Important: Mechanical Mod Safety

Ok, so now that I have embarked on the Mech mod journey, I am getting myself up to speed with safe vaping practice for mech mods.

I know there have been discussions about battery chemistry, using a kick vs not using a kick, and some other useful bits and pieces, but I feel it was necessary to have one central thread tying it all together. If you are lazy, or don't want to get your head properly around the danger of sub-ohm vaping, or what can go wrong when you push the limits with a mech and/or have an accident, please at the very least watch the video at the bottom!

(Maybe the mods will make this into a sticky?)

Firstly, I think we need a Vape Safety Mascot. I have nominated the friendly Fukuppy for this role. If you don't know Fukuppy's story, go and google it. Its actually quite funny:




In the words of @Matthee
" Ignorance can be solved by education.....
BUT......there ain't no cure....for STUPID!!
And.....instructions are only helpful to those who READ 'EM....and HEED 'EM!!
NEVER hurts to "hammer home" safety, though!!
Happy (vaping)!"

So to kick off with, here is a general article about mechanical mod usage:

http://bumblevape.com/article/25/105/0/Mechanical Mod Proper Usage Guide

Want to see what can go wrong when your batteries catch fire?

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...-battery-failure-imr-18650-a.html#post3265928

A quick explanation of different battery chemistry, and the risks of using one type versus another

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...stion-about-batteries-vape-safe-mech-mod.html


For those who want (arguably) the most exhaustive resource detailing mechanical mod safety:

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...-tips-vapors-looking-try-their-first-rba.html

@Matthee 's thread on RBA safety for beginners

http://www.ecigssa.co.za/threads/a-few-words-of-caution-about-rbas.661/

Should you use a kick (safety device) in your mech mod?

http://www.ecigssa.co.za/threads/to-kick-or-not-to-kick.727/#post-10971

The Mechanical Mod Safety video:


I would urge anyone exploring this exciting aspect of vaping culture to familiarize themselves with the science, methodology and mechanics of what they are doing when using mechanical mods. These things can be dangerous when abused or misused, and the last thing we want is for someone to get hurt or for something to happen which creates a bad image for the vaping community.

Disclaimer: The information is provided here as a general resource for those looking for information about safety when using mechanical mods. I cannot and will not be held responsible for any damage, harm, injury or loss that occurs to you, your property, those around you, or your equipment as a result of your own actions (be they willful or negligent). If you buy a mech mod you are obliged to understand and operate it in a manner that is safe to yourself, your property, your environment and those around you. Never underestimate the potential damage that can occur with high amp discharges, short circuits, poor workmanship and a lack of knowledge about what you are doing. Vape safe folks, and avoid any potential Fukuppys!

Mods: Please include any additional information that has not been included

Great thread @devdev ! I love it!

An absolute winner, @devdev. Thank you for putting it together. It has been stickyfied!

This thread would not be complete without the battery chart:

http://www.ecigssa.co.za/attachments/battery-information-pdf.585/

I can't stress again how important it is to ensure you have the correct kit.

Some extra battery info for those just starting out.

18350 and 18650 are popular sizes but what do the numbers mean.

The first 2 digits are the diameter in mm
The second set of 2 digits are the length in mm
And the last digit which is almost always 0 means its round.

So an 18 35 0 would be 18mm diameter 35mm in length and round.

Next important number is the mah which means milli ampere hour.
It is the discharge rate in milliamps per hour. Its the way the battery's capacity in measured.
so a 2000mah battery will last for 1 hour and a constant load of 2000ma (2A) in an ideal world.

This post might not correlate directly to safety, feel free to move to the relevant section.

Thanks @Gazzacpt this is important stuff as well, and does belong here.

Its also important to understand what the 'C' rating of the cell is. This is basically the amount of current that the cell can safely discharge. If you draw more amps than the C rating then you run serious risk of damaging the battery, which may result in thermal runaway, or venting.

Yes, we are (I am) doing a big number on safety at the moment guys.

Want to see what sort of injuries can happen when you accidentally turn on your mech mod?

http://www.vapeatron.com/unprotected-cr2-batteries-blow-up-detonator-burn-leg-3053/

This makes Fukuppy very sad!

(Note that this guy stacked two unprotected batteries, and then had the mod in his pants pocket. He is lucky he got away relatively unscathed)

Look at this mod:





Now, where did my charger disappear to? And why are there black marks on the wall?



Full post: http://www.thaievape.com/e-cigarette-technical-issues/4214-exploding-charger-battery.html

NEVER STACK BATTERIES!

I wish I could agree more than once with your post Tyler!

Gazzacpt said:

Some extra battery info for those just starting out.

18350 and 18650 are popular sizes but what do the numbers mean.

