Heat-up and cool-down, dialed to your exact banger.
Getting a dab right comes down to one thing: the surface temperature of your banger at the moment your concentrate touches it. Too hot and you scorch the terpenes, get a harsh hit, and leave charred puddles in the bottom of your banger. Too cold and the concentrate pools without fully vaporizing, wasting material. The problem is that surface temperature is invisible — so dabbers either buy an electronic thermometer or, far more commonly, count seconds. This timer makes the counting accurate by adjusting for the variables that actually change the numbers.
A banger is a heat battery. When you torch it, you charge the battery; when you pull the torch away, it discharges into the air, your rig, and eventually your dab. How fast it charges and discharges depends on how much material there is (wall thickness and bucket diameter), what the material is (quartz, titanium, or ceramic), and its shape — a terp slurper or blender carries noticeably more glass mass than a minimalist flat-top.
Quartz is the community standard because it heats reasonably fast, retains heat evenly, and is chemically clean at dab temperatures. A 2mm quartz banger heats quickly but also sheds heat quickly — its dab window is short. A 4mm banger takes noticeably longer under the torch but holds a stable temperature through a long, slow dab. Neither is "better"; they're different tools, and the timer's thickness and diameter selectors reflect real heat-up and cool-down differences between them. Titanium conducts heat far faster than quartz — shorter heat-up, shorter cool-down (and since titanium isn't sold by wall thickness, the timer drops that selector for ti). Ceramic sits at the other end, slow to charge and slow to release. Thermal (double-wall) bangers insulate the dish, so they take longer to heat but hold their dab window longer once they're there — the timer gives them a longer "dab now" window instead of just a longer wait.
For torch users the timer runs two stages. The heat-up stage estimates how long a steady, direct flame takes to bring your banger to a fully saturated hot state — hot enough that the whole banger, not just the bottom surface, has absorbed heat. Torching to full saturation and then cooling down produces far more consistent results than flash-heating just the bottom, because a flash-heated banger's surface temperature crashes the instant you pull the flame.
The cool-down stage is where your target profile matters. Max Flavor aims at roughly 480–540°F, where delicate terpenes vaporize without combusting — expect smaller vapor production and the fullest taste. Balanced targets the mid-500s°F, the everyday sweet spot. Big Clouds targets 600–650°F, where vapor production is heavy and flavor takes a back seat. The timer also nudges the target window by consistency: rosin and live resin carry volatile, temperature-sensitive terpene fractions and reward the cooler end, while shatter tolerates — and often needs — slightly more heat to vaporize fully.
Cold start flips the whole sequence: you load your concentrate into a clean, room-temperature banger first, then wave a low flame under the dish until the melt just starts to bubble and run — usually well under 20 seconds — then cap it and pull. It's the gentlest way to dab, it's become the default workflow for terp slurpers, and it uses completely different timing than a traditional heat-and-wait dab. The timer's Cold Start session mode runs a short low-flame countdown sized to your banger, then goes straight to the capped dab window. Watch the melt, not just the clock — the bubble is your real signal; the countdown keeps you from overshooting it.
A banger that just finished a dab is still warm, which is why second-dab timing by "the usual count" so often ends up too hot. The Back-to-back mode shortens the heat-up substantially and trims the cool-down, reflecting a banger that's starting from warm instead of room temperature. If your banger has visible residue, give it a quick swab first — burned residue changes how the surface absorbs heat and muddies every dab after it.
If you run an e-rig or e-nail, there's no cool-down guesswork — you set a temperature and the coil holds it. In e-rig mode the timer becomes a recommendation engine plus session timer: it suggests a setpoint based on your profile and consistency, then runs a session countdown so you know when your device's heat cycle is ending. Note that most e-rigs read coil temperature, not surface temperature, so the surface where your concentrate lands typically runs 30–70°F cooler than the number on the device — which is why e-rig setpoints look higher than torch-and-quartz targets.
A carb cap restricts airflow over your banger, which lets your melt vaporize fully at lower surface temperatures. Lower temperature means more terpenes survive. Terp pearls take it further by physically stirring the melt pool, spreading concentrate across the heated surface instead of letting it sit in one cooling puddle. If you consistently find low-temp dabs weak, a directional cap and a pair of pearls fix that far better than more torch time does.
After each timed dab, the timer asks one question: too hot, perfect, or puddled? Your answer nudges your personal cool-down calibration a few seconds in the right direction and remembers it — per device, automatically. Two or three dabs in, the timer isn't running generic numbers anymore; it's running your numbers, for your banger, your torch, and your room. That personal offset rides along when you save a preset, and presets back themselves up automatically so they survive a phone swap.
Your torch's fuel level, flame size, ambient temperature, and banger wear all shift the real numbers. Treat the first run as a very good starting point, then let the feedback buttons walk it in. Once your setup is dialed, save it as a preset and stop counting in your head forever.
| Profile | Surface temp target | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max Flavor | ≈ 480–540°F | Rosin, live resin, terp-heavy sauce | Smaller clouds, wants a cap + pearls |
| Balanced | ≈ 545–595°F | Everyday dabs, badder, most setups | The all-rounder |
| Big Clouds | ≈ 600–650°F | Shatter, maximum vapor | Terp loss, harsher hits, more residue |
| Cold start | Melt-signal, not temp | Slurpers, flavor chasers, small dabs | Needs a clean banger every time |
With a full torch flame, roughly 25 seconds for a 2mm banger up to about 60 seconds for a 4mm banger, heating until the whole banger is saturated. The timer above adjusts this for your exact thickness, bucket diameter, material, banger style, and torch flame size.
Typically 45–80 seconds for quartz depending on wall thickness and how hot you like your dabs. Thicker walls hold heat longer and need a longer cool-down. Flavor chasers wait longer; cloud chasers dab sooner. Set your profile above and the timer computes it — then tunes it from your feedback.
Most dabbers land between about 480°F and 650°F at the surface. Around 480–540°F preserves the most flavor, the mid-500s is the balanced everyday zone, and 600°F+ produces the biggest vapor at the cost of taste. Rosin and live resin do best at the cooler end; shatter tolerates the warmer end.
You load concentrate into a clean, room-temperature banger first, heat gently with a low flame until the melt starts to bubble (usually 8–20 seconds), then cap and pull. It's the gentlest, most flavor-forward way to dab and the standard workflow for terp slurpers. The timer's Cold Start mode times the low-flame stage for your banger.
Yes — slurpers and blenders carry more glass mass than flat-tops, so they take longer to heat fully and longer to cool. The style selector adds that mass into both stages. Slurpers also work best with marble sets and terp pearls, and many slurper owners prefer cold-start dabs entirely.
Because your banger never returned to room temperature. Use the Back-to-back session mode — it starts the math from a warm banger, with a much shorter heat-up and a trimmed cool-down.
Yes. Set everything to match your rig, type a name, and hit Save. Presets are stored on your device with your personal calibration, back up automatically, and load with one tap next session. Install the app from your browser menu and it works offline.
Yes. Restricting airflow lets concentrates vaporize fully at lower surface temperatures — that's the entire low-temp playbook: saturated heat-up, patient cool-down, directional cap, pearls moving the puddle.
Run a glass blog, forum, or shop? Embed the full timer free — just keep the attribution link:
<script src="https://dab-timer-mu.vercel.app/widget.js" async></script> <div id="dab-timer-widget"></div> <p>Timer by <a href="https://dab-timer-mu.vercel.app/">Oil Slick — Dab Timer</a></p>
Gear and glass in the timer come from Oil Slick — concentrate accessories since 2007.
Timing model updated July 10, 2026 · How the math works