Fix a Vaporite Solo

OldOneEye

New Member
I got this Vaporite Solo 8mo ago but Vaporite said I paid too little for the unit so they will not honor the warranty, They even said it must be a fake.. haha
So I disassembled it and this is what I found. AS you can see the Red thing overheated and pooped all over a resistor that also over heated
I can see that I need these Items
1) Capacitor 475k 4.7uF 250V (Red thing)
2) Resistor 1w unknown value (does anyone know what value this is) I can’t see the colors anymore
3) The plug connectors to the heating element look to have got hot, I will just clean them

Anything Else that I need to replace that you have experience with

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Hi, if the main chip is gone "which I suspect it has", you might be better taking the board to an electronic outlet and just buy all the components and start from scratch, or if you like a challenge, start from where the current comes into the board, and fault find using "Ohms law" calculate the voltage that should be going through it, more often than not its the main capasitor that goes, and takes everything else out with it, as for the resistor colour code, just google "resister colour code"... :goodluck:
 
Hi, if the main chip is gone "which I suspect it has", you might be better taking the board to an electronic outlet and just buy all the components and start from scratch, or if you like a challenge, start from where the current comes into the board, and fault find using "Ohms law" calculate the voltage that should be going through it, more often than not its the main capasitor that goes, and takes everything else out with it, as for the resistor colour code, just google "resister colour code"... :goodluck:

If you have a Radio Shack by you that's where you could probable find parts. Send vaporite the photos of the blown out board and maybe they'll send a electronics parts list be nice when you ask that stuff is not usually considered proprietary information it's just a electrical circuit.
I also have one but can't use it until I get out of this program they have me in. :peace:
 
Sorry OldOneEye, I can't tell you the value of the resistor, as mine fried in the same manner as yours -- only without the melted BAC (Big Ass Capacitor) on yours. I'm guessing from what I can make out of the resistor code that remains that it's somewhere between an 71 -- 118 Ohm 1 Watt resistor with a tolerance of 5% or so. I tried a 100 Ohm 2Watt in my unit and while everything still looks as it did post meltdown, the resistor stays okay. Still no heat.

My symptoms are:
No Heat.
The light comes on and indicates it should be heating.

Nothing's happening. I might have to replace the capacitor as well. In the meantime, I've been attempting to find a schematic with component values, but so far, no go. I haven't written to Vaporite, because, honestly, I am pretty disgusted with the level of quality (or serious lack) of the item and while I could have returned it under warranty, what would have happened?

They'd send it back to their Chinese sweat shop, have them do another slap dash crappy job, send it back to me (I get to pay postage) and in another five hours (Yes 5 (FIVE) hours) of operation it would most likely let all the smoke out of the components again. As we all know, once the smoke gets let out of components, they don't work anymore. All that for maybe six weeks of wait time? I don't think so.

I am ultimately going to reverse engineer the entire board and make something at least ten times more reliable. And, unlike Vaporite, I'll stand by my product with a no questions asked return policy. And I'll make it here in the US. Can't say enough bad things about US Business sending all their jobs to China and then getting *this* kind of service and reliability. No wonder the country's going to the dogs.

In the meantime, I'll post here when I have some success on fixing my current board or getting proper component values for you.

dunniteowl
 
Anyone that has a WORKING Vaporite Solo that is OUT OF WARRANTY who has a digital camera and is willing to open their unit, having a photo of the front side of the board with the components on it would be a great help in verifying the resistor that seems to be burning out next to that big brown capacitor.

You don't have to do anything special. Just unplug the unit, open it up (four screws, one in each corner on the bottom, two in the middle for the bottom cover) and then remove the board *(two more screws if I recall correctly) and gently lever it out, making sure to disconnect the small plug leads for the Lamp and the heater element. Then turn it so that it's face up and click click click, (that would be the taking of photos) and reassemble.

I would (as would anyone else that would like to see their unit come back to life) appreciate it very much. Again, DON'T DO THIS IF YOUR UNIT IS UNDER WARRANTY!! Taking the back off voids the warranty and I wouldn't want you to do that, even in the name of learning more if your unit is functioning and under warranty.

