Advanced E-cig users and oil/wax, how-to "one-hitter-quitter"

[Puffers]

Ya the igo-w is really solid for the price and a good performer, just got a patriot yesterday but it looks well built so far, the chimbus + is supposed to be good and has air flow control, I did retire the trident clone from frying an insulator with one of my first poorly wrapped coils. Also running mine with 1/8 air holes but I would baby step those from 1/16 to see what you prefer.

. The best part about it is when you make the coil your happy with ( which I'm sure isn't unique to the igo) you can easily and gently clean the coil with like a toothbrush, abd rewick it, and it's brand new again... I guess until the wire finally fully degrades, but in my case with dual braided 28g, that may take a long time to happen.

I don't even go that far I just dry burn the crap out of it til my wick is pearly white again. if I get gunk on the coil it self I might brush/chip it off but that's rarely necessary.



Wrapped a new oil coil last nite for the new patriot rda. Dual ribbon wire coils, on one side of the post, smashed flat with doubled over ekowool in a u bend shape. Clocked in at about 1.6 ohms with a 3/4 wrap iirc. Wish I would of wound it a little lower on the ohms though the heat up takes a bit longer then I am used to but works well and is tasty.

Got a sony battery with a 30 amp discharge and my .4 sub ohm is firing better I think the protected Panasonic cell with 10a discharge was being pushed a bit too hard. The cell never felt hot or anything even during dry burns but it couldn't keep up well around .5 ohm or so.

 

[smatchimo55]

for anyone wanting to make a coil brand new, dry burn it without a wick in it, and immediately run it sideways under a faucet of just tap water. dont let the water get too much on your atty/mod of course but hitting the coil with water while super hot (but not firing) will instantly clean it back to new status. stick a new wick in and ur good to go!

edit: dry off any water and then dry burn new wick to get rid of any excess water still on coils or near them

 

[fernand]

Holy moly. I pulled one drag off a little transverse coil in a tiny porcelain cup atop an eGo battery, with the coil smeared with Sour Diesel concentrate. This is a generic little black head for an eGo with the white ceramic cup just there. I think VAPED sells them.

Yeah, those little pen things don't feed worth a drat but smear that coil, and ... Anyway I was trying to hold that one toke down and not explode coughing in that restaurant. Yes, it was wicked. And that one toke did me in.

My wife didn't see me trying to hold that vapor as I'm waddling back from the washroom, but at the table she sure spotted the effects LOL. I guess, with these waxes being like 75% THC or so, all you need is a convenient source of heat. Not much to reclaim ;-) I'm not sure a bigger badder coil would really puff that one deadly hit o' stuff better.

... 6 hours later ... I'm thinkin' whoa! ...

It's ironic that what I've been liking best is concentrate on a little metal wool pad in a FireFly, because it heats it gradually so the taste is gradually revealed, and better.

But in all fairness, I will leave no depth of excess unexplored, so I'm shopping e-bay for glass adapters and building up a couple of nail rigs to compare ... before I come back to motha resistive coils. I think the big blue $14.99 Propane Torch on a Titanium nail has a certain "je ne sais quoi", don't you?

But what I don't get is this. The Vaped "skillet" is too hot. It burns stuff and the vapor is very harsh. What would be better about an even bigger and hotter coil?

AND - in what way is a red hot Titanium nail the "gold standard"? Is it because it's SO hot that stuff has no time to burn? Or is it cooler than a red hot resistive coil?

The yellow Pro rig is like $65, but when friends come over ... or if you're dabbing during a break at the philharmonic.

 

[2clicker]

ok yall i have taken the day off (due to drinking reasons ) and will be purchasing an RDA and supplies from one of the many local ecig shops around me. i will be getting the RDA, wire, and SSmesh (ceramic later) and was wondering before i even head out if someone could tell me the ideal diameter for the coil iteself...? what size screw should i get to wrap these guys?

im getting ready to do a qwet wash and will be getting to the ecig shop while it evaps. any help is apprciated!