The first 2 digits are the diameter in mm
The second set of 2 digits are the length in mm
And the last digit which is almost always 0 means its round.

So an 18 35 0 would be 18mm diameter 35mm in length and round.

Next important number is the mah which means milli ampere hour.
It is the discharge rate in milliamps per hour. Its the way the battery's capacity in measured.
so a 2000mah battery will last for 1 hour and a constant load of 2000ma (2A) in an ideal world.

This post might not correlate directly to safety, feel free to move to the relevant section.

Click to expand...

Hi Gazza, loved your post explaining the numbers of the batteries. Thanks.

With regard to the mah rating, you said it "is the discharg rate". I know what you mean, but in my view, calling it the discharge rate is misleading. I view the mah as the capacity or "size of the battery tank". It has little to do with the rate at which it can discharge, but rather the TOTAL amount of charge that can be stored in it.

To me the discharge rate is something described by the amp rating or maximum amp rating.

Quite a pedantic technical point, but maybe others can comment on this as well...

Silver1 said:

Hi Gazza, loved your post explaining the numbers of the batteries. Thanks.

With regard to the mah rating, you said it "is the discharg rate". I know what you mean, but in my view, calling it the discharge rate is misleading. I view the mah as the capacity or "size of the battery tank". It has little to do with the rate at which it can discharge, but rather the TOTAL amount of charge that can be stored in it.

To me the discharge rate is something described by the amp rating or maximum amp rating.

Quite a pedantic technical point, but maybe others can comment on this as well...

Click to expand...

Hey Silver. I know what you mean but thats the way I got taught, many years ago lol.
Its how it makes sense to me, the way the capacity in measured is how many amps it can discharge over an hour. So if I need a 7A load held up for 2hrs I need 14amps per hr. I suppose in the application we using it for the safe maximum current load is the more important number.

Agreed

Just for clarity then, suppose a battery is rated as 3000 mah. That does not necessarily mean it can push out 3A for 1 hour. It may only be able to push out 1A for 3 hours. So the amp rating is the rate of discharge and the mah is the capacity.

Think this also has a place in this thread. Although @devdev has already posted a chart

Good post @Tornalca - my research on the NCR18650B showed them as being 5 Amp limit, so I am only using those for 2 ohm rigs (Pretty much protank on an SVD). Since the NCR is unprotected and explosive chemistry I don't really want to use it my magneto, and the guys over at ECF advised against using NCR18650B's for anything other than a flashlight!

what an informative thread!!!

thanks to all those who posted. i have certainly learnt alot

thanks guys

devdev said:

Good post @Tornalca - my research on the NCR18650B showed them as being 5 Amp limit, so I am only using those for 2 ohm rigs (Pretty much protank on an SVD). Since the NCR is unprotected and explosive chemistry I don't really want to use it my magneto, and the guys over at ECF advised against using NCR18650B's for anything other than a flashlight!

Click to expand...

I only have one of them and use it in my SVD with IGO-L 1.7 ohm coil and Kayfun 1.8 ohm coil. Works fine but will not use it in a MOD.

Great thread guys - possibly a silly question, for those of us who use the standard coils (1.8/2.2 ohm bottom coils) on mods at risk of battery explosions too?

Or just put a kick in and never have to stress and have constant voltage.

vaalboy said:

Great thread guys - possibly a silly question, for those of us who use the standard coils (1.8/2.2 ohm bottom coils) on mods at risk of battery explosions too?

Click to expand...

Not a chance bud.

vaalboy said:

Great thread guys - possibly a silly question, for those of us who use the standard coils (1.8/2.2 ohm bottom coils) on mods at risk of battery explosions too?

Click to expand...

Yes, all it needs is a hard short, and even standard protank coils can short. In by far the most cases, the coil will pop, and no ill effects to the battery or mod, but if you get a hard short, or the battery fires continuously in your pocket, you might be in trouble. We must understand that something terrible must go wrong for a battery to explode, but the reality is, that it can happen.

vaalboy said:

Great thread guys - possibly a silly question, for those of us who use the standard coils (1.8/2.2 ohm bottom coils) on mods at risk of battery explosions too?

Click to expand...

Nah, you should be cool - even the standard batteries that most battery companies make can handle the amps needed for a 1.8/2.2 Ohm coil - but if you are ever in doubt - if the battery (not atomizer) starts getting warm while you are vaping, then you are probably overtaxing the battery. While getting warm does not lead to explosion, it does shorten the life of your battery.

Getting HOT - like too hot to touch will lead to what they refer to as thermal runaway - basically the higher temp causes a chemical reaction, which leads to higher temp, which causes the chemical reaction to speed up etc. etc. and boom! (well not a boom - imagine lighting a box of matches all at once - except it goes on for a few minutes)

In short - anything from 1.8 and up, pretty much any battery will handle it

EDIT: as far as shorts etc go - it will depend on your electronics. If you have no electronics (mech mod) then yeah, a short can cause thermal runaway in your unprotected battery.

