Do you hear a gurgling sound when you vape your PAX 2? Are you tasting bitter resins rather than the delicious terpenes in your dry herb? If yes, all you need to do is clean your unit!
You see, the PAX 2 isn’t the latest PAX vaporizer anymore, but it’s got plenty of life left in it, and many still consider it their favourite vape from PAX Labs. The PAX 2 shares many features with its older brother, the PAX 3, and includes a narrow vapour tube that isn’t so easy to clean.
This feature isn’t bad, but it doesn’t make cleaning your PAX vape any easier. So we’ve compiled all our favourite pro tips and tricks for quickly and properly cleaning your PAX 2 vaporizer!
Cleaning the Pax 2: What you need
- Isopropyl alcohol
- A few cotton swabs
- Narrow pipe cleaners or cleaning brush
- The PAX mouthpiece lubricant
Preparing the Pax 2 for Cleaning
Before beginning to clean your PAX 2, you should gather all of the PAX 2 cleaning supplies mentioned above, prepare your work station (optimally a tabletop or desktop), and start disassembling your PAX 2 unit.
Since you will already have all your cleaning supplies, you should take this opportunity to clean all of your PAX 2 accessories, and any other units or vape equipment you would like to clean - it will save time and hassle down the road!
- Remove the flat mouthpiece and oven lid from your PAX 2. You can pop the screen out by slowly running a pipe cleaner through the vapour tube.
- Take the lid off of your unit, and also pop out any other piece you may have in the chamber, such as a chamber filler, etc.
- Gently take apart any other accessories you’ll be cleaning in order to expose every little bit of the pieces.
You might have extra lids, a half-pack lid, a concentrate insert and/or some extra screens. You’ll want to clean them all at once to save time, so gather those too!
Checkout: - The Ultimate Pax Vaporizer Guide
Cleaning your Pax 2 and Accessories Piece by Piece
Before beginning to clean your PAX 2, you should gather all of the PAX 2 cleaning supplies mentioned above, prepare your work station (optimally a tabletop or desktop), and start disassembling your PAX 2 unit.
Before anything, get your isopropyl alcohol and put some into a bowl or cup. This is where you’ll be soaking all the resin off of the pieces, so it is optimal to use a bowl made from something other than plastic (which absorbs a lot of the oils and smells).
Also, if you’d like to reclaim the resin you obtain from the clean for use in a future cannabis tincture, you can use strong, drinkable alcohol such as Everclear or Vodka instead of isopropyl alcohol.
Check out this video! It shows you how the Pax 2 works and if you skip to minute 2:15 you can see exactly how the Pax 2 is cleaned!
Cleaning the Pax 2 Body
- To clean the body of your PAX 2, you can wipe it with a soft cloth wet with a little bit of alcohol. You can also use a disinfecting wipe (we recommend scentless wipes).
- Go in for a second round after the initial clean, and rub the PAX 2 with another damp cotton swab to dislodge the resins and any remaining herb residue.
Don’t worry if the metal inside the oven is still a little stained after cleaning. It may not be possible to restore the metal’s original appearance, but the staining doesn’t affect the oven’s performance. It’s just a sign that you like this awesome vape enough to use it regularly!
Cleaning the Vapour Path
If you’ve been using your PAX 2 for a while, condensed vapour and resins have probably left a sticky coating on the inside of your device’s vapour tube.
You can remove this coating by dipping a pipe cleaner in isopropyl alcohol, and running it down the length of the tube. You may need to use more than one pipe cleaner if the vaporizer is exceptionally dirty.
When a pipe cleaner comes out clean, and you can see through the vapour tube – you’re done!
Cleaning the Separate Pieces
In this step, all you really need to do is to soak all the soakable PAX 2 pieces and accessories in the bowl of isopropyl glycol for around 30 minutes, stirring or shaking the bowl up a bit every 10 minutes or so.
This initial soak will make most of the resin just melt right off of all the pieces, and it will make any of the hard-to-remove resin spots much easier to clean! Once the soaking time is up, all you need to do is go over the pieces with a pipe cleaner, brush, or cotton swab, and make sure you get all the rest of the residue off of the pieces.
- To clean the oven screen (not the oven door) and the mouthpiece, scrub them off with cotton swabs dipped in isopropyl alcohol. (Squeeze the excess alcohol out of the cotton swabs before using them, since you want to clean with the minimum possible amount of liquid).
What to do before Vaping the Pax 2 again
Before you replace the PAX 2 mouthpiece, feel around its edge and think: does the edge feel dry and sticky? If yes, put a couple of drops of PAX mouthpiece lubricant on the edge of the mouthpiece.
Then rub around the mouthpiece to spread the lubricant. After, just click in and out around 10 times to distribute the lubricant throughout the whole set-up. Since the mouthpiece doubles as the control button for the PAX 2, it’s important to lubricate it periodically, so that it doesn’t get stuck!
To finalise the process of cleaning your PAX 2 vape, you need to:
- Turn on your PAX 2, and set your heating path.
- Without putting any dry herb into the chamber, let the vaporizer go through its entire heat cycle (but don’t vape from it).
- You might smell some alcohol coming from it. This is normal, for you’re getting rid of all the residual alcohol (which you don’t want to mix into your dry herb vaping session).
- When the session is over, you shouldn’t be able to smell or taste any alcohol at all. Read our Pax 2 Review for more information.
How often should you clean the Pax 2?
Now that your Pax 2 vaporizer is clean, you may ask how often you should clean your vaporizer. Well, if you are vaping every day, we suggest cleaning your vaporizer every 2-3 sessions at least.
Checkout: - Why Storz & Bickel Vaporizer?
Overall, we will say that you should at least do a full cleaning of your vaporizer around every 6-10 sessions since this will ensure the best and safest user experience. The shorter the time between cleans, the shorter your future clean sessions will take, and the better overall experience you’ll have!