Any of you who are willing and confident in their ability to do this and reassemble without incident should only be the ones. Also, if you're not sure, or you don't think it's wise, then don't do it. Any one else with a damaged unit that is out of warranty, having more photos of damaged units could also help out. Maybe one of them has an unburnt resistor that will allow me to identify it, thus increasing the chance of home repairs.

Thanks.
 
Hello guys, I don't know if its too late to help or if you are still looking at this but I have the same vaporite and it is working. I almost burnt out the circuit a few days ago trying to use it with a car 12-120V adapter. After a minute the vaporizer began to let out smoke and the familiar to me (I was a tinkerer in high school) smell of burnt silicon. Anyways I took it apart and that same resistor was burnt but usable and the capacitor is intact. I did a quick multimeter check on the resistor and found it to be 47Ω. I went to radioshack and replaced it with a 10 watt resistor of 50Ω 0.o, I figured I better make my vape as resilient as possible.
Good luck!
 
This is welcome news and information! :goodjob:

As my intent is to build a better unit, this will be very helpful. Just to be clear, you replaced yours with a 10 Watt unit, correct? And that resulted in a still functional vaporizer? (I presume so, otherwise you might be telling me another sad tale, right?) Having solid confirmation is nice, though.

Thanks!
 
Yes the 10 watt resistor is working great, however it was a little tough soldering it in place and then re-closing the box, because its a much larger resistor than the one that was already there. I don't know if this is my imagination but it also seems to be heating up faster as well. I went to radio shack with the intent on buying a 1 or 2 watt resistor but they didn't have any that were close enough to 47 ohms. If you want I can take pictures of the new and old resistor and my circuit board
 
Your timing couldn't have been better! My wife just asked me about whether or not I can hook these HUGE things into the Vaporite Solo housing on the board. Yes, please take some snaps if you don't mind. That would be great.

I also noted that the 100 Ohm 1 Watt resistor I tried allowed the unit to come on as before, but not heat. It did, however, due to having to set the resistor slightly higher off the board, come into contact with the digital readout control cable (flat cable -- sort of) and was starting to melt that. I simply rerouted the cable to the side of the board so it wouldn't "flop" over the component side of the board -- FYI for any other DIYers out there looking to fix what they paid a hundred bucks for like me.

Again, if anyone comes across this and can deliver more information about any fixes that provide a long term solution for the burning resistor (and/or the that big Capacitor on the board) it would be welcome to have it posted here for me to make improvements as well as to let others know what they can do to fix their broken vaporizers.

Thanks again, very helpful stuff! :thanks:
 
Can't recollect if the big capacitor's value has been posted, but it's:
4.7 uF 250V MPP capacitor. In Words that's: Four Point Seven Micro-Farad, Two Hundred Fifty Volt rated Multi-Poly-Propylene capacitor.

And the resistor as mentioned above is 47 Ohm (but most places you're going to do with a 50 Ohm [it's probably fine just on tolerances alone]) looks like originally a 1 watt or half watt resistor. The replacement I was directed to is a ceramic block resistor. It's 5Watts dissipation makes it more resilient in circuit (But it gets pretty hot, route your cables accordingly!) I got the resistors at Radio Shack for about 3 bucks.

Sadly, my vaporizer isn't functioning yet. I have electrically verified the heater shutoff circuit (the temp meter hits a peak and then shuts off till the temp goes down below cutoff) is working, and the power to run the heater circuit's coming in, lighting all the cool LEDs (both of them) but the heating element doesn't seem to be getting power. I am replacing the capacitor first, so that's another 5 or so bucks after shipping.

I'm also drawing out a schematic and parts list while I'm at it. Might as well get a start on that whole "re-engineering" thing. More as it develops...
 
Sorry it took me so long to upload this. I got caught up with a few things this past week. But heres my photos. The quality might be poor, also I had trouble getting good angles.
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It appears in my particular case that the initial burnout damaged the board traces a bit. When I got my new capacitor in place, I had no power at all. I examined the board, reinserted the capacitor in the opposite direction (in case polarity mattered, I couldn't find any indication these were polarity specific caps) and still no power. I started to replace the old cap when I noticed there was a clump of material on each leg.

