Quote Originally Posted by leadmagnet
Mostly what she'll read in that thread over at FC is a bunch of yahoos complaining about breaking their stems and kids who are as tight as a frog's ass complaining about the price of the vape. Some folks manage to plug it up with cheap butane.
Kids and yahoo's ?? LOLOLOL

Well, there are kids and yahoo's at every site, but I'd have to say that there are less of those over at FC than just about anywhere else. The age demographic there is a lot older than just about any other cannabis site.

I know of no other site that is totally dedicated to vaporizers and has more users that own mulitiple vapes that provide both positive and negative reviews (yes, there a tons of positive reviews of the Iolite there as well as negative ones) along with the fact that there are many of the inventors and company owners of the various vapes that are active there, including those at Iolite in Ireland.

TONS of reviews, tons of user tips from both users and the manufacturers. To imply that they are just a bunch of yahoos and kids is TOTALLY off base and I urge anyone to go over there for info about any vape, including the Iolite.

But hey, don't take THIS yahoo's word for it, or take the very professional opinion of leadmagnet here, but instead, pay them a visit and come back with your own opinions. I think you will find that the time spent there will be very worthwhile.

Where else can you find:
A 106 page, 2600 post thread on just the Iolite, with input directly from the manufacturer.

A 235 page, 5800 post thread on just the Purple Days, with input directly from the manufacturer

A 101 page, 2500 post thread on just the Extreme

A 71 page, 1752 post thread on just the VripTech

A 41 page, 1000 post thread on just the Silver Surfer

A 166 page, 4100 post thread on just the LaunchBox with input directly from the manufacturer.

Etc, etc etc etc.........

btw, here's an example of a very recent post from there regarding doing some scientific studies to compare the various vapes on the market:
---------------------------------------------------
GC:

It appears that you are basically sneaking around, goofing off and risking your career. Even if you are in a state like CA, if you get caught messing with controlled substances, and in your own lab no less (what most scientists' dream of), the law enforcement and university establishments will be obligated to punish you. At the least, you will become unemployable as a chemist.

I would rather you work from within the system, get the needed licenses/permissions and do it right (publish credible studies in peer-reviewed journals). There are ample areas of research areas that could get you started, including in terms of equipment, funding and doing vaporization/aerosol science. You will likely have to approach your goal from a related area. For example, much the same expertise and equipment can be used to study combustion/fires, tobacco smoking (should be lots of research funding), distillation, the basic processes of vaporization, etc. Check out research in thermal desorption, flash chromatography, vapor/aerosol generation and analysis, aerosol drug delivery, inhalation toxicology, etc. You might be able to find something interesting that will get you funding, indirectly doing what you want to do, and preparing you to get appropriate funding and licenses.

Otherwise, concerning your original intension to quantify and then compare the content of vapor from different vaporizers, you seem to have no working hypothesis and no idea what variables need to be controlled, standardized and/or measured. You seem to presume that:
1) chemical analysis of vapor from different vaporizers can be done in a meaningful, scientific manner, such that comparisons can be made; and that
2) quantification of vaporizer output will tell you about real world vaporizer performance/efficacy.
From what I've seen, there is such a total lack of underlying, fundamental knowledge about vaporization/vaporizers that the multi-unit testing you plan (or even single model testing) will be totally arbitrary, making it useless. How could vapors from say an Extreme, Purple Days and Magic Flight Launch Box be compared in either a scientifically valid way or in a manner that would correlate with efficacy/performance (how will this be defined)?

A major problem with such comparison testing of output composition is that this ignores that essentially all vaporizers are essentially 100% efficient! If they do their job (provide air in the proper temperature or otherwise heat the material in the proper range for vaporization), given time and/or repeated draws (vapor sampling), all vaporizers will vaporize all of the relevant volatiles in a sample. What will vapor stream contents quantification tell you about vaporizer functionality that measuring power consumption/output, heat transfer, air temp. and volume, etc. as it passes through the material would not tell you even better?

Yes, you can measure the density and amount of volatiles by sucking up a set volume of air. This may confirm common knowledge regarding what vaporizers can provide the densest vapor concentration (most killer hits), which may be models that provide the most heat transfer with the least air mixed in (presuming you are testing convection vaporizers) or ones that simply run the hottest. But stream output vapor quantification alone, without a lot of other data, tells you nothing that can be associated with real-world performance/efficacy among different vaporizers (or even just one).

Vaporization is a physical, not chemical, process; and vaporizers are machines designed to induce a physical, not chemical, transformation (vaporization). What vaporizer technology needs is a better understanding of its physical phenomena and process(es), not chemical composition of vapor output, which is trivial -- rather well known and primarily based on temperature (or rather, heat transfer, exposed surface area, etc.). I think it much more useful to study physical aspects of vaporization -- and once sufficiently grounded, then relate physical variables, e.g., temperature, air flow and herbal materials packing with output chemical composition. We need to first understand the physical processes involved. Then maybe you can do valid comparative testing. Ideally, the chemical contents of vaporizer output should be predictable and reproducible, based on quantifiable or estimateable vaporizer- and sample-related variables. Give us the models/equations; give vaporizers and vaporization a scientific basis.

Perhaps to start, consider herbal materials in a vaporizer as a packed chromatography column (a separation method based on passing dissolved materials, in gas (vapor) or liquid medium, through porous materials with different molecules binding and/or filtered out), and see if and how the various models that apply to chromatography (and distillation) columns and column packing also apply or can be adapted to vaporization and vaporizers. This could be a place to start (and keep in mind that with a little research, you may be able to find a legal surrogate botanical material to routinely work with that might later be calibrated against the real thing). Ideally, data and volatilization models you develop might begin to show such things as what particle sizes (how powdered or not), particle size distributions, widths/diameters and depths/heights of material packing, packing density, temperature and air flow characteristics (what diameter holders/screens and how tall they are packed with stuff of what particle size) provide improved or optimized output (whatever that may be); ideally, of desired few micron-sized particles, with larger non-deep-lung-respirable particles largely irrelevant or of secondary interest in terms of efficacy.
-----------------------------------------------

Does this kind of discussion sound like it's taking place between yahoos and kids?