RDTA steel
This will be what I hope will become a comprehensive list of standard sized RDTAs or “Top Coilers” that employ either steel cabling or rolled mesh or some other extra-capillary feeding system to deliver juice to our cotton. Plan to try some of these out and pair them with a side by side (Have a 2025 edition 80w Paramour by Mechvape, arrived July 10, 2025). Will update this post with my findings and as new devices are released. Feel free to point me in the direction of any I may have missed. Surprisingly there were just as few of these I could find as Boro RDTAs (see my other long form post) - I expected to find many more.
—————————- HAVE —————————-
- Hellvape Helheim S RDTA - A 25mm device with a 5mL capacity. Juice is fed to a single coil via 4 steel cables. This device features a postless deck design with 4 terminals designed so the coil can be wrapped left or right. A metal sheath protects the tank. I like this one particularly for its airflow - bottom and side airflow controlled individually with a ring and top cap respectively. There is also a 30mm version capable of dual coils and fed by 6 cables. Arrived a day early - 07/11/2025. Initial thoughts - this one is billed as a single coil device, but it can easily handle dual coils. And it has a LOT of airflow. For a single coil I find myself constraining the air down to only 20-40% open. And I like a good bit of air. I’m by no means a MTL vaper. Excellent flavor. And a good saturated vape the whole way through the tank. Steel braids are an excellent medium to transport juice. I particularly like the way the bottom airflow is redirected through tubes that also anchor the top cap and keep it anchored in place so the airflow stays in proper placement for the coil.
———- OTHER CABLE FED RDTAS ————
- Thunderhead Creations Artemis Top Coiler 24mm RDTA - Four braided cables feed a single coil. Features a postless clamping deck with two terminals and a single screw to adjust the closure. Single screw! How cool is that? Airflow is designed to come at the coil from below and at an angle. A tool is included to ensure you cut your coil leads to the proper size. It has a 4.5mL juice capacity and a honeycomb cage over the tank protects the glass. I really want one of these RDTAs. Looking for one in a stainless steel finish. They also have a special edition in which the steel cabling has been given a rainbow finish. Fun.
- Damn Vape Nitrous 24mm RDTA - A 24mm RDTA built to accommodate single or dual coils in a 4 terminal postless deck. 4 steel cables. 3ml capacity. A very traditional, old school airflow system with a ring to adjust between 10 airflow holes on either side. No single side airflow option here. Another single airflow ring may have been nice, as was typically customary in a design like this. Great color options although I’m boring and always gravitate toward the SS color way. Timeless.
- Vandy Vape Mato RDTA - features a postless deck atop a 5mL tank in a 24mm diameter caged tank. Honeycomb airflow. 4 steel braids to feed the cotton. Also features a squonk pin… but with a 5mL tank I struggle to see the point in this - that goes for most any RDTA with a squonk pin, tho.
- Wotofo Profile - 25mm 6.2mL caged tank. Versatile deck with options for a mesh coil, a dual coil, or single coil build. And can also convert into a standard RDA without the reservoir below. But when in RDTA mode four steel cables feed your wicks.
- Vapefly Brunhilde 103 RTA - RTA is a misnomer here - it is without a doubt a top coiler RDTA. This one has an 8mL tank and a 25mm diameter. She’s a big’un. They took a velocity style deck and added an airflow inlet so air comes in behind the coils and in front of the coils, as well. I feel like Cthulhu has a similar deck design in one of their RTAs. Caged tank. Suitable for dual coils.
- Vapefly Brunhilde MTL RTA - Features a clamping deck to make an easy install of a single coil to sit astride bottom airflow. I love a clamping deck. Airflow is adjustable with reducers screwed into the airflow inlet below the coil. 5mL tank employs two steel cables to feed the cotton with juice. Thanks @Daniel_Forsyth for contributing this one to this list.
- Taifun BT - Unobtanium - Released in 2017, this is perhaps the earliest example of an RDTA that used braided cable to feed a wick. But this one used mesh for the coil, as well, but did so with a vertical mesh coil and two vertical posts to secure it. The cotton was fed with four braided cables under the cotton and in front of the posts.
- Minoan Mods Ikarus RDTA - This device seems to have taken the Taifun BT cable system of four cables in front of the posts and put a velocity style deck in front of it so that it can only be built on one side of the deck. 8mL capacity and 25mm in diameter. Another big’un!
- Freak Mods Tokamak - One of the few truly MTL devices in the top coiler space with a deck capable of supporting both a single vertical and horizontal coil. 3mL capacity. Very unique.
- Exvape Expromizer TCX RDTA - A 25mm diameter and 7mL tank with 6 steel braids to feed cotton and a mesh oriented build deck that looks capable of also supporting some chunky wire builds. Another big’un.
