Can we get a one source coil and wick theory thread?

[sandt38]

I have been building for just over a month now, and have searched and read about 2 million posts on various builds. What I have come across are a million contradictory theorys of operation. Can we get some long term tinkerers opinions and observations of how coils and wicks effect the final outcome?

I want a fairly generic set of ideas, not a be-all-end-all of "my setup is best", because we are all looking for different outcomes. Some like hot vapor, some cool, some want flavor, some want clouds... so if possible I would like objective rather than subjective opinions.

I would like to know things like; what are the effects of setup's final load? What produces a cooler vape? Can me adjust wick on a low ohm coil to cool the vapor and increase flavor? What does the amount of wick have to do with how wicking, holding partially spent liquid and other positives or negatives achieved by adjusting wick.

Some things that seem to be consistently contradictory to me would be things like:

• more wick touching the coil produces more flavor, while others say it mutes flavor
• lower load coils produce cooler vapor when you limit wick contact with coils and use less wick, others say it is a hot coil so it will vape hotter
• higher ohm coils produce similar wicking results to low ohm coils, while others say lower ohm coils burn more quickly and make wicking more difficult (or perhaps I should say picky)

Some things that would be nice to know are basic design principles like:

• Does keeping the coil closer to the airhole produces more vapor, flavor, throat hit.
• Conversely, how does raising the coil off the deck affect these attributes?
• Does adding wick aid in flavor production?
• How does a 32Ga coil compare to a 26Ga coil at the same load affect flavor, throat hit, and vapor production?
• In the case of RDAs, how does coil hieght, airhole placement, wick placement in the well, wick volume, etc translate to vapor production, throat hit, and flavor?
• In the case of vacuum tanks, how does wick placement relative to the juice channels effect wicking?
• I don't have a genny yet, but what are some basic design principles that I need to consider before purchasing and building one?
• etc

I am aware that different designs are affected in different ways. So perhaps you could keep us informed as to the device or type of device you are discussing the input on in the post to help clarify.

Of course there are many more ideas and opinions out there, so please feel free to offer objective info for those of us trying to perfect our builds through modifications to popular build designs. I don't mind tinkering, but in some cases tearing down an Aqua or Kayfun when half full of fluid is a PITA to do a couple times a day.

 

[Friscoweather]

Nobody? I am also interested in this topic.

Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk

 

[pdib]

OK, so.

Generally speaking, it's about balance. You've got heat energy (wire mass and applied amperage), you've got nicotine and flavoring suspended in e-liquid (strength, throat hit, acidic elements, sweet elements), and you have your admixture of air (volume, speed and direction). You can tweak that balance in many ways to vary the experiment and make it pleasurable to you.

Mechanical and VV/VW do play a role in the heat energy department; and, with mechanical, choice of battery also plays a role. I'll assume, for simplicity of discussion, that we are vaping mechanical, and that we've gone through the trouble of selecting a good quality, safe chemistry battery that can disgorge whatever amperage we can reasonably ask of it.

With mech. you choose the amount of heat energy you want to produce in two ways: wire mass and proximity of wraps. The fatter (low gauge or multiple higher gauge wires) the highway, the more energy the battery can dump, and the more shear heated mass. The shorter the wire, the faster it will heat up. (you're only wanting to create the heat event for 3-8 seconds. you need it to build fast and not linger.) The more densely the loops of the coil are stacked, the more conservation of heat energy you get. (resistance increases with heat, coils together form a little pocket of intense heat rather than "spreading the love" and having it dissipate in the air, e-liquid and metal surrounding). Also, the smaller the diameter of your coil, the more heat intensity you can achieve. (different kind of "proximity" of wraps) Also, with proximity of wraps, diameter, you are focusing that heat energy on a smaller volume of e-liquid. So you can more effectively dial in how you are treating it.

The more heat energy you produce, the more liquid needs to be directly available to translate that heat energy (directly and immediately) to phase change (liquid to vapor). This also goes to hotter or cooler vape. It's a balance. Imagine putting a glowing coil in a bathtub full of e-liquid. Imagine putting one drop of e-liquid on an already glowing coil.