 

[kingtut106]

I prefer 2mm diameters for my coils/wicks

 

[DabComa]

I've found tighter wraps great for my e cig , and looser wraps better for my concentrates. For my e cig I wrap on a needle. And for my Igo-w for concentrates I fold over a 2mm wick and wrap it with 28 g kanthal about 6/7 times. The wider the wraps are, the slower I've found that the coil takes to get red hot, so if it heats a bit slower, you don't have to worry about the oil running off the coil, but rather seeps into the wick and then burns. This way I can use it easier to get good hits without burning it all in one shot, or I can if I chose to do a large rip. When it heats slower their is also much less of a chance of blowback from igniting the vapor as well.
I've found after a lot of different coil builds that so far this is the best method for me.

It's much easier to free wrap kanthal than it is nichrome, as in without using a screw driver or something to aid.

 

[fernand]

Xcuse me, this seems like a group here with a bit more sense than the Nail and Budweiser crowd. Can someone tell me what happens on a titanium "nail"?

What temp is the usual "red hot and let it rest a few seconds" nail? I saw one guy swear it was around 100 degrees (F). Obviously it's a bit closer to 1000 than to 100. Do we know more?

And WHAT exactly is the mechanism of vaporization? Does the melted wax/oil instantly boil and not get burned because it's so fast? Or is the Titanium cooler than say a nichrome coil in a e-cig?
Or is it in various mysteries of thermodynamics like Leidenfrost points?

WHY (and HOW?) IS TITANIUM the gold standard for vaping oils/waxes?

Thanks!

p.s. and if "seasoning" with peach preserves strikes anyone as wrong, I'd say any organic matter on a red-hot Ti nail is going to leave a similar deposit of carbon, and nothing more, so the jam seems as good as anything.

 

[kingtut106]

I don't think it is anywhere near 100 or 1000 F. E/D-nails usually keep there coil temps around 700 so the Ti nail is probably around 400-500 depending on heat transfer and how nice of a setup. When someone uses a torch they might bring it around the upper 800s, but normally a person lets it cool down first until it isnt glowing red to dab.

I'm not going to get into the ti vs glass nail argument here haha, but there is no gold standard imo

 

[2clicker]

i finally got around to getting a few things together to take a stab at coil building. i want to get the basics down before i go twisting wires/ribbon and all that so i went with a humble Igo-L (didnt have the Igo-W in stock), some 26ga nichrome (should i use kanthal?) because the guy insisted i use nichrome, some 400 SS mesh, and a cheap little ohms checker.

so i get all this home open everything up. gave the Igo-L a quick iso scrubbing and dried everything off. then i just started wrapping the nichrome on a jewlers screwdriver (about 2-3mm if i had to guess) about 6 times and well it looked good to me. that is when i realized that i really have no idea what im doing and should probably do some good reading on the subject. anyway, so i put the first coil on the ohms checker and it was like .69 i believe. i think i want to be around 1 ohm, but for my first coil i figured it wasnt bad so i was going to attempt to try it. so i put it on mech mod with an efest 18350 and fire it up... well the the contacts that go to the posts lit up, but nothing from the center of the coil. so what causes that? i quickly wrap another coil with only 4 or 5 wraps, same screwdriver and checked its ohms... of which were .54. thinking this was a little low for my tastes, but wanted to see it glow anyway, so onto the mod it goes and it fires up beautifully. from the center and out and pretty damn quickly. at this point i thought ive got this shit and started on another coil. wrapped it about 7 times, same screwdriver again, it gave me a .7somthing ohms reading, but only fired on the sides like the first coil. tried it all again and same results. so some newb questions for yall...

what effects the ohms rating? is it number of wraps, size of wraps, etc?

i noticed the nichrome can fail and actually melt apart if it is not firing from the center. should i be using kanthal instead? is kanthal more durable to dry firing?

how tight should the coil be around the wick? the coil i have working now (2nd one at .54ohms) is fairly tight around the SS mesh rolled up wick.

how should i season or prepare the wick before using? ive seen lots of stuff on the subject, but what are you all using?

by the way i was able to get some pretty gnarly rips from the .54 coil im running now. taste was good, but could def taste a metal taste of some sort. i would love to eliminate that.

