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Comment by static_motion | Hacker News Reader

What are you on about? Your premise is pure bunk. The metal doesn't glow in normal usage. Speaking from experience: if that happens, it's a terribly painful experience and nobody would enjoy it. Vape coils usually heat to under 205°C/400°F, enough to transform the liquid into vapor but far below the glow point of the metal alloy typically used (kanthal/FeCrAl or nichrome/NiCr). Replacement is necessary due to residue buildup from the liquid, not because the metal has become degraded.

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That's correct, in normal use the coil (the term used for the metal) never glows, it's not even close to glow. This is because it is surrounded by cotton soaked in the liquid which always cools the coil and which produces the desired vapor. If the coil would ever start to glow this is called a "dry hit" and it usually happens if you failed to monitor there's enough liquid in the tank. In this case the cotton immediately starts to burn and believe me inhaling that is disgusting and you would immediately stop. In fact you even stop before that because if the cotton gets dry it stops tasting any good.

Vaping is (compared to actually smoking tabacco) definitely harm reduction and significantly less harmful (which doesn't mean its healthy and you should do it). Yet it is treated like smoking cigarettes by law. For example in Germany you have to pay tabacco tax on the base liquid (which doesn't even contain nicotine) if it is intended to be used in a vape (17 cents per milliliter) which increased the price of the base liquid from around 10€ to 170€. But the base liquid only consists of two things (propylene glycol and glycerol) and both those substances you can by cheaply in a vet doctors online shop for maybe 5€ each liter. It's ridiculous.

That’s a pretty ridiculous tax for something that is far safer than smoking, I pay $20/100ml of juice in the US.

When i made my own i could make 500-700ml for $20. The expense is all up-front if you don't know what flavors you want or you want to experiment with recipes - the flavoring is relatively expensive if you want a lot of variety. If you're a "cherry cola" or "golden tobacco" sort, then the up front cost is about $40 (or was, 6 years ago), and you can make over a gallon of liquid at a strength of ~2.5% (25mg/l) off a single purchase of everything. you need 2 liters of PG, 1 liter of VG, and 1 liter of 100ml/l nicotine. then your flavoring.

anyhow, i buy juice now, too, but mine was better. I never used sweeteners. My current go-to is Naked Euro Gold 12mg, but i am on the hunt for a 25ml nicotine salt version of a similar flavor. (nicotine salt vs freebase nicotine, salt is more "mellow" and lets you put a higher concentration in, which translates directly to less use, as you're satiated much faster.)

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