In recent years, vaping has taken the world by storm. The idea was initially created as a safer and healthier alternative to smoking. Due to the ease of use, the lack of unpleasant odor, and other benefits of vaping, many users (including teens) have taken to vaping. To understand more about this current trend and the devices used, here is a quick guide to understanding how vaporizers work.
What Is Vaping?
Vaping is a common alternative to smoking that requires a vaporizer. This device heats up your favorite concentrate, e-juice, or herbs until it generates a botanical-infused vapor. Once the vapor is generated. The active compounds within the vapor can be inhaled into the lungs.
While vaporizers do use high temperatures, the vaping materials are not heated to the point of combustion. Therefore, they avoid generating smoke and the dangerous by-products created with the smoke. Thus, vaping provides a safer, and healthier alternative to smoking concentrates.
Why Is Vaping Considered a Safer Alternative than Smoking?
While they are still researching the effects of vaporizers, there are a number of reasons why vaporizers are deemed safer than smoking. Vaporizers are considered healthier than smoking by many users because they are designed to allow you to inhale your concentrate without the harmful toxins found from the process of combustion used by smoking devices (cigarettes, cigars, etc.) These include harmful by-products like carbon monoxide, tar, toxins, and carcinogens.
What Is A Vaporizer?
A vaporizer is a type of device designed to heat concentrates and herbs until it produces a vapor. These devices typically fall into one of two categories desktop and portable vaporizers. A desktop vaporizer is large and remain stationary, while a portable vaporizer is small, convenient, and include a variety of options such as a dry herb vaporizer, a wax vape pen, an oil vape, and a box mod vape.
Vaporizers use one of two heating processes, either convection or conductive heating. Conductive heating involves direct contact between the heating element (such as the coil) and the material. Typically the dry herbs or concentrate is placed on top of the heating element and heats the material until it produces vapor.
When a vaporizer uses convection heating, the material does not come into direct contact with the heating element. Convective heating instead heats up the air and then passes the heated air over the dry herbs or concentrate. This process is considered a far more effective vaporization method than conductive heating.
How Do Vaporizers Work?
Although vaporizers can be a little intimidating to new users, once you get the hang of it, vaping is a relatively simple process. You just need to become familiar with your vaping device. To use a vaporizer, you simply follow these quick and easy steps.
1. Charge your; device. Before you can use your device, you need to make sure it is ready. Start by plugging in your vaporizer until the battery is fully charged. This can take several hours depending upon your device.
2. Choose your material. Whether you prefer dry herbs, wax concentrate, or e-juice, pick the material of your choice and place it into the heating chamber of your device (or if you are using a pre-filled cartridge, simply screw the cartridge into your device).
3. If applicable, choose your temperature setting. While not all models offer precise temperature control or presets, most vaporizers will allow you to select between a lower temperature and a higher one.
4. Turn on your device and heat up the heating chamber.
5. Using the mouthpiece, inhale the vapor into your lungs.
6. Once you have the vapor in your lungs, hold it for a few seconds and exhale. Wait a few minutes to see how the vapor is affecting you. If needed, continue to take hits of vapor from your vaporizers until you have reached your desired outcome.
What Materials Can You Vape?
Although the exact options you can vape can vary from one vaping device to the next, there are typically four material options most consider for vaping. These include e-juice (with and without nicotine), oil concentrate, dry herbs, and wax concentrate.
- Dry herbs usually consist of either the flowers or buds of the plant. To use, dry herbs are generally ground into a fine powdery consistency (either by hand or with the use of a grinder) prior to being placed into the heating chamber of the vaporizer. Unlike smoking, vaping dry herbs allows the user to enjoy more of the natural components creating a more overall flavorful experience.
- Wax concentrates are made from the botanical extracts of the plant. These materials are created using large concentrated quantities of the active compounds found within the plant. This provides the user with more profound effects and a more potent overall vaping session.
- E-juice or vape oils are used with prefilled or reuseable cartridges. The liquids are placed into the tanks are created by combining botanical oil with another sort of filler/base consistency (like vegetable glycerine). The cartridges can be mixed with more active ingredients such as nicotine, CBD oil, or various other botanical oils.
The user guide will help to determine what material options are compatible with the specific vaping device being used. Although some devices cater to a specific type of material (ex. wax pens), many devices are multi-compatible and can be used to vape with multiple types of concentrates and materials.