 

[fernand]

@2clicker The resistance is a function of the material and its length. Different materials have different conductances. And a fatter wire has more conductance, i.e. less resistance per unit length. Given a nichrome wire so thick, it comes down to length. The windings counts are just a way to express length. You can count windings on a given diameter, or cut a specific length and wind it as best you can.

@kingtut106 , ok, so around 400-800 deg F on Titanium, glass around the same? Of course, some people prefer this or that, but Ti is common. MF says their Mau Deeb heats to 900 deg (in 3 secs). Is a red hot coil of resistance wire hotter than 500 deg F in spots? and of course way cooler on the wick. So is that the issue, the small hot cross-sections, and why they tend to burn the melted liquid at the boundary of the wire, while an even temp on Ti or glass explosively boils it off on the flat surface? This would suggest that maybe rather than a coil we might prefer a fine screen as a heater, like on the Mau Deeb?

I seem to remember that after the Genisis discovery, there were people who figured out how to make the Stainless Steel screen (rolled up as a wick in the Genisis) act as the heater (too).

 

[arrr]

@2clicker be cafeful using a 18350 battery with a coil that low an ohm. I have heard 18350 should not be put under that type of load. I will try to do some reseaech to see what the lowest ohm you should use with 18350.

For now with a .5 ohm coil I would use an 18650 battery if you have that size. AW IMR are highly recommended.

 

[Lo]

You can use low ohm with an 18350 if it's rated properly...ike the AW IMR but it will drain pretty quickly.

Nichrome used to be a standard and now most people have gone to Kanthal - that is what I use.

Resistance depends on gauge of wire, length of wire, etc. After a bit of practice you get to know how many wraps of a specific wire it takes to get the ohms you are looking for.

There are also charts and calculators out there if you search for them in e-cigland.

 

[DabComa]

I've taken electrical engineering... Didn't finish but that's neither here nor there...Lol. one of my teachers gave the class an excellent analogy to almost try and visualize what current and resistance and their correlation for those in the class who just didn't seem to get it. Current is the amount of power or electricity supplied to w.e you happen to be supplying. Resistance is just that. So if one were to imagine the wire being used to carry the current, in our case our e cig coil, one could think of that wire as a bridge that people can cross, where people represent the current.... Still keeping up? So what happens when 500 people try to cross a bridge made for lets say 20 people, at the same time... You got a problem.

By using the people for current and wire for a bridge you can better understand why a thinner wire has a much higher resistance then a thick one, because 4.2v being sent through 32 g wire is not gonna be able to let as much voltage pass through at one time as a 26g would... Similar to how a log 1 ft wide used as a bridge for people to cross the grand canyon would take muuuuch longer to cross 500 people then say , a five lane road bridge (for our analogy people only walk), more people (or current) can find an easy way across.

I've used both nichrome and kanthal, and besides the kanthal being more sturdy/stiff , I wouldn't say that theirs a significant difference in performance IMO. Kanthal can take longer to lose the metal taste off a new coil IME.

Wider wraps require more wire and therefore contain more resistance then say a micro coil, which would be wrapped thinner therefore having a total overall less length dropping the resistance. For example only... A 5mm wrapped 28g 5/6 Could have the same resistance as a 13/14 wrapped on a needle.

I can't comment on SS mesh wicking because I have yet to get my hands on some, bot for silica or cotton you want them snug in the coil, but not so tight that you can't pull them out without messing up your coil, so they can be replaced.

Tight wrapped coils are great for e cigs but not so much for concenctrates. The heat is concentrated in one area and therefore expells the oil from the area fast from high heat, before it can be burned. Wider wrapped coils with slight seperation between wraps not only heat with much more control, but disperse heat into your wicking material much more effeciently, which for the viscosity of materials used, deals with it perfectly.

 

[arrr]

@Lo the people in this thead seem to believe sub ohm with a 18350 is not safe http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/new-members-forum/492638-18350-sub-ohm-4.html

I am going to have to do some more research.

 

[2clicker]

@2clicker be cafeful using a 18350 battery with a coil that low an ohm. I have heard 18350 should not be put under that type of load. I will try to do some reseaech to see what the lowest ohm you should use with 18350.

