Something very interesting has happened in the industry of disposable items that use the one use rechargeable lithium cells and some people got in touch with me and said they appear to have capacitors in them now and that doesn't really make much sense. However, what's inside does look like a capacitor. Let me just put this out the way and open one of these up. So these, as you may have noticed, are the incredibly e logically unsound uh Vapor inhalation devices being all cryptic here I Don't want to say the words and upset the tubes.

and the construction of this has completely changed. The idea is that, you know, yeah, it creates a vapor now to get these open. Uh, you push this, uh, mouthpiece backwards and forwards until it gradually works out different construction to the previous ones. but what's inside is very neat.

Then tap it down like that, the whole lot slides out and there is the thing that looks like a capacitor. Let's get a close-up in it. now. A super capacitor would not be suitable for applications like this because they have a very high rate of self- discharge and also they've not got a good energy density but this one is Mark 13300 which is I presume that's 13 mm diameter.

Let's check that there's your 13 and 330 mm long. Is it the full thing There we go? there's your 30 mm long. Um, but the uh lithium cell has the higher energy density and it is marked 3.7 Vol which does indicate standard lithium ion um and 360 Milah which seems to be very common for these. They used to be 500 milliamp, but they've cut things down presum.

they've cut Mount of liquid down as well. Other interesting things worthy of note: when you wiggle this, it comes out with two goldplated pins. that's also very wasteful and it turns out it connects to the uh, the heater by uh, thin gold flashed wires in here that as you push it in, it literally just skids along them in the connector. For those who use these things, it's worth mentioning it comes apart very easily for refilling.

uh, something that is interesting though. The Well: I'll take this out completely and look at circuit board. Uh, the LED that would normally been at the end is now on the circuit board and it's shining along a little light guide that is literally just stuck onto the side of the Uh cell. but also they have separated the little sensor here by the look of it.

and there's a separate little chip under there which we'll take a look at in due course. Uh and I tried experimentally. Oh, that that does come off. That's good.

Uh I tried experimentally. uh, um, putting power onto these pins after working out the polarity to see if the chip still had the recharge functionality. but it doesn't. You can't That would have been great cuz you could have made a little adapter that you plugged on.

it would have recharged it, but they have, uh, prevented that. They've also potentially made it quite hard to to reuse these. H Anyway, I am going to take this out uh, and uh, desolder it from the circuit board. We'll look at the circuit board.

I shall test the cell and we'll see what results we get one moment. please. Reverse engineering is complete. Let's explore.

My apologies if my voice goes squeaky or cracked at some point because I I've got a bug at the moment and it's just making making things a bit unpleasant. Let's take a look at the circuit board. On one side, we have a device marked M I as in microphone. It is not a microphone, it is just basically a pressure sensor.

I've opened that and I'll show you what it looks like inside. It has our membrane on top to try and prevent liquid getting in, which does cause huge problems with these. There are the battery connections. Removing the battery in its little capacitor form was very, very scary because there's a huge ground plane on the back of the circuit board and that surrounds the positive connection.

which means if you're trying to desolder that and you, uh, break through the insulation the solder resist layer, then it will short the battery out and it makes it very tricky getting out. Also, if you were trying to do solder it and you touched the case of the uh, the pressure sense the microphone here, it would uh also short out lots of things to short out onto. it's not easy removing them. Also, they got a fairly High thermal mass that makes it tricky on that side.

We've also got two Hollow pins that are s of goldplated I think yes they are goldplated um and they uh go into the Uh cartridge and they actually connect to just folded over wires and I'll show you those as well. On the other side we have the chip uh Asic application specific integrated circuit that is normally mounted inside these I wonder why they've mounted externally? It is a decoupling capacitor across the supply rails. uh, it goes. It's got one connection grounded by the microphone marked pressure switch and then it's got one output going to an LED which also goes to the sort of ground reference and then it's got the heater output going to the positive pin of the heater with a negative pin connected to the chassis.

negative and well, everything negative all the time. Let me show you the schematic: I Have tested these Lithium cells H It says they're 360 milliamp I have done a few charge discharge Cycles on them and the capacity I got was roughly at best 280 milliamp and that was energy in uh versus actual like monitor discharge. so uh, not quite the 360 Milah advertis. In fact, if you look at the other traditional devices made by the same company, they used to have a 500 milliamp power cell and that kind of makes me think they've pretty much halfed the lifespan of your device.

Your disposable device? um, I show? Well, no. I'll show you it right now. Just so you know, if you like those devices, they make a rechargeable version of the USBC in the end and little pods are going much better for the environment anyway. moving on.

