Back at the start of this year, the\u00a0Willamette Week\u00a0reported on a new type of vaporizer that would work with any pipe to make it into a vape.<\/p>\n
The seemingly miraculous device at the center of their\u00a0story<\/a>\u00a0was\u00a0the Ember<\/a>, a U.S.-made vape by Portland-based Prrl Labs. Created by a former aerospace engineer, it\u2019s essentially a pocket-sized\u00a0heat gun<\/a>\u00a0designed to blast your bowl. The Ember uses convective heat, like a Volcano, passing heated air through the plant material, vaporizing the\u00a0cannabinoids<\/a>\u00a0and other active chemicals in the cannabis. This is different than conductive heat, used in nearly every other vape pen on the market, where the heating element contacts the cannabis or oil directly \u2014 which raises the risk of accidental combustion.<\/p>\n Cannabis Now caught up with\u00a0Josh Winicki, one of the two founders of Prrl Labs, who told us about the process of designing, creating, and launching the Ember.<\/p>\n Winicki is a former economist with the\u00a0USDA<\/a>, a researcher with the\u00a0American Institutes for Research<\/a>, a teacher at Portland\u2019s Wilson High School and even a\u00a0competitive gymnast<\/a>. In a way, it\u2019s thanks to his history as an athlete that Winicki is in the cannabis industry today.<\/p>\n \u201cI have always enjoyed cannabis much more than\u00a0alcohol<\/a>,\u201d Winicki says. \u201cWith gymnastics, if you come in and you are pushing yourself and you\u2019re not performing your best it can be dangerous.\u201d While many of Winicki\u2019s peers drank to relax and have fun, if he drank he says he suffered dire consequences. \u201cI couldn\u2019t train the next day or two, but with cannabis I was fine.\u201d<\/p>\n Winicki and his co-founder Mark Lewis are both \u201csensitive to the material components issue,\u201d and they \u201cwanted to have a clean vaping experience.\u201d To do that, they put intense effort into their sourcing of materials. \u201cMark found a coil from his background in aerospace that is completely non-corrosive and never breaks down,\u201d Winicki says. They use that coil in place of nichrome wire, which research has found actually\u00a0breaks down and vaporizes<\/a>. In addition to the coil, the Ember has a screen glued into place which covers its heating element. Winicki says this prevents flower material from blowing into the device and \u201ccauses a more even distribution of the heat.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe glue in the Ember is heat safe,\u201d Winicki added. \u00a0<\/p>\n Another step Prrl Labs took to create a safe device is making it themselves in Portland, Oregon, rather than half a world away in Shenzhen, China. \u201cYou send something over to China and it\u2019s like a black box,\u201d says Winicki. \u201cYou get it back and while it may look really professional, you have no idea what went inside it.\u201d<\/p>\n To Winicki, the Ember is \u201clike a piece of art\u201d and like art, \u201cit\u2019s about the quality.\u201d He says he and Lewis felt the best way to make an artisan vape product was \u201cto keep it more local,\u201d with an in-house operation. However, as of now the Ember itself is an adapter that fits onto a battery pack, the\u00a0Cuboid Mini<\/a>, which Winicki says \u201cdoes come from abroad.\u201d But he says that\u2019s something Prrl Labs is already reexamining. \u201cThe next product we are working on has the battery inside it, rather than using the Cuboid,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n While the goal is to make the Ember able to fit onto any pipe or bong, for now, the device comes with a customized pipe. The Ember pipe is designed for both bud and concentrates, although Winicki advises that users \u201cput concentrates on a bed of flowers so they don\u2019t gum up the screen.\u201d And if you\u2019re a\u00a0serious dabber<\/a>, don\u2019t worry \u2014 Winicki says they \u201calready have an accessory with a 14.4 brushed glass attachment to go onto a dab rig.\u201d<\/p>\n As Cannabis Now has\u00a0reported before<\/a>, there are many devices on the market being sold as vapes which aren\u2019t actually vaporizing what is inside them. Instead, they heat cannabis material to temperatures well above the point of combustion.<\/p>\n \u201c[We] dug into the temperature settings on other devices and found that all they are really measuring is the resistance in the circuitry rather than the actual temperature,\u201d Winicki says. Basically, this means your inhalation speed can impact the heat applied your cannabis material, because your vape\u2019s setting manipulate power levels rather than exact temperatures.<\/p>\n But the Ember is no exception to this rule, and how quickly you inhale will affect the temperature things are heated to. Winicki says that a \u201cslower draw will cook the bud more, but a faster draw will be a purer vapor draw,\u201d and added that \u201ca very tiny amount of airflow could cause combustion, but no airflow at all should not burn.\u201d<\/p>\n Winicki gave specific tips on how to get the best results from the Ember. \u201cWhat I tell people is you are going to want to draw in a lot slower than you think,\u201d he says. He also mentioned you can do a \u201ccigar puff\u201d to \u201cpre-heat of all the material,\u201d which means that your first puff will get your bud or dab up to temperature and is not likely to produce a huge cloud. But Winicki says that \u201cby the tenth draw it can be hot enough where you only need like a three-second burst of heat to vape it.\u201d<\/p>\n As of yet, Winicki says Prrl Labs has yet to reap the financial rewards of the Ember, but he remains unbothered.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not making a whole lot of money on it,\u201d he says, but emphasized that it isn\u2019t about the money, it\u2019s about breaking out from the pack and working to get people \u201cback to the pipe\u201d in a healthier way. \u201cOnce you get to experience vaping flower, you can tell the difference in the vapor,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n For the record, I got to try a prototype of an Ember and found that the quality of vapor produced for flower and cold-water hash to be on-par with a home device like a Volcano or a VapeXhale \u2014 with some bonus points for portability. Put that in your pipe and vape it!<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, have you ever used a vaporizer?<\/p>\n The post Meet the Flameless Device That Wants to Disrupt Cannabis Vaporizing<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Back at the start of this year, the\u00a0Willamette Week\u00a0reported on a new type of vaporizer that would work with any pipe to make it into a vape. The seemingly miraculous device at the center of their\u00a0story\u00a0was\u00a0the Ember, a U.S.-made vape by Portland-based Prrl Labs. Created by a former aerospace engineer,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[605,50,9810,9811,9812,9813,73,9814,9815,1491,2085,9816,9817,9818],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34853,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34852\/revisions\/34853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}S<\/strong>afety First<\/h4>\n
Ambitious Plans for Innovation<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Heating Up<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Meet the Flameless Device That Wants to Disrupt Cannabis Vaporizing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"