General RBA question - Expectations from an RBA

Kanj.nguyen;9232363 said:

Hotspots come from a badly wrapped coil: most likely, in your case, one or more wraps of your coil is biting into the wick way too much. Because of this pressure, the current gets grounded by the wick instead of the negative screw. Hotspots also create the jump in resistance, more specifically it makes resistance drop drastically as you already saw.

The method i used as a newbie to RBAs for my AGA-T+ is this: cut off the tip of a standard q-tip, then stick it in your wick hole. Now capture your wire at the negative screw really tightly, and wrap the rest snugly onto the qtip body, however many wraps you desire, then capture it onto the positive post. Fiddle with the coil to get the wraps nicely and evenly spaced. Now gently twist the qtip out and you have a perfect coil.

Wash your mesh thoroughly with warm water, let dry, then very lightlt torch it (with a bic lighter, if you dont have a torch) to clean it of machine oil and the likes. Roll a tight, solid wick (no center hole) with #400 mesh or better, the size thick enough to snugly fit into the coil you just wrapped (i like to use 70mm wide 45mm tall piece of mesh, rolled across width). Oxidize the end where it touches the coil. Voila. Stick it in there, dry burn and check for hotspots, poke the coil around if there are any. Remember to let the coil cool before each dry burn to get accurate results. Once you get the coil to glow from the center out and glow evenly, you are done.

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