Whew...... 
Got all that so far? Hopefully you have a better understanding of the processes that go on in these remarkable little devices. Let's move on shall we? Let's get to the core of this post, and why you've had to be inundated with all that information.
In the beginning there were mods. Mods were flashlights or just about anything else you can imagine that could be used to power an atomizer. The existing batteries at the time had very small capacities. So with these other devices being utilized it was quickly realized that much larger batteries with higher capacities could be used. Thus "mods" were born.
A mod is really just that... What we these days refer to as a "mechanical mod". A battery and some sort of switch mechanism. This means a FIXED voltage. Now the thing is, with a fixed voltage if I want to produce more watts, and therefore heat, I only have one other variable I can adjust... Resistance.
Soon it was realized that the lower the resistance of the coil, the more wattage was produced, and therefore more heat was released... Meaning a higher heat flux and more juice getting vaporized.
Sub-ohm was born.... As batteries improved and could handle higher and higher currents, lower and lower resistances could be utilized.
This all culminated into the idea that seems to be ingrained in so many's heads to this very day... The lower the resistance, the more vapor I produce. And in the case of a mechanical mod, that's exactly correct.
Early VV and VW devices couldn't handle very much current and/or wattage. So this still held true. If you wanted large clouds of creamy tasty vapor, you needed a mechanical mod with a sub-ohm build.
But more recently there has been a slew of high power regulated mods coming out.
I've recently seen some posts referring to some of the newer regulated devices. Talk of how "stupid" people are going to feel when they get their hands on these things and realize they can't go down to a ridiculously low voltage, or the amp limitations prevent them from running coils of .1 or .2 ohm at full power. Every time I see one of these posts, one half of me laughs and the other half just shakes his head. These people who make such comments just truly don't understand what these devices are all about.
These devices aren't about trying to run a ridiculously low resistance build... They have voltage to spare... They can pump out way more than the 4.2 volts a mech mod is capable of. What does that mean? Well.... Let's remember the above...
It's all about heat flux and surface area... But we know we can "exceed" a certain point where our wicking material just can't keep up with our heat flux. In that case at best we aren't generating vapor as fast as we could, and worst case we get a nasty dry burnt hit full of our burnt wicking material.
Why does that relate? Because in general the lower resistance our build, the less surface area we have. Now, we can work around that, by using a thicker gauge wire. A 24awg build is going to have a lot more coils than a 30awg build given the same resistance..... BUT... what we also have is a lot more metal... Meaning it takes longer to heat up, and also longer to cool down.
Mention a "2 ohm build" to a "cloud chaser" and he'll laugh at you... Because in his mind he imagines this clearomizer type build running a few watts producing almost no vapor at all... That's because in his mind when you talk about a 2 ohm build he's thinking about supplying it with a maximum of 4.2 volts... Which means almost 9 watts...
But suppose you took that same 2 ohm build and ran 9 volts into it? All of a sudden you're kicking out 40 watts of power. And spreading that 40 watts out over a large surface area...
Starting to get the picture?
Let's say we build a .4 ohm build with dual 24awg coils... That's 11 wraps on each coil with a 2mm inner diameter... That's 44 watts on a freshly charged battery with a drop to 27 watts by the time the battery reaches 3.3 volts. (This is NOT accounting for voltage drop in the mod itself) But at 44 watts that's a heat flux of 243mW/mm2.
There are two problems with this build... First, it's going to take a VERY long time to heat up... From the time the switch is thrown till it's ready to vape is going to be a while. That's a lot of metal for 4.2 volts to handle... Likewise, once the switch is thrown back off, it's going to continue to cook juice for a while... It's going to take a good bit for it to cool back down... Which means a lot of excess wasted juice and longer run times meaning lowering of battery life. Second, it's not consistent. Every hit drains the battery and results in a lower voltage. The more hits, the lower the voltage. That means not only is it taking even LONGER to heat up, which means even more battery drain, but not as many watts are going into the coil, so less vapor is being produced with each hit.
Too many times people who build for mech mods try to build the same way for regulated mods. They are different animals. They aren't designed to run the same sorts of builds. It's my belief this is where so much confusion comes in.