But there are many safety precautions: Protected batteries, kicks, electronic mods - all of these will have short protection, over discharge protection and even reverse polarity protection

@vaalboy You should be fine, although maybe you want to consider the chemistry of your batteries, as some are definitely safer than others.

Your safest bet is to use IMR chemistry batteries, as opposed to any other chemical make up. The reason is that in the event of a thermal run away the IMR will only vent gas. Provided your mod has vent holes then you should be fine. If you have no vent holes, then you may have a pipe bomb in your pocket.

There are a couple of things you can do to make sure that things are safer and you have minimised the chance of something going wrong:

1. Only use IMR batteries, since their form of thermal runaway is seriously diminished and it just vents gas instead of bursting into flames
2. Always make sure your mod has venting holes (SVD has holes in the end cap)
3. Never stack batteries, use only a single cell, and use the biggest cell you can (in mah rating), reason being is that the larger the cell, the more abuse it takes to cause thermal runaway.
4. Never put your mod in your bag unless it is turned off

Derick is right, you do get protected batteries, these are non-IMR. Although they have a built in safety circuit this can fail, or it can be activated and then destroy the circuit. The cell can continue to operate even though the circuit is destroyed, so you basically land up with a battery that is unprotected AND dangerous chemistry.

Remember that vapers are basically using these cells for reasons that they were never intended for - especially low ohm rigs which suck huge current (Amps) out of the battery. The bulk of the 3.7v cells on the market were designed for continous low current usage - i.e. for powering a flashlight. These cells are not protected (they don't need protection if used for their intended purpose).

Manufacturers started adding protection as a fail safe mechanism. IMR chemistry is the newer technology and as said, they vent if abused, as opposed to combusting. Downside with IMR is that they don't have the same mah capacity as the other chemistry cells. To counter this manufacturers have started making hybrid cells which combine the safety of IMR technology with slightly higher mah rating.

After all the research I have done, it seems that badittude on ECF is the defacto authourity on batteries. He has a blog post where he provides a list of 'safer' batteries. He strongly advises against using the wrong batteries for High drain applications:

High drain applications would be in a regulated mod which uses pulse regulation to make VV/VW, a mechanical mod using a Kick, or when using an RBA/RDA.

Click to expand...

Note that mods such as the SVD and VTR rely on pulse width modulation to achieve VV or VW - which according to his definition, would be considered high drain applications. He does state though that:

Low drain applications would be using factory-made juice attachments on a mod (cartomizers or clearomizers).

Click to expand...

Source: http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...-ohm-range-panasonic-ncr18650b-max6-8a-2.html

So to answer your question, if you avoid using an RBA, are using factory assembled kit and atomisers and you have a decent battery that can handle amp draws in the region of 5 Amps upwards on an electronic mod then you should be fine, although you may feel better using an IMR type of cell, even though its mah rating is lower.

If you consider that your mod will either be in your pocket, near your lap (groin), face, house or car if the battery gets to a thermal runaway the best case scenario will be minor damage to whatever is surrounding it, and worst will be destruction of property and/or disfigurement or injury to you or your loved ones.

All that being said, you can compare the risk to reckless driving. If you are going to drive everywhere and every day at 180km/h then chances are you will get into an accident sooner rather than later, and the chances of surviving are pretty low. On the other hand if you occasionally go 20km/h over the speed limit then you will probably be fine and even if there is an accident, there is a much higher chance of surviving it.

For those that are interested the safest batteries for mechnical mods are AW IMR cells. AW stands for Andrew Wong (or Wang). He basically buys up cells from sony, panasonic and other manufacturers, and then runs them through a series of tests, rejecting the cells that are outside of the manufacturers claimed specs for that cell type. Those that make it through this additional series of tests are then shrinkwrapped in red labels, with the AW logo.

These cells are believed to be the best (provided they are genuine AW cells) because they do actually perform as the manufacturer specified. Obviously you pay more for these cells. Any AW cells that you find in the east that are significantly cheaper than reputable vendors are almost definitely knock-offs, and you can assured they do not conform to the same specifications as genuine AW batts. These fake cells are definitely not able to handle the 30 Amp discharge that genuine AW cells can handle, and may be rated as poorly as a 2 Amp discharge.

From the ECF forums it seems there is a huge problem with counterfeit batteries. As with most things, you get what you pay for.

Sorry for the long post!

Thanks @devdev, well explained. Came to the same conclusion as you re badittude. That is why I rely on his battery info.

Thanks @devdev for the comprehensive post. Well explained.
Good to know this