Manuel's Engineering Blog -> Electrical Shisha / Hookah

Hey guys,

Today I will tell you a bit about my electrical shisha plan. Our vision was to build a portable, easy to use and fast electrical shisha, that could be controlled over an app. Our hopes where not only to have those awesome features, but also to eliminate the unhealthy coal, which at a traditional shisha generates the heat to vaporize the tabacco. 

The main design idea was to look modern and stylish, kind of like a Mac with brushed aluminium. It should be as small as possible, but still draw attention when used in public. 

But before really thinking about the design of the final product we should have a proof of work, that the smoking gets generated the way we wanted it to. So we thought about ways to get the tabacco to several hundreds of degrees Celsius, without instantly burning it. The first ideas where to use heat plates that heat up the entire head and then therefore produce the smoke. But that way the tabacco would burn simultaneously, even when nobody is using it. Therefore we tried to heat up the air that is going through the tabacco. The best and easiest way to get to such high temperatures is inductive heating. Inductive heating works by generating a huge difference in a magnetic fields by sending a AC current with a very high frequency trough a coil. That magnetic field then induct a current in the metal that is supposed to heat up, which then generates heat in it. 

The theory sound pretty simple, in real life however, its pretty hard to build such a system. Don't get me wrong, its easy to get metal glowing red, but to build an entire working heat up unit is pretty hard until now. The material of the head has to be non conductive and heat resistant as well. Duo the given criteria, the only real solution is ceramic. However to manufacture a precise prototype is not only hard, but also expensive. I already got a 3d Model and as soon as I a have 3DPrinter,  I'm gonna test some models and then finally order the ceramic print. However here is a small sketch of the e-head.

If you guys liked this small introduction to the electrical shisha, please upvote and follow me! Also please tell me and suggestions for the final product, or how to optimize things, additionally let me know whether you want to know more about how other systems like the active water cooling, or the refined smoke filter should work!

Have a nice day!