For now with a .5 ohm coil I would use an 18650 battery if you have that size. AW IMR are highly recommended.

@Lo the people in this thead seem to believe sub ohm with a 18350 is not safe http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/new-members-forum/492638-18350-sub-ohm-4.html

I am going to have to do some more research.

You can use low ohm with an 18350 if it's rated properly...ike the AW IMR but it will drain pretty quickly.

Nichrome used to be a standard and now most people have gone to Kanthal - that is what I use.

Resistance depends on gauge of wire, length of wire, etc. After a bit of practice you get to know how many wraps of a specific wire it takes to get the ohms you are looking for.

There are also charts and calculators out there if you search for them in e-cigland.

my goal is .8-1ohm coils. after toying around some more i wrapped one that is at .89 and working beautifully. the cells are EFest IMR 18350s 3.7v 800mah. pretty common ecig cell i think. ive got some AW 18650s also, but prefer my mods shorter so i like the 18350s. are my 18350s are no good for my goal ohm range? i would prefer to run an 18350 for esthetic reasons, but will look elsewhere if makes sense.

I've taken electrical engineering... Didn't finish but that's neither here nor there...Lol. one of my teachers gave the class an excellent analogy to almost try and visualize what current and resistance and their correlation for those in the class who just didn't seem to get it. Current is the amount of power or electricity supplied to w.e you happen to be supplying. Resistance is just that. So if one were to imagine the wire being used to carry the current, in our case our e cig coil, one could think of that wire as a bridge that people can cross, where people represent the current.... Still keeping up? So what happens when 500 people try to cross a bridge made for lets say 20 people, at the same time... You got a problem.

By using the people for current and wire for a bridge you can better understand why a thinner wire has a much higher resistance then a thick one, because 4.2v being sent through 32 g wire is not gonna be able to let as much voltage pass through at one time as a 26g would... Similar to how a log 1 ft wide used as a bridge for people to cross the grand canyon would take muuuuch longer to cross 500 people then say , a five lane road bridge (for our analogy people only walk), more people (or current) can find an easy way across.

I've used both nichrome and kanthal, and besides the kanthal being more sturdy/stiff , I wouldn't say that theirs a significant difference in performance IMO. Kanthal can take longer to lose the metal taste off a new coil IME.

Wider wraps require more wire and therefore contain more resistance then say a micro coil, which would be wrapped thinner therefore having a total overall less length dropping the resistance. For example only... A 5mm wrapped 28g 5/6 Could have the same resistance as a 13/14 wrapped on a needle.

I can't comment on SS mesh wicking because I have yet to get my hands on some, bot for silica or cotton you want them snug in the coil, but not so tight that you can't pull them out without messing up your coil, so they can be replaced.

Tight wrapped coils are great for e cigs but not so much for concenctrates. The heat is concentrated in one area and therefore expells the oil from the area fast from high heat, before it can be burned. Wider wrapped coils with slight seperation between wraps not only heat with much more control, but disperse heat into your wicking material much more effeciently, which for the viscosity of materials used, deals with it perfectly.

well said. all coming together now.

so why do some coils heat from the outside and some from the inside out? a couple of them i wrapped today only heated up on the outside.

and how long until the subtle metal taste goes away? some hits taste pretty damn good with a slight metal flavor. some totally taste like metal and others are pretty harsh on my throat.

oh and does anyone know the thread size on the screws in the igo series RDAs?

 

[Puffers]

18350 for subohm-it all depends on what the cell can handle for discharge current the new purple efest 18350 is supposed to be able to handle 15a discharge continuous. The draw back is that the lower voltage the cell gets to the more stress it's put under and when you are pushing a cell to the limit of its discharge amp capacity it's more likely to have a failure as it try's to maintain to the discharge current for the coil while the voltage drops. Obviously a 18350 doesn't have the mah capacity that an 18650 will.

If you really really want to go 18350 know your battery spec's, know your coil ohms, carry back up 18350 if needed to swap out so you don't over discharge the cell, and check the batteries with your meter to confirm you are not doing so. Also make sure you give yourself some wiggle room with the cell and discharge spec's IMO to help keep everything safer.

hope that made sense at work right now and just making a quick post to clear that up.

