Refocusing Premium Atomizers
My start in design was with a Chinese vaporizer manufacturer called Innokin. After working with them for some years on technical feedback and marketing work, they offered me a once in a lifetime opportunity in 2016: I could design a series of products with them as the manufacturer in a joint venture. I would live and work part time in Shenzhen, China and learn everything about design and manufacturing from the ground up. The Mulciber atomizer was my first piece, and I had a mission.
There were several mounting points to accommodate multiple styles of heating elements, which the users would create themselves (hence the “rebuildable” moniker). Additionally, there were multiple airflow control rings to acommodate those different styles.
These “dripping” atomizers generally provided the best flavor experience as there were fewer variables to control. The lack of capacity bothered some, so there was a style known as “squonking” which hollowed out the central post in the base of the atomizer and fed liquid up into the well to soak into the wicking material. I had designed a supplementary post to accommodate this, and there was a small cult following for this piece.
Unfortunately, I had learned that the slotted set screws would degrade fairly rapidly, and there was a mid-production swap to more traditional grub screws, thus improving durability.
In 2016 I had never touched CAD. I had some graph paper, scales, and French curves and that was more or less everything I had in my pocket to create these designs for which I was essentially commissioned.
After several attempts at pen-and-paper designs, I had moved back to Chicago and reconnected with a friend who had gone to SCAD. She recommended that I start with Rhino 3D; a relatively affordable design software that would enable me to create everything I needed. And down the rabbit hole I went!
The Mulciber atomizer is what the industry called an “RDA” — a rebuildable dripping atomizer. This piece had no held capacity save for what the wicking material could hold. At this time in the industry, wattage was increasing substantially and creating a subculture that had strayed from what brought me into the industry in the first place — substituting leaf tobacco with a user-controlled nicotine source.
In retrospect, I may have been one of very few people who actually hoped to have an industry that would run out of customers, but that’s a discussion for another time.
This atomizer was intended to bring the techniques from high-end small batch atomizers to the mass market. The high-wattage devices generally only achieved in wasting more energy for the same effect, and these were designed to minimize the energy required, and to concentrate the taste in a parabolic vaporization chamber.
