DNA40 – The New Paradigm
Those of you who may have been following my writings probably remember me saying, several times, that resistance just isn’t as important as it used to be. I have been pondering that and trying to figure out a way to explain it better. Then it dawned on me, with this new technology there really is a whole new Paradigm regarding coil optimization.
Brandon kept saying during the beta that temperature should be adjusted to your particular juice, and that wattage equated to vape volume. I finally realized he was right but only if you have adequate juice delivery.
The new paradigm is that it is now all about coil surface area and juice delivery.
(For the sake of this discussion lets assume I have set the DNA at 420 degrees and 40w.)
Lets take Coil Surface Area first.
Since the DNA now controls by temperature, and achieves that temperature regardless of the resistance of the coil (within its specified range) then, assuming you have adequate juice delivery, more coil surface area will equal more vape! The coil resistance is an element, but it is only the “result” of the surface area, the surface area is what will drive the volume of vape.
The theoretical limit would be when you have enough saturated surface area to barley maintain the 420 degrees with the DNA putting out a continuous 40 watts. This is where your juice delivery system will come into play.
Now lets talk about Juice Delivery.
Remember, the DNA now controls by temperature, and the amount of juice presented to your coil has a direct effect on that temperature. In other words, more juice has a cooling effect which the DNA will compensate for with more wattage. Less juice and your coil will get hotter quicker and the DNA will compensate by putting out less wattage. Hence the benefit of no dry hits.
I was observing a coil I made on a S.O.D. dripper. When I first dripped the outside surface (not touching the wick) of the coil would remain wet. This told me the “coil” was fully saturated. As I fired it got to the point where the wick was still wet but the outside of the coil was dry, and as a consequence there was less vapor. This was also associated by a reduction in wattage by the DNA. When I refilled the S.O.D. the wattage went back up again and the coil was wet again.
The moral of this story is: Dont worry about resistance, concentrate on tweaking your surface area to maximize your juice delivery system instead.
©2014 Mike Petro. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Those of you who may have been following my writings probably remember me saying, several times, that resistance just isn’t as important as it used to be. I have been pondering that and trying to figure out a way to explain it better. Then it dawned on me, with this new technology there really is a whole new Paradigm regarding coil optimization.
Brandon kept saying during the beta that temperature should be adjusted to your particular juice, and that wattage equated to vape volume. I finally realized he was right but only if you have adequate juice delivery.
The new paradigm is that it is now all about coil surface area and juice delivery.
(For the sake of this discussion lets assume I have set the DNA at 420 degrees and 40w.)
Lets take Coil Surface Area first.
Since the DNA now controls by temperature, and achieves that temperature regardless of the resistance of the coil (within its specified range) then, assuming you have adequate juice delivery, more coil surface area will equal more vape! The coil resistance is an element, but it is only the “result” of the surface area, the surface area is what will drive the volume of vape.
- Lets say you have a coil that is 5 wraps around a 2mm mandrel and you have a wick that can keep the coil saturated. You fire the DNA and the wattage starts out 40w until it hits 420 degrees a split second later, then the DNA throttles back the wattage to maintain the 420. At this point the wattage starts to hover around 9-13 watts and maintains that for the duration of your hit.
- Now, take that same setup but do 7 wraps instead of 5, thus increasing the surface area by about 29%. Those 7 coils are now being maintained at 420 degrees, and DNA is settling at 12-15 watts to maintain it. Assuming you still kept the coil saturated with juice, you now have 29% more heated surface area, all of it at the same 420 degrees, consequently you are vaporizing more juice.
The theoretical limit would be when you have enough saturated surface area to barley maintain the 420 degrees with the DNA putting out a continuous 40 watts. This is where your juice delivery system will come into play.
Now lets talk about Juice Delivery.
Remember, the DNA now controls by temperature, and the amount of juice presented to your coil has a direct effect on that temperature. In other words, more juice has a cooling effect which the DNA will compensate for with more wattage. Less juice and your coil will get hotter quicker and the DNA will compensate by putting out less wattage. Hence the benefit of no dry hits.
I was observing a coil I made on a S.O.D. dripper. When I first dripped the outside surface (not touching the wick) of the coil would remain wet. This told me the “coil” was fully saturated. As I fired it got to the point where the wick was still wet but the outside of the coil was dry, and as a consequence there was less vapor. This was also associated by a reduction in wattage by the DNA. When I refilled the S.O.D. the wattage went back up again and the coil was wet again.
- So, for a given coil, you will maximize your vapor if you can keep the coil saturated.
- If your juice delivery cant keep the coil saturated the DNA will just throttle back. It wont do any good to double your coil surface area if your juice delivery cant keep up.
- I honestly believe we will find that juice delivery systems will become our next bottleneck. We can easily play with wire gauges and number of wraps (twisted wire, double coils etc) to maximum surface area, but keeping that coil WET as we throw large surface areas at it will be the challenge. New wick materials, or maybe even revisiting some old ones, and innovative tanks that can keep up with the heat load of various surface areas, without flooding, will be the next area we need to focus on.
The moral of this story is: Dont worry about resistance, concentrate on tweaking your surface area to maximize your juice delivery system instead.
©2014 Mike Petro. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
