Random friday night tinkerer musings

[Tara]

So it's probably way to early to ask this, but has anybody taken one of these apart to see how they work yet?

I'm trying to get my head round the electronics of this device as it offers anywhere between 3v and 6v using a 3.7v battery and it's supposed to be a constant voltage. I can sort of see that some kind of capacitor combo is being used to store and boost the 3.7v supply to get the higher voltages and I understand the concept of  constant voltage devices, I can even sort of imagine some kind of drop down transformer or feedback loop for the voltages below 3.7v so that you can get less than that out, even on a fully charged battery, but I'm struggling with a few posts that say there is a performance drop off at 3.5v on the battery and they are changing them out as a result.

Surely if you are set to 3.5v or lower there is no undue drain on the batt at all (and in fact I would be mildly concerned at any battery that degraded soo quickly on only a 0.6v drop) and if you are vaping higher then all that will happen is that the battery will hit a point where it cannot supply the desired voltage and the devices electronics will indicate a dead batt, why is there a perfomance drop off?

Thoughts anyone?

[FredSpencer]

I am one of the people who have commented on the loss of power. As I type this I am using a DCT with a 3.0 ohm DC cartomizer fitted. It has now dropped to a reading of 3.6 V and is starting to become more difficult to get a normal draw from it. I have the Torpedo set at 6 V now although when the battery is fully charged I would normally set it at 5.5 V and increase it as the power drops off. The atomizers that came with the kit are rated at 3.0 ohm as well and quite a lot of people are using these for dripping. Have a look at the instruction page for the [prohibited vendor name] and it says this is what will happen. It can be read here [prohibited vendor name]

[FredSpencer]

Update to my previous post.

As the performance had dropped below an acceptable leveI at 3.5 V I changed the DCT to a brand new one with a 1.5 ohm cartomizer. The liquid I used in this was also one I had not used before being a home made one based on TW's cigar flavour. As soon as I changed it it was noticeably better, easier to draw, more vapour and flavour was stronger (the cigar flavour is really quite good). Even down at 3 V it was still working although better around 3.5 to 3.7 in terms of vapour output and throat hit.

I persisted with this on the same battery trying to get it to run out completely and switch off but that didn't happen, although performance again started to drop off going down below 3.4 V. The voltage reading eventually went down to 3 V but it was still producing a little bit of vapour, although no throat hit or much in the way of taste. I also started to get gurggling as well, so I guess I was basically doing almost dry draws. Anyway, not having been able to get it to switch off I changed the battery and found a small amount of liquid on the top of the battery. I think this confirms I was drawing liquid through but it wasn't heating up enough when the battery was so low on power.

With a new battery installed the performance is great. It was reading 4.1 V before any use and even set at 3 V it was giving reasonable vapour and throat hit. At 3.5 both are much better and the taste is great.

[cyborg]

I get a consistent vape ending in an extremely fast drop I performance and the Torpedo turning off, this is the same with any of my 18650 batteries.
When the Torpedo turned off I tested the voltage with a multi-meter & the reading was 2.73v

[8Ball]

Hi Tara,

Well, I'm sure there are more qualified people to answer this than me, but based on my vast electronics knowledge (all of which is very dated and mostly forgotten) I'll give it a shot.

I doubt that there's much in the way of capacitors, resistors, chokes, or transformers inside a Torpedo (other then a few supporting bits).  The heart of a Torpedo would undoubtedly be an IC (Integrated Circuit (think a-whole-buncha-transistors in one physical package)) buck/boost chip.  This is what would take the varying voltage of the battery and either boost it higher or throttle it down.  There shouldn't be any voltage drop-off as the battery voltage changes (with the changing charge state), but I suppose there could be a more pronounced voltage sage as the battery nears the end of it's charge state.... epically with higher demand devices (e.g.  dual or triple coil cartos).

One thing to be aware of.  Unlike other mods that just give you an error code and won't fire if you select an output voltage that's too high for the resistance of the device you're trying to vape, this device will reduce the output voltage to something it thinks is acceptable for the resistance of whatever you've stuck on the end, and fire anyway.  What this means is that you can set it for six volts with a LR atty attached and it will vape just fine..... but you won't be vaping anywhere near six volts.

I've never noticed a drop in performance with my LTs.... but I usually don't let the batteries drop much below 3.5v...... that's just me though.  YMMV.