Uh, this cell here the capacitor disguise sell couple things worth mentioning about. it has a light guide literally just stuck onto the side to bring the light from the Led up to the end where it just glows through the end of the device in a very halfhazard manner. But it works, It shows, it's doing stuff. It also is worth mentioning that uh, unlike capacitors, the large black Bandon is marked with their all positive symbols cuz it's a positive and not a negative.

So here's the application specific integrated circuit. Let's write in the value of that I'm going to say let's say it's actually 260 milliamp. Let's be generous about that. Maybe it's her, not not sure.

but there's the Lithium cell. There's the little decoupling capacitor to provide circuit stability. There's the AIC the application specific integrated circuit which is marked V 6989 and then underneath Sy y33 2728 B I've come across the Sy y number before, however, I could not find a data sheet on it. However, Again, hold on, let me just grab something here.

It followed the standard pinout of uh Vape devices that used the these things. Um, the inputs to it are just the switch. That switch is representing the diaphragm, which you're showing a moment. There are two outputs.

There's the output for the LED to make it. Glow It's got built-in current limiting and then there's a high current output to the heater. The heater is interesting. It's formed from a piece of punched mesh that has been expanded but super super thin.

Look at this, let me see if I can pick it up. It's very, very hard to pick up. It's tiny, I'll just put it next to oh, it's just falling apart not to worry. and uh.

they basically spot welded. uh, thicker wires with insulation. Goat flashed wires onto the sides of that and then sort of stretched out. So it basically forms a heat element.

but it's got a large surface area to make the heat element. They've got these little pieces to make this wicking material. They've got these pieces of Wick that are laminated. They're just laid together and they're just basically wrapped around that.

It's like the heating element has been wrapped around a central core just to form it. Then these uh, bits of fibrous material have been folded round and tucked out the end. Then the whole lot has been pushed down inside a metal tube like this, so it just bunches out a little tail. Let's see if I can show you that in the actual device? Is that showing? Let me uh Zoom down.

Actually, I shall focus on this and you can see the little Uh tail hopefully sticking out the side there just there. And that's the bit that the wicking material basically. When it's put in, it's got some slots in it, but it basically pushes over that and that couples the liquid onto. Let's go back down onto this area and zoom back out a little bit.

The way this is terminated. There are a couple of fairly big holes just underneath where that's put into the Uh to the base here and the two wires are fed down. Uh. and then there is a goop in here.

They've just put a small quantity of uh goop that's just sealed those in and then the wires have literally just been pushed into to the point they've actually kind of folded around like that. And that's electrical connection. When you push the circuit board in these pins actually I'm looking at this one and the pins are look like solid. They don't look like Hollow but these pins basically just push up there and make the connection with either end of the heat element.

The pressure sensor is very classic. It's based on a little cylinder and uh, the cylinder has multiple layers of insulators. It's got a insulator at the side protecting it from the outer metal case. Then it's got a metal core inside.

That's this bit here with its little insulator on there insulating ring and and across the top of that is a thin flexible membrane on the front packed away by this little tiny insulating washer that's barely visible There uh is the front electrode which is sandwiched up against the front of the case and then the this fiber material put on. When you inhale through the device, all that happens is there's a perforations at the front, there's a little hole for pressure Equalization At the back, it pulls that diaphragm up, the conductive diaphragm, a metallized Myer and it touches the front and that signals back via the switch. Just basically super low current just tells it that that's happening. the ASC The application specific integrated circuit also has timing and stuff built in Uh that will detect if that switch remains closed too long, either indicating that someone's drawn a huge pool of vapor or that um, the switch has got liquid in it or something or failed or water's ingressed and got in the circuit board and it will time it out and it'll Flash the LED but it'll turn the heater off, just protect it against burning up.

Um, technically speaking, if you were of that type of person who does such things, refilling it is a symbol just basically slide out as shown getting liquid everywhere here. uh, popping the end off and injecting liquid down the sides to reso this Wick But the tricky bit with this unit is recharging the uh lithium cell because the easiest way to do that you've got these tiny little pads on here might be to repurpose one of these. It's got little holes uh, in it where it sits over this just to, uh, make space the Soder joints you could theoretically put little wire probe through so you literally plug that on and it made a little char charging port. But having said that, as I said earlier, or just buy yourself rechargeable one and get the pods which you can also refill if you wish if you're so inclined.

But it's an interesting construction. It's the first time I've seen uh lithium cell inside a capacitor uh case. I Do kind of want to open one of these up, but they're fully charged at the moment, which is not the time to open one of these up and but I probably will do that. Um, but there we have it.

That is the latest version, The V6 I Think it is of that elf type device that you might find lying in the gutter and it's quite interesting inside. If you're if you're brave enough to try and desolder these, keep in mind they may go up in flames in the process if they short out, then uh, it could be a useful little Lithium cell. Um, but that is it. Interesting devices: An unusual Evolution with what appears to be custom housings for the Lithium cells.