- Taifun GX - is an RDTA (not to be confused with the Taifun GT, which is an RTA) features a quad terminal deck that can be removed from the lower tank for ease of building. Airflow is adjustable with fiddly inserts that have to each be purchased separately if you wish to tighten the draw, called air disks. Air is directed from beneath the coil at an angle. Two steel braids drive juice to the cotton. It is available in a 4mL and 2mL configuration. The Taifun topcap with the cooling fins is iconic, but for those who prefer otherwise, alternate topcaps are available. Thanks @ripe_plantain for the corrections on this one.
-— OTHER EXTRA CAPILLARY SYSTEMS —-
- Aspire Kumo - Unobtanium - This device does not employ any steel cabling or mesh to carry juice to the cotton. Instead it uses physics. And sorcery. Straight up magic. Wicking sits atop an interior tube that runs up the length of the 3.5mL tank exploding into the shape of a petal just beneath the build deck. Pressure between the tank and the tube are all that’s needed to keep the cotton saturated. Fascinating. Build deck is a two post design suitable for a single coil. Adjustable side airflow hits the coil from the front and two AFC ring styles are included.
- Steampipes Cabeo RDTA - Unobtanium - Developed by the same company Aspire tapped for the tech that makes the Kumo work its magic. The tank and tube system is similar, but with even cleaner aesthetics. And the airflow system is far more interesting with the air intake at the very top of the topcap and redirected through a peek insert that diverts the air to the front and back of the coil. Available in a MTL version/insert kit, as well. If my vape fairy godmother ever shows back up again and offers up one or the other - between this and the Kumo this is the one I’d pick. Thanks to @Toleot on Reddit and @Daniel_Forsyth on ECF for bringing these to my attention.
——— WHAT ABOUT MY OLD RDTAS? ——-
So the Paramour SBS arrived today, July 10, 2025 and the Hellheim S isn’t going to be here for another couple of days. So what’s an impatient vaper to do? Wait? F - no!
The impatient vaper digs through his old stash and pulls out five of his old RDTAs. He looks them over. He sizes them up. He settles on the old Geekvape Avocado.
The impatient vaper rolls up some steel mesh and ploops it down into the wick holes.
The impatient vaper - patiently and with great care - centers a triple fused clappy over the airflow and pulls a strand of shoelace cotton through the coil. He wicks with great care to only let the cotton just touch the tip of the mesh.
The impatient vaper can wait no longer. He snaps the topcap into place and he vapes.
The impatient vaper is contented. And yet… the impatient vaper wonders what other RDTAs will be up to this task and which will work well.
- Geekvape Avocado 24 - when I think back to the quintessential RDTA circa 2016 time, this is the first one that comes to mind. A velocity style deck sits atop a 3mL tank. With a deck like this possibilities abound - it can be built single coil or dual coil (can shove even more coils in there if you like!). Nice thing about Geekvape devices from this period - they typically come with a reducer of sorts where one side of the deck can be plugged with a silicone insert and the bottom airflow redirected to the back of the coil. This is how I chose to set this one up for the purpose of testing it with steel mesh. This way I could pull the silicone insert when I wanted to refill it. The only way to refill the avocado is through the wicking holes, so if both sides were plugged with mesh filling it with juice would have proven difficult. The mesh makes this early top coiler perform better than it ever has previously. The vape is saturated such that every pull is like the first after dripping straight down the drip tip. It is phenomenal.
… more to come in this section hopefully soon. Please feel free to drop a line in the comments with any you may have tried yourself or any that may be good candidates for such research.
————————— DEJA VU ————————
Gather around you cloud chasing nubbins and let uncle yoshi.poshi learn you something. Back in my day…
Okay enough of that. I started vaping about 15 years ago and started building about 2 or 3 years in. Around then it was the tail end of when Genesis Atomizers, as they were called, were a thing. So I didn’t see much of them beyond the one Genny clone (that’s what the cool kids called them, Gennies) - the one clone I bought on Fasttech. Fasttech is what we used to use instead of 3fVape or 2FDeal or whatever China Direct shops are still shipping. It was so long ago I don’t even remember what this device I got was supposed to be a clone of to be honest with you.
Anyway, genny style tanks were built without any cotton. You would take a roll of stainless steel mesh and wrap kanthal wire around it, drop the mesh down into your tank so it stood up straight, and anchor a lead from the top and bottom of your kanthal wrap into your positive and negative post. Positive post was a post and the negative was a screw in the deck. And the wraps would be spaced, too. This was not a cloud chucking style build or anything mind you. Still if you got a dry hit, you remembered it. When I got my first dry hit off one that’s when I quickly forgot about gennies and never looked back. It hurt. It hurt a lot.