On further examination, I discovered they were the through hole contacts for the circuit board. I used proven and clean desoldering techniques with proper heatsinking and a needle tip soldering iron. Proper tinning and solder sucking to remove solder before overheating. So I'm guessing the traces were heat damaged in the initial overheating condition and applying the heat to desolder them was the last straw for them.

No worries; I guess that accelerates my desire to build a new board with beefier components. I certainly cannot recommend a Vaporite Solo to anyone at this point. I only have experience with one other vaporizer and that was a Silver Surfer. It seems to be pretty sturdy.

More as I progress on this...
 
I gave up on my vaporite solo had to much trouble controlling temp always burnt my weed.Went to a Iolite better but moved on to a Arizer Solo does everything better it cost me 180 on amazon it's not for a crowd it's good personal one. When I take it out with me it's nice to know the smell of burnt weed doesn't follow me around when I go out in public.
 
Thanks Demp5294, that's good information to have. So when I rebuild my vaporizer (I suppose at that point it won't really be a Vaporite product, per se) I should ensure not only precision temp readout, but stable thermal control to keep the temperature tight. No-one wants the smell of burnt plants in the air if they can avoid it.

That's another thing I noticed when I was testing for the malfunction in this unit. The thermal control loop works, but it is super wide. The "wider" a temp control (or any control) loop is, the wider the space between shutoff and turn on of the heater in degrees of heat. In other words, I narrow loop would most likely be something like a 5 degree difference, plus or minus a few degrees. In such a situation, the loop would be relatively "tight" in that, the temp hits, say, 305F and the heater shuts off until the temperature guage reads a five degree drop to 300F and then turns back on, till it hits 305F and then shuts off again.

Depending on how fast the thermal circuit is, from getting the actual heat from the heat checked location to responding to that information, this could result in a nearly constantly turning off/on condition that's pretty hard on a heater element like these. So the band is most likely going to be pretty wide.

I'm guessing that, if you set it for, say 305 F, the heater wouldn't recieve a "shut off" indication from the controller until it actually reaches something like 320 F (15 degree overage) and then won't get a "turn on" signal until the recorded temperature drops to something close to 290 F or so (another 15 degree underage) and that 30 degree band between shutoff and turn on would be your width, with optimal temp in the middle of the band.

So my aim would also be to find a way to increase the accuracy of the readout and it's width so that it is tighter at low end and maybe a bit wider at the high end. (Using the above example as a guide,) you might wish to be able to "set" your limits with something like: Turn on (initial condition when you turn on the unit) and set to 305 F. It reaches 315 F and shuts off. Then when the temp drops to 300, you'd want it to come back on, even though your optimal temp is 305, a mere 5 degrees from the bottom of your band.

This would be a fairly tight band at the bottom and probably a bit tight on the upper end as well, though the jobs I've had, temperature tolerances were extremely tight with a +- 2C shift being seen as nearly "out of control." (of course, we're talking vaporizing, not making microprocessors in a semiconductor manufactory, so there's that.)

I don't know how fine the control should be, but I respect precision.

In any case, I suspect one of my challenges will be to find that "sweet spot" that allows the heat at the upper end to still do the job without accidentally burning (based on an optimal setting, of course) the materials while keeping the lower end from being too cool to properly vaporize materials as requested and pretty close to the temp requested. I suspect that too cool a vape setting, while it might actually start to vaporize, may allow an area of cooling (along with the movement of air through being pulled through the wand while "hitting,") that ends up heating and then carmelizing the resins on the unburnt or un-vaporized-by-heat portions of material where cooling resins and cannabinoids might begin to collect on as yet untouched materials in the bowl.

It's amazing what you can pick up at work after many years of experience in electronics tech work. :high-five:
 
[SARCASM]Sounds like a high-quality product.[/SARCASM]
 
Hey guys thanks for the information! I have a Vaporite Solo. It's almost two years old and still working. I have been thinking about how to fix it when it dies, as I'm not looking forward to spending lots of money on a new vape. Unfortunately I'm quite mechanically inclined, but not so much experience in electronics.
Is it possible to buy a duplicate or comparable board for this unit at an electronics store? Or is that something that is custom made only?
 
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