The more heat you produce, with the right amount of e-liquid immediately available for phase change, the more cool air you need to draw across the conversion zone to begin the process of cooling the vapor to a condensing (or just about to condense) cloud. Drawing too much air over your heat/liquid ratio, may produce more cloud; but less flavor. Flavor does seem to be dependent on temperature and "droplet" size (degree of condensation). The volume of air you can draw at the appropriate speed (air speed relates directly to how much air you are adding to the mix . . . .. . if it's going by faster, there's more of it going by . . .. or it's going by more effectively . .. . like wind pulling the heat off your body) is limited by your "mouth draw" capacity. If your air hole (or combined air holes) exceeds ~ 1/16", you'll probably be relying on lung capacity to act as billows (vs mouth draw). So, that's like a gear shift for air flow.

Stuff like proximity of coil to air hole is directly related to how effectively you are using your air supply (direct hit at high speed vs diffuse breeze in the room).

Lastly, it's my observation that air hitting directly center on a horizontal coil gives the most "balanced" flavor profile. Air passing more over the horizontal coil produces mellower, less defined and sweeter vape. And air passing more under the coil enhances acidity, "throat hit" and cuts the sweetness. This, I think, has to do with the fact that heat and vapor both tend to rise. Vertical coil? . . . . whatever, just hit the thing dead on.

Wicking. Most materials don't do both of the two jobs required well. Those are, rapidly transporting e-liquid to the coil, and holding it there. (pulling, and sponging). If a wicking material is a really good puller, it may not have to hold as much at the coil. (like, say, ceramic rope, or ss mesh). Cotton seems to be the best all-around performer (wicking fairly fast and holding/sponging good enough). Silica gets a C- on both. Bottom feeding is really the ideal solution (IMHO). Then, all your wick has to do is "hold" enough juice for one or two big vapes. Easiest job for a wick, is that BF.

 

[pdib]

So, if you've got a tiny little air hole, don't build a lot of heat.

If you've built a lot of heat, invite a lot of air and e-liquid along for the ride.

If you want a lot of heat and don't have fat wire, use multiple lanes of skinny wire or stack those coils tight.

If you like acidity and TH, push your coil up. If you like sweet and mellow, push it down. If you like balanced and mellow, center it or build vertical.

 

[Jjshbetz11]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEoMO0pc7k

 

[mvroman]

OK, so.

Generally speaking, it's about balance. You've got heat energy (wire mass and applied amperage), you've got nicotine and flavoring suspended in e-liquid (strength, throat hit, acidic elements, sweet elements), and you have your admixture of air (volume, speed and direction). You can tweak that balance in many ways to vary the experiment and make it pleasurable to you.

Mechanical and VV/VW do play a role in the heat energy department; and, with mechanical, choice of battery also plays a role. I'll assume, for simplicity of discussion, that we are vaping mechanical, and that we've gone through the trouble of selecting a good quality, safe chemistry battery that can disgorge whatever amperage we can reasonably ask of it.

With mech. you choose the amount of heat energy you want to produce in two ways: wire mass and proximity of wraps. The fatter (low gauge or multiple higher gauge wires) the highway, the more energy the battery can dump, and the more shear heated mass. The shorter the wire, the faster it will heat up. (you're only wanting to create the heat event for 3-8 seconds. you need it to build fast and not linger.) The more densely the loops of the coil are stacked, the more conservation of heat energy you get. (resistance increases with heat, coils together form a little pocket of intense heat rather than "spreading the love" and having it dissipate in the air, e-liquid and metal surrounding). Also, the smaller the diameter of your coil, the more heat intensity you can achieve. (different kind of "proximity" of wraps) Also, with proximity of wraps, diameter, you are focusing that heat energy on a smaller volume of e-liquid. So you can more effectively dial in how you are treating it.

