Has anyone considered the use of a ceramic such as silicon carbide in atomizers? Modders? The use of silicon carbide both as a heat transfer material and heating element has been known since it was brought into use in the industry over 60 years ago.
The reasons why I am asking this:
Silicon carbide is known in its natural form as Moissanite. When a crystal is faceted, it very closely resembles diamonds, and its hardness is extremely close to that of diamond. One interesting way to test for a true diamond is a thermal conductivity test, moissanite transfers heat energy much the same way as diamond and so fooled many testers who suspected cubic zirconia.
I am holding in my hand a defectively overzealous aquarium heater made by Tetra. it overheated my aquarium by about 15 degrees and so I cannot use it. One interesting feature is that it utilizes silicon carbide crystals (looks like 0.5mm ish diameter) specifically for this heat transference property...
Thinking about disassembling it, and working it onto an atty coil design. It seems as though the small crystals would form a suitable porous wick layer, and atomize e-liquid as soon as the heating element on one side of the crystals had achieved the proper temp.
Couple things to consider:
Silicon carbide is extremely hard, and an abrasive. Safety precautions I'd like to take with this is to make sure that the nichrome wire doesn't get ground to a powder as I know that nichrome is also known as "Muscle Wire" in the robotics field, and changes shape during heating. This movement could be detrimental.
The crystals moving against each other could also make a very fine silicon carbide powder, at least i'm guessing. sucking with force through industrial abrasive.... ehhhhhhhhhhhh. Cotton batting on top for a filter at LEAST.
Looking for design ideas with these considerations in mind, especially the heating element / SiC "wick" junction.
Alternatively, if this is the electrically conductive variety of SiC, this could fizzle very fast this way (ie short out the atomizer coil), but opens the possibility to using the SiC itself as the main heating component. Still doing some research on the old thermal conductivity diamond testers, I believe they actually ran a current through the stone to produce heat and how they found the difference between that and SiC is that SiC heated up WAY faster than diamond, but this is buried from under the reams of crap in my brain and I'm still looking for supporting evidence. Any help / thoughts / doomsday predictions much appreciated.
The reasons why I am asking this:
Silicon carbide is known in its natural form as Moissanite. When a crystal is faceted, it very closely resembles diamonds, and its hardness is extremely close to that of diamond. One interesting way to test for a true diamond is a thermal conductivity test, moissanite transfers heat energy much the same way as diamond and so fooled many testers who suspected cubic zirconia.
I am holding in my hand a defectively overzealous aquarium heater made by Tetra. it overheated my aquarium by about 15 degrees and so I cannot use it. One interesting feature is that it utilizes silicon carbide crystals (looks like 0.5mm ish diameter) specifically for this heat transference property...
Thinking about disassembling it, and working it onto an atty coil design. It seems as though the small crystals would form a suitable porous wick layer, and atomize e-liquid as soon as the heating element on one side of the crystals had achieved the proper temp.
Couple things to consider:
Silicon carbide is extremely hard, and an abrasive. Safety precautions I'd like to take with this is to make sure that the nichrome wire doesn't get ground to a powder as I know that nichrome is also known as "Muscle Wire" in the robotics field, and changes shape during heating. This movement could be detrimental.
The crystals moving against each other could also make a very fine silicon carbide powder, at least i'm guessing. sucking with force through industrial abrasive.... ehhhhhhhhhhhh. Cotton batting on top for a filter at LEAST.
Looking for design ideas with these considerations in mind, especially the heating element / SiC "wick" junction.
Alternatively, if this is the electrically conductive variety of SiC, this could fizzle very fast this way (ie short out the atomizer coil), but opens the possibility to using the SiC itself as the main heating component. Still doing some research on the old thermal conductivity diamond testers, I believe they actually ran a current through the stone to produce heat and how they found the difference between that and SiC is that SiC heated up WAY faster than diamond, but this is buried from under the reams of crap in my brain and I'm still looking for supporting evidence. Any help / thoughts / doomsday predictions much appreciated.