 

[walrus]

@2clicker
I believe the 18350s you are using have an amp limit of 6.4a. If you are vaping a .89 ohm could at 3.7 volts then you are pulling somewhere around 4.2 amps. Under the limit but too close for my liking. If your resistance drops due to shorts/hot spots you could heat up, damage or vent the battery. I understand the appeal of the smaller form factor but personally, I don't use 350s on anything 1 ohm or lower. 18650 batteries have a 10 amp (or higher) limit and they are all I will use in a sub ohm build. Probably just me being overly cautious but I just don't want to risk burning my face off for a toke.

Your coil should glow evenly when dry fired. If only part of it is heating up you may need to fuss with it to get it glowing right. Make sure none of the wraps are overlapping each other or touching the deck/posts. If you can't get it glowing even, scrap it and try again.

I had a metallic taste when I used nichrome as well. I don't get that nickely taste from kanthal, but YMMV.

 

[Haywood]

@2clicker:

Switch to 28 gauge and wrap a few more turns and you should find your resistance in the 1.0Ω range. With 18350s you should probably avoid going below an ohm. Suitably rated 18350s should be safe below that, but won't last very long. That's one of the reasons that e-cig users often use 18490/18500 batteries when they don't want the size/weight of 18650s.

Contrary to DabComa's experience, I have found that Kanthal has less metal taste than Nichrome. Not sure why, but essentially no one in the e-cig world uses Nichrome anymore, just Kanthal.

You don't mention (or I missed it) whether you are wrapping conventional coils with spaces between the wraps, or micro/nano/mini coils where the wraps tend to be touching each other. In any case, you really do want the coil to heat up first in the center and spread to the outside. When this doesn't happen, it's usually because the wrap is touching (shorting) out against an adjacent wrap. If it's a conventional wrap, then you have to alter the spacing of the wraps so they're evenly spaced, and not touching each other. If it's a micro wrap, part of the construction of the coil involves heating the coil and then compressing it with a tweezers or needle-nose pliers while it's still hot to compress the coils so they're touching each other evenly. (Note that you must NOT keep the power applied while you're compressing the coil or you'll short out the atty, unless you happen to have a tweezer with ceramic non-conductive tips).

Also, if you're using a SS wick, you must "condition" it so that it's no longer electrically conductive where the coil touches it. You do this by torching the SS wick before wrapping it with the Kanthal, or by short pulsing (dry firing) the battery until the (insulating) carbon builds up on the SS wick. There are a zillion YouTube videos that show how to do this (and the many ways to do it). If you can't find any, let me know, and I'll try to provide you some links.

Haywood

 

[2clicker]

thanks everyone for the feedback! i will go back to using the 18650s. going to be looking for the shortest mech mod (non telescoping) that will run an 18650 i can find.

ill keep using my 18350s for my ejmix tanks.

 

[Puffers]

thanks everyone for the feedback! i will go back to using the 18650s. going to be looking for the shortest mech mod (non telescoping) that will run an 18650 i can find.

ill keep using my 18350s for my ejmix tanks.

The shortest you will probably find will be a mech mod that can go hybrid meaning there is no 510 top cap connector you can thread a RBA right onto the tube like a Bay City Vapor-XXIX. All copper mech mod this thing is beautiful and with an egg patina or something similar oh man, been wanting one of these for a while but other vape gear is on the the radar. I'll let the pic do the talking...

Gaaaah it's hard to look at, makes my VAS flare up something awful

 

[Lo]

Good info given about batty ratings. I personally stick with 18650's and up but people do use the 18350's....they know the ratings of their batts and they change them often to avoid over discharging - I personally don't see the reward/risk being worthwhile with them. 18650 is a better bet but everyone messing with sub-ohms should know their batteries limitations and know when to swap batteries out. It's a dangerous thing to mess with if you aren't informed - and we seriously do NOT need more stories of people blowing up mods and/or their faces... that would be terrible for the industry.