The more heat energy you produce, the more liquid needs to be directly available to translate that heat energy (directly and immediately) to phase change (liquid to vapor). This also goes to hotter or cooler vape. It's a balance. Imagine putting a glowing coil in a bathtub full of e-liquid. Imagine putting one drop of e-liquid on an already glowing coil.

The more heat you produce, with the right amount of e-liquid immediately available for phase change, the more cool air you need to draw across the conversion zone to begin the process of cooling the vapor to a condensing (or just about to condense) cloud. Drawing too much air over your heat/liquid ratio, may produce more cloud; but less flavor. Flavor does seem to be dependent on temperature and "droplet" size (degree of condensation). The volume of air you can draw at the appropriate speed (air speed relates directly to how much air you are adding to the mix . . . .. . if it's going by faster, there's more of it going by . . .. or it's going by more effectively . .. . like wind pulling the heat off your body) is limited by your "mouth draw" capacity. If your air hole (or combined air holes) exceeds ~ 1/16", you'll probably be relying on lung capacity to act as billows (vs mouth draw). So, that's like a gear shift for air flow.

Stuff like proximity of coil to air hole is directly related to how effectively you are using your air supply (direct hit at high speed vs diffuse breeze in the room).

Lastly, it's my observation that air hitting directly center on a horizontal coil gives the most "balanced" flavor profile. Air passing more over the horizontal coil produces mellower, less defined and sweeter vape. And air passing more under the coil enhances acidity, "throat hit" and cuts the sweetness. This, I think, has to do with the fact that heat and vapor both tend to rise. Vertical coil? . . . . whatever, just hit the thing dead on.

Wicking. Most materials don't do both of the two jobs required well. Those are, rapidly transporting e-liquid to the coil, and holding it there. (pulling, and sponging). If a wicking material is a really good puller, it may not have to hold as much at the coil. (like, say, ceramic rope, or ss mesh). Cotton seems to be the best all-around performer (wicking fairly fast and holding/sponging good enough). Silica gets a C- on both. Bottom feeding is really the ideal solution (IMHO). Then, all your wick has to do is "hold" enough juice for one or two big vapes. Easiest job for a wick, is that BF.

I think this is about the best answer you will ever get, although we could really use some less broad answers. For example, how do the wicking properties vary between porous ceramic, cotton, Ss mesh, etc. Also, how much does the heat exchange vary between different guage kanthal as well as ni chrome and then the nr-r-nr wires?

When I think about all of this it takes me more or less into my car building experiences. You need X amount of fuel at Y amount of RPMs when Z amount of air is flowing to equal a perfectly tuned engine. Each engine is different, as is each tank we use in vaping.

Therefore, obviously, each tank will perform at its most efficient state with only one setup, but then you throw in the human variable. Maybe the most efficient state of say my Trident is dual nano coils (10 wraps of 30g kanthal A1 around 28g kanthal wire for both, .5 ohms) with X amount of cotton in the form of a cotton cloud. It produces a warm vape but loads of flavor, but that same setup on a big chamber RDA might not work as well, or maybe you don't like the way it warms up in YOUR trident. Maybe you want a cooler vape or a hotter vape.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

[pdib]

Yeah. I just thought we could start with the general principles, and then sift our way through the details. It becomes difficult (for me, anyway) to discuss specifics without addressing someone's preference. There are SO many factors and each of them, in itself, is almost insignificant without the context of: either preference of vape quality, or the discussion of a single factor when all other's are given.

If it were me; I'd start the conversation with batteries. You're not going to accomplish much up top (atty) if you don't know what you're powering it with. There's only a few batteries out there (just yet) that can deliver all the amperage one may want for a reasonable chunk of the day. (Say, for example, long enough to get you through a day at work.) A battery's Maximum Continuous Discharge rating is an indication of how much Amperage it can continuously dump without stressing the battery. It's also an indication of the battery's internal resistance (can it actually freely give up the energy you want, or is it gonna get bogged down?). The mAh is the amount of energy it can store. How much it can store is irrelevant if it can't release that energy effectively. So, Amp ratings come first, and then the storage capacity is considered in relation to that.

