How Does a Vaporizer Pen Work?

There are countless different styles of vaporizer pens out there, many with unique methods of heating and vaporizing your product, but the tried and true method you will see in premium brands is the ‘Coil and Wick’ system. This is the system used in the Dr. Dabber Ghost, Light and Aurora pens. It should be noted that the Dr. Dabber Aurora also has two atomizers included which work slightly different to the traditional system, but we’ll get to that shortly. First, let’s take a look at how your Dr. Dabber Light or Dr. Dabber Ghost works.

Coil and Wick System

Surprisingly enough, the large majority of people do not understand how these types of vaporizer pens work. The misinterpretation of this system was so significant (before we came around) that many companies designed and calibrated their vaporizer pens in a manner which went completely against the true nature of the system. Like taking a well-designed concept and using it to less than half its full potential. Let me explain…

A coil and wick atomizer consists of an absorbent wick, wrapped with a metal heating coil, housed in a heat resistant chamber made of materials such as ceramic or quartz. In the case of the Dr. Dabber Ghost/Light, it is a glass fiber wick wrapped in a titanium coil and housed in a ceramic chamber.

When you load the product onto the coil and press the button, the traditional coil and wick system is designed to heat the product gently enough to melt it into the wick, which in turn absorbs the product. Once the wick is sufficiently saturated, the heating coil should reach optimal temperature to heat the fibers of the wick, which in turn vaporizes the product it is saturated with.

Yes, you ready that correctly. The heating coil itself is not supposed to heat your product, it is the product saturated in the wick that is being heated.

Now don’t be too hard on yourself if you didn’t know that, you’re not alone. Most vaporizer pen companies mistakenly assumed that the coil was responsible for heating the product, so their units were calibrated to get as hot as possible, as quickly as possible. The result? The burnt, electric taste that has become synonymous with vaporizer pens.

In 2013 Dr. Dabber set out to change all that, with a focus on flavor and maximizing beneficial efficiency. The funny thing is, we didn’t reinvent the wheel. We just calibrated the coil to heat at a slower rate, and max out at a lower temperature, so the product you load has a chance to melt into the wick before being burnt by the coil. Which brings me to my next point…

When your product is burnt by the coil, you are not vaporizing at all. Your product is literally combusting on the coil, creating smoke, not vapor. While this may be fine for some, the true connoisseur not only wants to feel the effects of the product, but also wants to enjoy the flavor as well as all the health benefits associated with that particular essential oil. By keeping heat low throughout the process, Dr. Dabber vaporizer pens are able to preserve a lot of the benefits which, quite literally, would go up in smoke in another vaporizer pen.

Dr. Dabber Aurora Quartz Atomizers

At this point, if you’re an Aurora owner, you may be looking at your atomizer wondering how the quartz ‘wick’ is supposed to absorb the product. You may even be looking at your ceramic wick atomizer thinking the same thing, but ceramic is porous, so it will absorb your product much like a glass fiber wick, just with a lower threshold for saturation.

So we will focus on how the Quartz atomizer works on the Dr. Dabber Aurora, as it is a slightly different concept to our traditional method.

The Quartz atomizer on the Aurora consists of two quartz ‘wicks’ wrapped in titanium coils, housed in a quartz chamber. As quartz is not a porous mineral, the wick will not absorb any of the product loaded into this atomizer…so how does it work?

In theory, the Dual Quartz heating coils housed in the quartz chamber create a little boiling pot which works with the same low heat calibration as the traditional atomizers. The airflow holes in the Aurora atomizer are in the side of the atomizer instead of the bottom like the traditional Ghost/Light atomizers, and this is so product can sit at the bottom of the unit and heat slowly to the ideal temperature creating full flavored vapor. While loading protocol is the same as any of our other vaporizer pens, we recommend loading slightly more into the quart Aurora atomizer for the best experience, and using it on the highest heat setting. This results in smooth, dense draws with unparalleled flavor preservation.

Now this post may seem a little ‘sales-pitchy’ but Dr. Dabber’s Low Heat Technology is what put us on the map, so we are really proud of the result. Through word of mouth and online forums, enthusiasts ranted and raved about how they didn’t have to sacrifice flavor for the sake of portability anymore, which was what we set out to do. Without those enthusiasts spreading the word (you may be one of them!) we wouldn’t be here, so we cannot express how appreciative we are that there are likeminded connoisseurs out there who are not willing to settle for mediocre.