Lol this industry has done plenty for me over the years. I’m always happy to jump in and drop some knowledge for my fellow ents (I won’t spam the site with a link but if you haven’t, be sure to check out my site, I make a bunch of cool shit for vaporizers 😉 )

I was wondering some things: What is a good temp range with these? I have been using the method you suggested for my max pro of starting at 300, letting it preheat a bit, taking a few good hits and bumping the temp +20f every few minutes until 385f daytime or 430f evening.

That’s the fun part - self discovery. Not all of us prefer the same temps. Sometimes it depends on the mood, or the strain, or the time of day, etc.

You sound like you’re on the right track. The best way to do it is continue temperature-stepping. Start at that 300F. But work your way up 10F or 15F at a time from 300F. Maybe you find yourself RIGHT where you want to be at 350F… maybe it’s 380F. Maybe it’s 430F.

500F is used for concentrates. Depending on the device, temperatures can fluctuate by as much as 1-10F hotter than set temp (depends a lot on the design of the device, programming software, etc. So combustion can occur anywhere between a set temp of 435F and 450F. In general I prefer staying below 430F. If your ABV looks black, that’s beyond cooked for me haha. I still like it to be a shade of coffee brown when I’m done cooking… in most cases.

There are times when I’m a dumb@ss and fall off a bicycle or something and injure myself bad. Then I’ll enjoy some higher temp sessions closer to 430F. But I personally usually stay below 400F most days.

With this desktop I’m not really getting any vapor until I hit around 400f and the device can go up to 500f. Do you have any suggestions for the temps I should be using/avoiding?

What desktop? Arizer ExtremeQ/XQ2? It sounds like you’re not preheating adequately and the oven is sucking heat away from the oven. This is a very common situation. The glass hardware acts as a heatsink. With most desktop plug-in devices, it’s best to set temp and let it sit for 20+ minutes before loading. This lets the device run more efficiently at temp.

The preheat thing for desktop is my biggest issue right now. Even just loading the herb and waiting for it to vaporize can take 3-5 minutes, which is a big difference from the comparatively instant smoke im use to with air max and plain old combustion. Plus preferably a 30 min preheat for best heat extraction? I will have to learn to have a little patience. Maybe get my first wake and bake done with air max while its preheating

Yes indeed this can be an adjustment.

There are “hacks” for many portables to avoid this preheat.

With my tin “log” vaporizer (Epic E-Nano Vaporizer - about the size of a small redbull can) - the wood housing was part of the secret sauce to the device. Even at max temp the device would suck for the first 10 minutes. But once the device got going, it was unstoppable. Since it was literally a 120v ceramic heater wired to a PWM dimmer switch consuming about 10 watts of electricity (at my favorite temp), I simply kept it running 24/7! So I always had heat on tap ready to vaporbong a load of any size I wanted (from full oven to microdose). It was literally too convenient so after running for 10 years I powered it offline and tucked it away for safe keeping.

At one point I even got fancy and used a smart outlet, programmed on a schedule to turn on the device in the morning before waking up, off while at work, then on to preheat before I arrived home from work hahaha.

Should I have whip inserted while its preheating?

For sure heat rises. Inserting the whip attachment would trap some more of the heat radiating up from the heater decreasing preheat times

What is minimum time for preheat in your opinion?

So this depends on many factors. With the OEM bowl, probably 10 minutes. You could accelerate the process by cranking up to 450F for the first 5 minutes, then turning down for the next 5 minutes (or less) before starting your sesh.

Some people get a different oven modded with the screen placed lower closer to the heater so they can rip away without preheating. That depends on you - I prefer the OEM bowls.

On the topic of packing the whip insert part, I think that’s dumb from an air flow standpoint. I noticed the herb that gets stuck in there stays green which indicates its not being heated as well as rest of bowl. I actually take a little puff into the mouthpiece to dislodge the stuck herb back into bowl.

For sure, I agree with you. I’m a bigger fan of preheating my desktops before use. I’ve simply gotten in the habit of turning on my Arizer XQ2 if I think I’m going to use it in the next hour. I have the auto-off timer set to shut off after 60 minutes of inactivity so it doesn’t stay running unattended.

Finally,would it be okay to email you? Not sure how Lemmy PMS work.

Totally! Feel free to fill out the contact form on my website and I’ll reply back from there :-)