If I have a 2,600 milliAmphour battery (2.6 Amp hours), and it's rated at 3 Amps, it's not gonna do much good in a mech. It might do fine in a VAMO. If I have a battery rated at 20 Amps max cont. discharge, and it has 1,600 mAh storage capacity, you can actually make use of a lot more of that 1.6 Amp hours of stored energy. It's like two pitchers of water. How much water do they hold (mAh)? How big is the spigot (Amps)? It could be the size of a keg; but if it requires an eye dropper to get the liquid out .. . . . not so good. Maybe, just a 2 liter bottle with it's bottle neck will give you more water when you need it, and hold enough water to last as long as you need.

Now that we have sufficient power, we can discuss how we want to apply it.

 

[Jjshbetz11]

Yeah. I just thought we could start with the general principles, and then sift our way through the details. It becomes difficult (for me, anyway) to discuss specifics without addressing someone's preference. There are SO many factors and each of them, in itself, is almost insignificant without the context of: either preference of vape quality, or the discussion of a single factor when all other's are given.

If it were me; I'd start the conversation with batteries. You're not going to accomplish much up top (atty) if you don't know what you're powering it with. There's only a few batteries out there (just yet) that can deliver all the amperage one may want for a reasonable chunk of the day. (Say, for example, long enough to get you through a day at work.) A battery's Maximum Continuous Discharge rating is an indication of how much Amperage it can continuously dump without stressing the battery. It's also an indication of the battery's internal resistance (can it actually freely give up the energy you want, or is it gonna get bogged down?). The mAh is the amount of energy it can store. How much it can store is irrelevant if it can't release that energy effectively. So, Amp ratings come first, and then the storage capacity is considered in relation to that.

If I have a 2,600 milliAmphour battery (2.6 Amp hours), and it's rated at 3 Amps, it's not gonna do much good in a mech. It might do fine in a VAMO. If I have a battery rated at 20 Amps max cont. discharge, and it has 1,600 mAh storage capacity, you can actually make use of a lot more of that 1.6 Amp hours of stored energy. It's like two pitchers of water. How much water do they hold (mAh)? How big is the spigot (Amps)? It could be the size of a keg; but if it requires an eye dropper to get the liquid out .. . . . not so good. Maybe, just a 2 liter bottle with it's bottle neck will give you more water when you need it, and hold enough water to last as long as you need.

Now that we have sufficient power, we can discuss how we want to apply it.

That was the first responce to batteries that actually made me think the person wasn't speaking fron wiki! On a side note, I heard the sony's might not be 30 amp cont. As we were told to believe. Supposedly more should be coming out about this

 

[Kemosabe]

That was the first responce to batteries that actually made me think the person wasn't speaking fron wiki! On a side note, I heard the sony's might not be 30 amp cont. As we were told to believe. Supposedly more should be coming out about this

heres a chart showing the VTC3 being 15A continuous, 30A burst (c-rating 9.5). i knw its not from Sony themselves, but it does touch upon the point you bring up.

Battery mAh & C Rating = amp Calculator

edit: i just noticed that the AW 18490 info is incorrect so who knows how much of the other info is too. :/

 

[emus]

Coil position relative to air flow greatly affects vapor quality.

On small air hole toppers I run coil about 1 mm from air feed in crows flight path. This produces a smooth rich TH.

 

[super_X_drifter]

Just incase y'all aren't familiar with that pdib dude, here's the mods he recently started making:

And here's a vid I made about the mod he made me.

http://youtu.be/bP0iHHz18Kk

The mods kick serious AYuss and are made by a dude that talks the talk and walks the walk

 

[Kemosabe]

woah! i am well versed in the likes of the one and only pdib....but dayum!! i hadnt realized he was crafting up some serious works of art! that mod looks very well done. if i werent broke id be all over that.