Being the kind of guy who lives under a rock, I thought this thing lying at the end of the driveway might be a USB widget:
But the contacts are all wrong:
It has an opening on the other end:
An easy teardown produces a yard sale of parts:
The fiber snippet inside the coil carries the same sickly sweet scent as exhaled by passing vapers.
Some casual searching suggests it’s a Juul Vape Pod. The Juul site insists on lower browser armor than I’m willing to grant it; you’re on your own.
The heating coil press-fits into slots cut in the contacts:
It’s about 1 Ω cold, so I foolishly assume there’s a current limiter somewhere in the circuitry.
The little steel tube goes into the Tray o’ Cutoffs, where it might come in handy some day, the debris hits the trash, and I washed my hands up to the elbows.
Ya learn something new every day around here and, obviously, I must get out more …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
The local gas station had a vaping starter pack for $1 so I had to get it: reportedly it contains an attiny84, an eeprom and other nice things (http://se.azinstall.net/2015/10/hacking-vuse-e-cig-puff-counter.html).
Now it sits here till I can come up with a useful application for it. Model train steam engine? Micro vaporizer for something? Wonder if the bottle with nicotine solution works on spider mites.
Why am I not surprised to find puff-counting DRM inside an e-cig? [mutter]
“spider mites”
Been stuffing all kind of stuff into my pipe, but never spider mites. Thanks for the idea! Everything is sooo biodegradable or recyclable, but you must learn to live with polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)…
cheech and chong – the cockroach
Smoke is sooo good for your health or at least my ancestors used to think so…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_sauna#Smoke_sauna
“The longevity is warranted by disinfectant features of smoke.”
All of your surviving ancestors; the real smoke eaters flushed themselves out of the gene pool … phew!
Dad died a year ago (89 years old, lung cancer). Wrestled with steam locomotives 1944-60 (asbestos and PAHs), 1960-78 (diesel fumes). He had a nightmarish last two months.
Aye, a hard way to go; my condolences.
Everybody has a soft spot for the few surviving coal-fired steam locomotives, but they really were a terrible way to convert carbon into go-power. Unless, of course, you enjoy just a hint of air along with your smoke and ashes. I can’t imagine what the Hudson River Valley looked like with trains running on half a dozen tracks along both banks.
If hydrocarbons weren’t so energy-dense, the Industrial Revolution would never have cleared the gantry …
The wood-fired steamers in logging territory were worse, I believe. Lots of creosote along with the particulates. The wood was almost surely quite green, at least in commercial operation. The live-steam roundup in Oregon can make for challenging breathing, and that’s with relatively dry pine and other woods (juniper and cedar).
I just smoked another batch of bacon using cherry twigs from a snow-downed tree out front: smogged the patio and didn’t smell at all like cherry, but produced greed-arousing bacon. I’ll define it as a successful pollution tradeoff. Next time I’ll use slices from the larger branches, rather than twigs.
Thank you.
“If hydrocarbons weren’t so energy-dense, the Industrial Revolution would never have cleared the gantry …”
When it comes to hauling heavy loads and towing, diesel is still the king (e.g John Cadogan skeptical on Tesla Semi). And then of course there is the Ultimate Heavy-Duty Pulling class…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_locomotives
In regards to “obviously, I must get out more …”
One of my favorite quotes from one of my very few favorite movies:
“Don’t look for it, Taylor [Ed]. You may not like what you find.”
– Dr. Zaius, Planet of The Apes, 1968
These days I wish I did live completely under a rock or underground.
The consumers of this garbage often being completely unaware of how it is made, how it works, how it should be disposed of, or in this case, how it can re-purposed or recycled.
Which reminds me of the Fundamental Rule of Parenting: “Never ask a question you don’t want answered.”
Another reason for getting out more: gotta keep my immune system topped off … [sigh]
Re: Current limiting and 1ohm cold: I’m told that the state of the art in these types of things is to use the heating coil itself as a thermistor. I’m also told that’s also a reason to use stainless steel for the coil instead of nichrome or Kanthal or something, because stainless has a relatively temperature coefficient of resistance.
Perhaps a suitable length of stainless steel wire lets them do away with all the fussy electronics: a bare lithium cell provides the proper current when the coil reaches operating temperature.
Makes perfect sense!