rotating so many of them, I really only have to boil them like once a month or so. It isn't like a weekly activity or anything. Although if it was, that would mean it would involve far less of them. I just don't like wasting, or throwing away something that obviously is still working just fine. And like with the boiling, soaking in everclear, THAT kills EVERYTHING. After that process there is NO odor, NO taste, they are like totally never used cartos.

[DJJROCK]

Good infos here thx jul. I'm gonna have to try it some time, I mean 10 bucks is the cost of 1 atty so guess I don't have much to loose at this ppoint. Glad to hear a easy way to clean um.

[juliery]

Good infos here thx jul. I'm gonna have to try it some time, I mean 10 bucks is the cost of 1 atty so guess I don't have much to loose at this ppoint. Glad to hear a easy way to clean um.

Really, I am telling you, it is NO big deal. It just looks like a big deal, but it is nothing......most of the time they are just sitting there, either boiling or soaking in cheap vodka, but not like I have to stand there supervising it. I mean you just use common sense, obviously you don't want the water to all evaporate, plus I want to keep a lot of water in there for them to move around in and really get it going through the filler material. I don't know what the heck kind of adhesive they use on the labels, but they do NOT come off, even after many times of going through this process. When I started cleaning them, THAT is when I started saving serious money because I was only buying the e liquid to fill them then. And the everclear once in awhile. I do the boiling every 4-5 refills, or when they start tasting funky....then the next go around after the next 3-5 refills or when they start being nasty again they get the boiling/everclear/more boiling treatment. It truly is no big thing. Of course they are sold as disposable.....if you were selling them, wouldn't you LOVE selling me hundreds of them a month vs using them over and over????