But let's say instead we build for a regulated mod. Like the T5 for instance. Now in this case let's say we build a 1.8 ohm build with dual 29awg coils... That's a whooping 19 wraps on each coil at 2mm inner diameter... Now we can run this setup at 8.9 volts to get the same 44 watts we were kicking on a fully charged battery with our mech's .4 build. But what's the difference?
Well... LOTS of difference.... First, since we're using a regulated device that voltage is going to stay at 8.9 volts for the entire ride... From first hit to last it's going to perform exactly the same way... As the battery voltage drops, the boost circuit in the DC to DC will simply draw more current from the battery and "Trade" it for the voltage it needs...
Second, we have less than HALF the heat capacity in the wire... In other words, the lag time from when it's fired to when it's fully heated, and vice versa, when it's stopped and cools down is WAY less than the 24awg build... Because we have less mass to heat and cool.
Third, we have MUCHO surface area... Remember how we learned how important surface area is to vapor production? Well now we've got tons of it... almost 40 wraps worth!
And as for heat flux? We actually have an even higher heat flux on this build at 307mW/mm2... So that larger surface area is being delivered more heat within it than our mech build. As long as our airflow and wick can keep up, we're going to be producing large amounts of vapor...
Starting to see the light? Look, I'm not trashing mech mods here... I have some and use them myself... They are simplistic and small and can give a darn good vape with the right setup... Instead what I'm saying is, the newer regulated devices are being "compared" to these mech's by mech users, and often times being trashed because they can't do .0000001 ohm builds... (some exaggeration inserted.) But these folks just don't realize that that is NOT what they are intended to do. Many of them I don't think even realize WHY they build the sub-ohm builds the run... They don't understand that it's to overcome the limitations their mech mod presents them, and instead think that somehow there's this magical formula that says the lower resistance you can build the better the vape... and that's just bull...
With higher voltages you can build higher resistance builds with much more surface area and good heat flux to produce massive amounts of vapor with absolute consistency. And that my friends is exactly where these high voltage regulated mods shine.
Got all that so far? Hopefully you have a better understanding of the processes that go on in these remarkable little devices. Let's move on shall we? Let's get to the core of this post, and why you've had to be inundated with all that information.
In the beginning there were mods. Mods were flashlights or just about anything else you can imagine that could be used to power an atomizer. The existing batteries at the time had very small capacities. So with these other devices being utilized it was quickly realized that much larger batteries with higher capacities could be used. Thus "mods" were born.
A mod is really just that... What we these days refer to as a "mechanical mod". A battery and some sort of switch mechanism. This means a FIXED voltage. Now the thing is, with a fixed voltage if I want to produce more watts, and therefore heat, I only have one other variable I can adjust... Resistance.
Soon it was realized that the lower the resistance of the coil, the more wattage was produced, and therefore more heat was released... Meaning a higher heat flux and more juice getting vaporized.
Sub-ohm was born.... As batteries improved and could handle higher and higher currents, lower and lower resistances could be utilized.
This all culminated into the idea that seems to be ingrained in so many's heads to this very day... The lower the resistance, the more vapor I produce. And in the case of a mechanical mod, that's exactly correct.
Early VV and VW devices couldn't handle very much current and/or wattage. So this still held true. If you wanted large clouds of creamy tasty vapor, you needed a mechanical mod with a sub-ohm build.
But more recently there has been a slew of high power regulated mods coming out.
I've recently seen some posts referring to some of the newer regulated devices. Talk of how "stupid" people are going to feel when they get their hands on these things and realize they can't go down to a ridiculously low voltage, or the amp limitations prevent them from running coils of .1 or .2 ohm at full power. Every time I see one of these posts, one half of me laughs and the other half just shakes his head. These people who make such comments just truly don't understand what these devices are all about.
These devices aren't about trying to run a ridiculously low resistance build... They have voltage to spare... They can pump out way more than the 4.2 volts a mech mod is capable of. What does that mean? Well.... Let's remember the above...
