I see a common theme with bowl designs where when they go bigger to hold more capacity of herb but seem to favor increasing the size vertically more than horizontally.
While I imagine it would not look as sleek, it seems from my amateur knowledge that a flatter, thinner bowl design with even diffusion would rock all the current designs out there.
The heat would be hitting much more surface area simultaneously (I’m thinking convection vapes here) and with the flower spread across a larger, flatter surface area I think it would be much more capable of producing true, max flavor OHEs since the heat doesn’t have to soak it’s way through a more narrow vertical path to heat the herb near the screen side of the bowl.
Is there a reason this hasn’t been done more or is this maybe the next evolution as diffusion methods evolve?
The wider the bowl, the harder it is to make the lower speed air flow evenly through the entire coin of herb. I think a lot of the vapes today would would be massively improved simply by evening out the hot air flow. In fact, I think that’s really the name of the game.
I find people automatically turn up the heat to cook their bowl ‘completely’, rather than adjusting the air output to cook the bowl evenly. They’ll often have uneven heating and they’ll have to stir to even it out with a second pull. Gemcut rubies help to a degree, but it limits airflow significantly.
Narrowing the bowl will also help even it out a bit vertically (think Phase3 ZX), but you can still have huge flow deviations because they have to use 3mm balls to keep airflow acceptable. 3mm balls layed out in a 12mm hole does not make for an even airflow. They resolve this somewhat by moving the balls a bit further away from the herb (whether intentionally or not). What makes it so good is the high airflow and the small amount of heat capacity in the injector. You have to run the ZX higher than other vapes, as the initial blast of air is higher than combustion temp, but short lived due to it’s size. It flashes all the trichomes and the heat drops quickly before the rest of the material is burnt. That’s why AVB vaped from a ZX will tend to look lighter as the core plant material isn’t really burnt brown.
Also, with a smaller vapes, you get one bowl, one breath. Second pulls are nasty compared to the first. Why put yourself through that? That’s why I’ve move exclusively to smoothed out 14mm injectors for now, until the next thing comes along, like the extraction under vacuum idea.
I have similar thoughts when using my Tempest 2. On full bowl setting I never seem to get quite that even extraction that I want, no matter how I draw. However, when I put 0.25ish grams in my WOHW bowl, I get a very even roast when doing high-temp OHEs.
For desktop I think extra-wide bowls could work well, for portables I fear the wide form factor might be a bit unpractical.
The Vapvana full size bowl with the screen at the top position is what comes to mind here. From my experience. the extraction has always been even and great to look at while dumping. That’s the only thing that stands out though. for me. Flavor and effect aren’t any better than other bowls/desktops. Maybe for reasons @MrGrumpyMcGrumpster mentioned.
I loved the Screwball! It showed me exactly that same thing. A nice even coverage due to the gem cut rubies, but not much else above and beyond, a little harsh in fact. Only when I switched to a smaller bowl did it come alive a bit.
The biggie really is that doubling the diameter quadruples the surface area, and our lung volume is static. By going from an 11mm bowl diameter to 22, each lung full of air now gets split over 4x the surface area of weed (in a perfect world…). That means we’re trying to flash off the cannabinoids from weed with 1/4 the hot air flow without overheating it. In an inperfect world, grinds are always inconsistent and we’ll have channels through the weed puck that air flows through easier. Compound that with the big gaps in the ruby balls and the shape of bowls funneling more down the middle than the sides.
I’m finding it much easier to control a vape with a small diameter than a large, and a course grind rather than finer. More people should play with the heat curves of their vapes. All you need to do is add or remove rubies and play with the temp. Most vapes are so heat dense that they only ramp down towards the very end, if ever (temp at the bowl that is, the coil will always ramp down). That consistency is great for hash and concentrates or big gigantic bowls you sip on. But vaping flower for flavour is best done with a small bowl, a peaky curve, a gradual downswing, and not so much bud that you need to take a second draw, in my opinion of course. If flavour is not a concern, then this is moot. Crank it and rip it.