 

[DabComa]

IME the only time I get heat from the outside first is when I've clamped down too hard on the screw holding the nodes causing one to break and appear to be mounted but is really being held to the post by the tension of the kanthal / coil . Not easily detectable by eye, but when you hook up your "handy dandy" ohm meter, you'll see that if you gently touch the coil the meter reading will fluctuate, meaning poor if no connection, or the opposite, the terminals are not tight enough. You have to find the happy middle ground, especially with kanthal and the igo-w and other RDA's with similar style terminal posts

If you gently touch your coil with your finger, the resistance should not change, or there is a problem with the current set up as described above.

I am now using a 28g 1.8 ohm coil, and I am getting much better flavor profile out of my product and way better control over the heat, now taking about 5-6 seconds to start to glow in the center. So far it's working great, and decreasing the amount of oil consumed per session, which is always a plus, I can now put on about .02-.03 and make it last 8-10 FLAVORFUL hits, much better now IMO.

 

[arrr]

My igo-w is still in China but when I do get it I think I am going to start at 1.5-2.0 ohms and see how that works.

Does anyone know what ohm is safe and won't have to worry about over discharge with 18350. I know all batteries are differerent but a general rule such as anything over 1.2 ohms (this is a guess I did not research this) should be fine with most 18350 batteries.

I only use AW IMR High Drain batteries in my mech mods.

 

[2clicker]

Good info given about batty ratings. I personally stick with 18650's and up but people do use the 18350's....they know the ratings of their batts and they change them often to avoid over discharging - I personally don't see the reward/risk being worthwhile with them. 18650 is a better bet but everyone messing with sub-ohms should know their batteries limitations and know when to swap batteries out. It's a dangerous thing to mess with if you aren't informed - and we seriously do NOT need more stories of people blowing up mods and/or their faces... that would be terrible for the industry.

the only reason i like the 18350s is because i prefer the shorter form factor they provide. i hate the length of my telescopic mods with 18650s in them. far too long IMO.

IME the only time I get heat from the outside first is when I've clamped down too hard on the screw holding the nodes causing one to break and appear to be mounted but is really being held to the post by the tension of the kanthal / coil . Not easily detectable by eye, but when you hook up your "handy dandy" ohm meter, you'll see that if you gently touch the coil the meter reading will fluctuate, meaning poor if no connection, or the opposite, the terminals are not tight enough. You have to find the happy middle ground, especially with kanthal and the igo-w and other RDA's with similar style terminal posts

If you gently touch your coil with your finger, the resistance should not change, or there is a problem with the current set up as described above.

I am now using a 28g 1.8 ohm coil, and I am getting much better flavor profile out of my product and way better control over the heat, now taking about 5-6 seconds to start to glow in the center. So far it's working great, and decreasing the amount of oil consumed per session, which is always a plus, I can now put on about .02-.03 and make it last 8-10 FLAVORFUL hits, much better now IMO.

interesting... i may have to give this a shot tonight. the only reason i wanted lower ohms was to speed up the coils heat time. maybe ill try 1.5-2ohms and see how i like it. if it gives me a more flavorful hit then its well worth it. and if it lets me continue using my 18350s then that is a bonus.

My igo-w is still in China but when I do get it I think I am going to start at 1.5-2.0 ohms and see how that works.

Does anyone know what ohm is safe and won't have to worry about over discharge with 18350. I know all batteries are differerent but a general rule such as anything over 1.2 ohms (this is a guess I did not research this) should be fine with most 18350 batteries.

I only use AW IMR High Drain batteries in my mech mods.

would love to hear more about this as well.

thanks everyone!

 

[SquidgyB]

iirc every battery has a peak ampage that it can handle - it should be stated by the manufacturer somewhere if it's a decent battery (you might have to hunt on the net for stats though).

Then it's just ohms law, using your coil resistance and voltage to determine how much current your coil pulls, and make sure that isn't more than the battery can handle. At least that's how I understand it.

This link looks like it's got a lot of pertinent info though:

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...-discussion-safety-battery-info-warnings.html

e; reading further down that link, that's exactly the one I was looking for while searching - there's a table in there with current limits for common batteries.