It's all about heat flux and surface area... But we know we can "exceed" a certain point where our wicking material just can't keep up with our heat flux. In that case at best we aren't generating vapor as fast as we could, and worst case we get a nasty dry burnt hit full of our burnt wicking material.
Why does that relate? Because in general the lower resistance our build, the less surface area we have. Now, we can work around that, by using a thicker gauge wire. A 24awg build is going to have a lot more coils than a 30awg build given the same resistance..... BUT... what we also have is a lot more metal... Meaning it takes longer to heat up, and also longer to cool down.
Mention a "2 ohm build" to a "cloud chaser" and he'll laugh at you... Because in his mind he imagines this clearomizer type build running a few watts producing almost no vapor at all... That's because in his mind when you talk about a 2 ohm build he's thinking about supplying it with a maximum of 4.2 volts... Which means almost 9 watts...
But suppose you took that same 2 ohm build and ran 9 volts into it? All of a sudden you're kicking out 40 watts of power. And spreading that 40 watts out over a large surface area...
Starting to get the picture?
Let's say we build a .4 ohm build with dual 24awg coils... That's 11 wraps on each coil with a 2mm inner diameter... That's 44 watts on a freshly charged battery with a drop to 27 watts by the time the battery reaches 3.3 volts. (This is NOT accounting for voltage drop in the mod itself) But at 44 watts that's a heat flux of 243mW/mm2.
There are two problems with this build... First, it's going to take a VERY long time to heat up... From the time the switch is thrown till it's ready to vape is going to be a while. That's a lot of metal for 4.2 volts to handle... Likewise, once the switch is thrown back off, it's going to continue to cook juice for a while... It's going to take a good bit for it to cool back down... Which means a lot of excess wasted juice and longer run times meaning lowering of battery life. Second, it's not consistent. Every hit drains the battery and results in a lower voltage. The more hits, the lower the voltage. That means not only is it taking even LONGER to heat up, which means even more battery drain, but not as many watts are going into the coil, so less vapor is being produced with each hit.
Too many times people who build for mech mods try to build the same way for regulated mods. They are different animals. They aren't designed to run the same sorts of builds. It's my belief this is where so much confusion comes in.
But let's say instead we build for a regulated mod. Like the T5 for instance. Now in this case let's say we build a 1.8 ohm build with dual 29awg coils... That's a whooping 19 wraps on each coil at 2mm inner diameter... Now we can run this setup at 8.9 volts to get the same 44 watts we were kicking on a fully charged battery with our mech's .4 build. But what's the difference?
Well... LOTS of difference.... First, since we're using a regulated device that voltage is going to stay at 8.9 volts for the entire ride... From first hit to last it's going to perform exactly the same way... As the battery voltage drops, the boost circuit in the DC to DC will simply draw more current from the battery and "Trade" it for the voltage it needs...
Second, we have less than HALF the heat capacity in the wire... In other words, the lag time from when it's fired to when it's fully heated, and vice versa, when it's stopped and cools down is WAY less than the 24awg build... Because we have less mass to heat and cool.
Third, we have MUCHO surface area... Remember how we learned how important surface area is to vapor production? Well now we've got tons of it... almost 40 wraps worth!
And as for heat flux? We actually have an even higher heat flux on this build at 307mW/mm2... So that larger surface area is being delivered more heat within it than our mech build. As long as our airflow and wick can keep up, we're going to be producing large amounts of vapor...
Starting to see the light? Look, I'm not trashing mech mods here... I have some and use them myself... They are simplistic and small and can give a darn good vape with the right setup... Instead what I'm saying is, the newer regulated devices are being "compared" to these mech's by mech users, and often times being trashed because they can't do .0000001 ohm builds... (some exaggeration inserted.) But these folks just don't realize that that is NOT what they are intended to do. Many of them I don't think even realize WHY they build the sub-ohm builds the run... They don't understand that it's to overcome the limitations their mech mod presents them, and instead think that somehow there's this magical formula that says the lower resistance you can build the better the vape... and that's just bull...
With higher voltages you can build higher resistance builds with much more surface area and good heat flux to produce massive amounts of vapor with absolute consistency. And that my friends is exactly where these high voltage regulated mods shine.
