A vaporiser that’s “not working” is rarely a dead vaporiser. Most of the time it’s a clogged screen, a gummed-up vapour path, a flat battery or a part that’s worked loose. All fixable at the kitchen table in a few minutes, no tools to speak of.
Here are the five problems we got asked about most, how to tell which one you’ve actually got, and what to do about each. Work out the symptom first. The fix is usually obvious once you’ve named the fault.
1. Weak or thin vapour
This is the big one, and it’s almost never the heater giving up.
Start with the screen. A bowl screen clogged with fine particles chokes the airflow, and thin air means thin vapour. Pop it out, brush it, or swap it for a fresh one. Next, check your grind. Too coarse and the heat can’t get into the material, so grind finer and pack the bowl a touch firmer so there are no big air gaps for the draw to shoot through.
Then give it time. People pull the second the light goes green, but the chamber walls are still warming. Wait the full heat-up, and on a conduction unit give it another ten or fifteen seconds at temperature before your first proper draw. If it’s still weak, nudge the temp up. A lot of “broken” units are just being run at 170°C when the material wants 190°C.
2. Bad or burnt taste
Two causes, and they’re easy to tell apart.
If the taste is harsh, acrid, almost ashy, you’re running too hot. Most dry herb tastes best between 180°C and 200°C. Past about 210°C it starts to char rather than vaporise. Drop the temp and stir the bowl between pulls so it cooks evenly instead of scorching the bits nearest the wall.
If the taste is more stale, plasticky or just off, the unit’s overdue for a clean. Residue builds up in the cooling unit and vapour path and it goes rancid. Strip the path down, give the mouthpiece and screens a soak in isopropyl, and the flavour comes right back. A soft brush and a couple of spare screens make the job quicker.
3. No draw, or a draw like a brick
If you can barely pull air through it, something’s blocking the path, not the heater.
Run through the airway end to end. The usual culprit is a packed-too-tight bowl or a fully clogged screen, so loosen the pack and clear the screen first. On units with a removable cooling unit or a long mouthpiece, that’s the next place gunk collects. Take it apart and run a pipe cleaner through it. Nine times out of ten the resistance disappears.
While you’re in there, check the bowl isn’t overfilled. Cramming it in feels efficient but it strangles the airflow and you get neither draw nor vapour.
4. Battery won’t hold a charge
First, rule out the boring stuff. A dodgy cable or a tired USB wall plug fakes a dead battery surprisingly often, so try a different cable and a known-good charger before you write the unit off.
If it genuinely drains fast, batteries do wear. Lithium cells lose capacity over a couple of years, faster if you leave them flat for weeks or charge them in a hot car. For units with removable 18650s, a fresh pair of quality cells brings it back to new. For built-in batteries, the trick is to stop running them to zero and stop leaving them on the charger overnight. Both habits cook the cell. If it won’t charge at all, clean the charging port. Lint and pocket fluff pack into USB-C ports and block the connection completely.
5. Rattles, wobbles or loose parts
A rattle is almost always a part that’s come loose, not damage, and it’s the quickest fix on this list.
Power off and check the mouthpiece, cooling unit and any caps are seated and screwed down. Heat cycling slowly loosens threaded parts, so a quick nip-up sorts most rattles. If a screen is loose in its housing, it’s either seated wrong or the little O-ring or seal under it has flattened with age. Seals are wear parts. They’re cheap, and they pop in.
If a part is genuinely cracked, don’t run it. A split cooling unit or a perished seal leaks unfiltered, hot vapour straight to your throat. Replace it before you use the unit again.
What not to do
- Don’t crank the temperature to fix weak vapour. You’ll char the bowl and ruin the taste before you ever make more vapour. Sort the airflow first.
- Don’t soak the body. Only screens, mouthpieces and cooling units go near liquid. The body holds the battery and electronics and water kills it.
- Don’t run a screen until it falls apart. A clogged, sagging screen is behind half the draw and vapour complaints we ever heard.
- Don’t keep using a cracked part because it “still works”. Heat and a broken seal are a bad mix.
Most of this comes down to keeping the thing clean and not running it flat out. For the full routine, see vaporizer maintenance, and if you’re on a Mighty specifically there’s a step-by-step in how to clean your Mighty.