That’s a valid worry. You have to stay on top of them. For example, some RDA’s have flat sides on the inner surface of the barrel. The barrel locks into place with small tabs. If those tabs unseat and the barrel twists you can short out the coil. Now your tube mech has turned into a pipe bomb. So even if you know electrical characteristics and measurements there is still the possibility for problems.
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Cleaning your mechs and battery wraps are of the utmost importance but there is also something to be said that once all the boards in my other mods fail, my mechs will still be going strong.
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I’ve seen some awful purty mechs in my time. I have nothing bad to say about them at all. Only advice I have is if you are unsure of yourself or lack a deep understandin’ of this Ohm’s Law stuff and safe practices, stick with the regulated fellows. And then get that deep understanding anyway.
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Had a guy join my forum once begging everyone who had one to sell it to him. Said they were the best mechs, hands down. I didn’t know if he was right or not, having never mech’ed. I felt bad for him almost. Said he had a lot but wanted them all… So how good are they?
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They are, indeed, some fine damn tube mods! The Greek company called Metal Madness doesn’t make them anymore 
… they discovered that folks loved paying a metric assload of money for stab wood mods… so, they dropped the tube mech line and went full boat stab wood.
I’ve got 4 sets each: 18650, 500, and 350 of the Poldiacs (mix of SS and Brass version). Keep’em clean and they’re fantastic tube mods! Worth the price of admission, in my book! Sadly, they are “hens teeth” on the market now; relics of days long past.
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Does anyone remember these??
he used to make elf and wood pipes too…
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@authormichellehughes … What can we mech users do to comfort you, with regards to using a mechanical mod? Mechanical Mods really aren’t little pipe bombs, as the media would have you believe. 
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LOL I don’t know. I already deal with anxiety and freak out if I try anything new, so there’s that. It took me forever not to freak out when the RDA’s made the little popping sound.
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I can certainly understand the first couple of times. But you make it sound like you jump when a mouse farts… 
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Don’t be bringing no dang mice near me LOL
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…bumping this convo here. 
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Meh… not really. 
You’re still getting the effect of a mech; drawing off the actual voltage of the battery. The coil you use defines the amp draw on the battery.
For starters, if you stick to .5 to 1ohm coils (total) on your atomizer (whatever that is), coupled with say, a Samsung 18650 20a battery in a mech… you got no worries 
It’s when folks don’t pay attention to their coil build or atomizer/coil dead short scenarios… this is when there can be issues.
Yeah ya can… Hell, it’s what I started out with, after I dropped the “pen types” back in 2013/14. I was using a multi meter with probes to test my coils 
…it was a year or so after I started twisting my own coils that I finally got a real atty ohm tester. So… if I could bludgeon my way through the process, years ago, with just the help of reading the ECF forum… With the info out there today, you can surely make your way into the mech realm without fear.
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This is really cool to hear, and appreciated… because I really do like the raw “simplicity” of what I see and hear about rockin’ mechs. Someone above described it as organic, and I can totally feel that. It seems regulated mods muddy the water in some degrees… If someone knew my habits, and picked up my mod, and saw it was on bypass mode, they could safely assume in the hours before that I got super frustrated with a build and gave up by means of working in bypass instead 
Note: I’m pretty self taught when it comes to flavors, wicking, coils, and the tension between them all… and TBH I’ve found bypass to be more straight forward… So if anything I’m saying goes against common knowledge, this is why 
… I still have almost no clue about ohm’s law… I just figured out how many wraps, guage, ID, and etc my device and battery got along with… anything that drained my batteries wicked fast or made my mods heat up like a hand warmer was a No No 
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I absolutely LOVE the popping and crackling sound lol especially with a multi core Clapton or staple coil
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Riiiggghhttt? when you get it all just right and have the milky crackling 
…move over bacon.
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That’s kind of a problem in my opinion when it comes to vaping, especially if you want to get into mechs. Yes, again my opinion here, and I do not want it to appear that I am belittling or questioning you, because I am not.
Ohm’s Law is much of the physics that controls our vaping world. How amps, Ohms, and volts interact is critical to understanding what a build will bring to the table. Amps is current flow. Volts is current flow potential. Ohms is the resistance of the circuit. Sites like Steam Engine use it, of course. It’s V=I*R (I amps, V voltage, R resistance). You can manipulate it to isolate either variable you choose, but the law is the law. Wattage or power is a calculation of the three to measure the energy produced.
Typically, the resistance is the one constant for us as coil builders. We build a coil to a specific resistance, then with our regulated mod, we adjust the voltage (or wattage, which is just another law formula the chipset uses) to work with the coil’s resistance to feed the correct amps needed to drive the circuit and get the vape we like. If the situation we desire is not possible, the mod will let us know by complaining about it and not firing i.e. resistance too low, dead short, etc).
With a mech, you don’t have any chipset to help regulate and protect the vape. So in other words, even if you put a nice safe build on an atty, but short the coil to the cap, your regulated mod will tell you. Your mech will not, and will faithfully acknowledge and complete your desired action when you press the button. Even if it will overload the cell or melt the coil to a bad place. Similarily, even if a build is correct but it exceeds the battery’s safe limits, the regulated mod will refuse to fire and warn you. A mech of course will not. It’ll go ahead and do exactly what you tell it to. Regulated mods are not infallible, but they are much safer to use if a solid understanding of the physics in play is not there for the vaper.
So to sum things up and step down from my soapbox, please try to learn and understand the relationships in Ohm’s Law, the safe capacities of your cells, and the condition of your build. Obviously you can also ask the mech experts here for advice as well.
I’m not knocking mechs. They were the first on the scene, still going strong, and some are strikingly beautiful. But be safe. That’s sort of way more important than anything else.
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We need soapbox speakers! 
Don’t apologize for teaching and most importantly, teaching safety!
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And that is why the mechanical mod I bought will stay safely in my vape cabinet until/if there is absolutely no other choice but to use it. My brain is no longer wired that way.
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I started here:
…check out that time stamp!
(October 4, 2013)
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