How To Clean Your Atomizer - The Beginners Guide

Anyone who’s vaped for a while can tell you that a clean atomizer is one of the essential requirements of enjoyable vaping. As you vape over time, residues from the juices you’ve been vaporizing slowly collect on the atomizer coil and gunk it up. This, unfortunately, has many negative effects on your vaping experience. You’ll notice:

Your hits taste unusual, burnt, or dull.
Airflow through the device becomes restricted
Electronic connections can become interrupted and fail
Physical components seal up and become hard to detach
Your device looks, feels, and even smells funny.

With regular use, it typically only takes a few weeks for a fresh atomizer to be stuffed up with gooey residues. But that’s OK, because cleaning both is easy and affordable!

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Most devices work the same way no matter how they look or how the pieces fit together, meaning the advice we’re sharing today will work for a majority of devices you’ll come across. If it doesn’t, then you’ve probably got your hands on either a very simple disposable device, or a sophisticated rig that will have come with its own care instructions anyway. You can always consult the device manufacturer to find out what recommendations they have for device care and cleaning, but these steps will cover the basics for most vapes out there.

Let's get on with our guide on atomizer cleaning.

Here's What You’ll Need

All you’ll need to get started is some rubbing alcohol (look for the kind labeled 90% pure or above, rather than 70%) and a paper clip or toothpick. One optional piece of gear; you can use a non-fibrous cloth to handle the coil with while you’re cleaning it with.

Don’t use paper towels or tissue paper like many cleaning guides say; you’ll find yourself with a tattered mess of paper fibers stubbornly clung to the dirtied device. Using a non-fibrous cloth, or even something like a coffee filter, will prevent this annoying problem.

Pro tip: You might also want to get your hands on some latex gloves so that you don’t get stinky residue all over your hands!

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How to Clean Your Atomizer

Start by simple wiping away the bulk of the residue that you can get just rubbing with your cloth. Try to rub down the whole atomizer as best you can to remove as much gunk as possible at this early stage.

Next, submerge the atomizer completely in the rubbing alcohol. Leave this sit for a few hours, then come back and wipe away the remaining residues.

Then, blow through your atomizer several times to blow out any liquid that’s caught up in the airflow chambers in the coil. You might want to soak it thoroughly with water before you do this!

Use your paper clip to poke through any openings, and to carefully scrape off any residue that you couldn’t reach with your cloth. This will take some time to complete thoroughly, but it’s essential to remove as much gunk as possible to get the best performance out of your atomizer.

If the device is still pretty gunked up, then submerge it in alcohol again and leave it out overnight. Come back to it the next day and attempt to clean even further.

Keep in mind, if you’ve let your coil go a long time without any cleaning, it’s going to get harder and harder to get completely sanitized. You need to stay ahead of the problem by cleaning your coils very regularly, and perhaps even cycling through a set of backup coils you can use while you’re cleaning dirty ones.

In some cases, heavy residues can be removed by submerging the coil in boiling water for several minutes. Be careful not to let the coil roll around in your pot, though, or you might ding up the pot or the edges of the coil. If you go this route, wrap the coil in a cheap dishcloth you won’t mind throwing out. This’ll keep the metal pieces from scraping off of each other.

Cleaning Your Connections

Once you’ve cleaned the atomizer, you’ll still need to clean out the connections that attach it to your device.

If your device uses screw threads to hold everything together, you might have a difficult time. If you can submerge the threads in rubbing alcohol, great, but obviously you wouldn’t want to do this with your battery connector. Instead, you can use your non-fibrous cloth to blot the threads with rubbing alcohol, leave them sit for a bit, and then scrape them out with the tip of your paper clip. If you don’t mind getting down and dirty, a durable fingernail can really work out some of the gunk that plugs up the threads.

Magnetic connectors are far easier to clean because they’re typically smoother and easier to wipe down. Again, just be careful about which parts are OK to submerge in liquid, and which parts you’ll need to handle more carefully.

For the connector attached to your vape tank, just make sure the openings are free and clear. You can use your paper clip to poke through them and push out any junk that’s built up.

Don't Forget To Rinse Everything

You can’t skip this step.

Rinse everything you’ve cleaned thoroughly and air dry for as long as it takes. You want to make sure you get any rubbing alcohol off of the device so that it doesn’t tarnish the flavor of your e-liquids.

Plus, who wants to inhale that nasty stuff? You may even want to consider soaking your atomizer in water after you’ve rinsed and dried it once to be extra sure the alcohol has washed off.

If you’re using a drip tip, add a little e-juice to the atomizer, wipe it off, and then screw on the tank and fill. This is a way of “priming” the atomizer so that your first hits aren’t bland and dry tasting.

And you’re done!