And for those who are battling uneven airflow, but don’t want the added restriction of smaller diameter or gemcut rubies, the solution is a thick concentrate pad as the bottom layer. In the case of 14mm injectors like the ZX, the smaller S&B cencentrate pads are perfect and can be used in place of a bottom screen in most cases. Doesn’t really add to the thermal mass, and evens out the flow more than sufficiently for a completely even cook. I think they make larger pads for the volcano that can probably be used for larger diffuser vapes, but I’ve never tried.
It’s been done and is already being reworked to make it even better. It’s not really possible with top down, straight bore airflow which is what is pretty much all ball vapes on market except 2.
The original Vapvana Screwball cap vs. the updated cap with the airholes on the outside show the benefits of disrupting laminar airflow. The OG always had a more off even cook on AVB.
As for the OP’s point, some have gone wider. The 30mm XL heads (and think that Coma is 35mm) come to mind. I think some vapes like the T2 and Tornado are also designed with existing Induction Heaters in mind. Controlling their dimensions to some degree.
There’s also the chance that more terps aren’t better. I think I prefer DHV to Dabs because less terps.
It’s one of the very first things I experimented with.
I find it makes for harsher vapor and worse flavor.
A shallow load has a very short residence time with the hot air, leading to longer inhalations and excessive waste hot air inhaled.
A deeper load buffers the volatile aromatic compounds from the initial heat surge, preserving flavor. And waste heat is recycled, as there is a deeper bed of material to extract, resulting in smoother inhalations.
10000% agree here. Top down straight bore airflow is everywhere, makes most desktops identical. Enhanced chamber designs is in my opinion where we will gain the best possible outcome. Heat injection points/patterns and creating that resistance sweet spot for the best vacuum. Hope I’m not saying anything wrong, but the tech of the Electropath (or whatever it was born from) needs to be tested in more applications…not copied.
In my head I was thinking it would be important to have well diffused, slower moving air to have this be effective as I figured too fast of air flow would shock it and result in more harshness. So like a flow restricter before the diffuser. Though this sounds like it would need to be overengineered to be viable and therefore makes it not.
So I have the screwball with the modular bowl and the normal bowl and I can say for sure that I much prefer the vapour i get from the Ruby Twist with micro dose bowl.
I wanted to make a post for a long time asking “why is the vapour from the screwball different from the Ruby Twist” and now you guys are talking about this exact thing.
I cant put my finger on why but just feels like you get a lot less with the screwball than the Ruby Twist and I know the screwball holds loads but still it feels like the vapour is much less desirable and different with the screwball and that is why I use the Ruby Twist.
Is the same with the Dani Fusion 2, it just feels like you get more vapour and more dense vapour and with less weed.
Actually guys now that I think about it the volcano bowl (standard no reducer) is the same as screwball and feels like you get much less vapour and less dense compared to vapes with a smaller less wide bowl.
Maybe the volcano is not the best example and i hope am talking about the same thing here.
I hear this is why the ZX series of vapes is so good because of the bowl dimensions.
Yeah i mean this is kind of where I was going as well with the comments on restricting airflow for a more even but saturating diffusion. There is nothing out there that I know of that would diffuse properly over a wide area but I keep having thoughts that channeled restriction heat tunnels that take the intake air and diffuse it out over the full area of the bowl could be really good. The center diffusion tunnels would need to have an extra bend or somethingto slow flow and then that would need to be slowly tapered off with the other tunnels moving out from the center to really even out the diffusion.
The design in my head honestly seems kind of ridiculous but if you had a solid wide-tapered cone of mass above the pancake bowl with minimal air gaps and hundreds of channels with a shower head style outlet into the bowl material all tuned to provide even flow i think you could produce one hell of a one hit experience.
The only reason I felt this was worth putting down for discussion now is there is 3d metal printing which could create these channels or tunnels or whatever they would be called since standard CNC machining would not be a possibility due to the geometry inside the diffusion head with angle changes etc.
It might be irrelevant but in case of the screwball there might be another explanation. Over here most of the time the weed I am getting is rather dry as smokers prefer it that way (at least I did) and I figured that the screwball (normal & microdose bowl) can’t produce a sufficient amount of vapour if it’s too dry. HerboTi (microdose bowl), TM2, T2, CXL,… All of them are getting more dense vapour out of it.