Fast forward to 2016 or so. Vaping is experiencing a bit of a renaissance. Vape shops are full of life. New RDAs and Tanks and Mods are coming out every week. The Velocity style deck is really popular. And RDTAs start to come out in a big way. But we’re all just clipping our cotton really long and shoving the ends of our cotton danglers down deep into our tanks. We have to dip and turn and do somersaults to make sure we’re tilting our mods back when we take a pull to keep the juice flowing to our coils. It works, but honestly it isn’t great. Juice flow is the main issue - it’s hard to keep the coil saturated with the distance that juice has to flow up the cotton. Flavor really isn’t as good as an RDA, juice in the tank is mixing with torched juice runoff from the coil, drop your mod and your glass is busted. It’s more convenient than dripping, but there are compromises.
And IMO squonking had far fewer compromises. But that’s a whole other topic.
———————- SQUONKING ———————-
So why not a squonker?
Who said that?
Crickets.
I love a squonker. Squonkers are great! Carry around 8 or 10 or more milliliters of juice, your favorite atty and an all day battery - I really like a 21700 for these. All in a single device. And overall I’ve been very happy with this for years. But here too there are compromises.
Squonkers are just as messy. They leak. Your atty still leaks. The bottle goes bad and it leaks. Juice ends up in your pocket, on your shirt. Juice ends up all over your battery, the door of the mod, all over the board. Have lost a lot of mods that way. Juice gets to the board and eventually it just craps out. And after all that the flavor is not even the same anyway.
The flavor isn’t the same!? What?! That’s -
That’s exactly right. The flavor isn’t the same. There, I said it. Stop clutching your pearls and looking at me like I just kicked your dog. If the squonk vaper is honest with oneself he/she/they/them knows that there is a difference in the flavor of the juice fed up from the squonk bottle vs the flavor dripped over the cotton and coil directly. And it isn’t subtle. It is like two different juices after a while.
The thing about squonking is that you think you’re just feeding the cotton with juice but in reality you’re also feeding the scorched and heated and boiled over juice back into the squonk bottle where it is mixing and mingling and muddying the flavors of your juice in the rubber bottle. Squonking is a two way street. Excess juice is funneled back out of the RDA’s juice reservoir when you stop squeezing the bottle and you hear that quintessential s q u o n k sound. That’s how it got its name, you know.
It’s not a deal breaker. It’s a feature. Without that we wouldn’t call it squonking, we’d just call it leaking. Just leaking. All the time.
It’s backwash plain and simple. Like sharing a bottle of soda with someone who doesn’t know how to take a sip without letting some slip back before they pass the bottle back. The flavor of the soda doesn’t lie. They backwashed!
It’s a compromise is what it is.
Don’t believe me? You love that squonker in your hand right now so much. Take a good long thoughtful pull on it. Let it out. It’s pretty good. Take another. Good? Might could use a cotton change. But it’s all right. And I’m sure it is. Now vape on a bit - just until you think you need another good squeeze, but instead drip a few drops of your juice from the needle tip (used to be dropper bottles were a thing) straight through the top cap. Take a pull.
What the heck was that?
Pretty good huh? That’s what your juice is supposed to taste like, bud! Wild right?
And so we circle back round again to the age old dilemma…
——— I WANT A VAPE LIKE AN RDA ——-
… but not like an RDA.
IMO the most enjoyable vape I have ever found has always been out of a single coil RDA with an exotic build. An Alien. An SFC. A staple variant. A braid. But I’ll rock a plain old Fused Clapton coil any day of the week and be completely happy. But there are compromises to everything. With an RDA there is mess. There is having to drip every few pulls. But there’s also the best and most pure possible flavor you can get from your juice. If I’m sampling a bunch of juices nothing is better. And I’m not in to DIY (mainly because I’m clumsy, disorganized, and have a lot of pets) but if I was I would be testing my recipes with an RDA constantly. I was in a thread the other day and this one guy was waxing poetic about zen and the meditative quality of carrying around an RDA and a bottle of juice with him every day and taking time out just to drip. Sort of a mindfulness activity. Beautiful really. We all could benefit from taking a little time out just to drip. But you know what else he has with him on his desk? An RDTA or a squonker, depending on his mood that day.
————— SO BACK TO DEJA VU —————
So stainless steel mesh. It was here. We got rid of it. Now it’s back. What gives? And why steel cable?
It’s like walking around with steel girders in your juice tank. The thing about steel cabling is that it’s made to flex. It does this because it has a bunch of thinner strands of cable all braided together. These braids create gaps and it’s why the steel can move. There’s a reason they use this stuff to hold up bridges. These gaps also act as capillaries, creating a capillary bridge so to speak between the juice and the cotton.
And yet it is completely disconnected from cotton wicking but for the very tip, just resting atop the steel. Any more than that and you dam up the juice. The cotton just needs to rest on top of the cable. Nothing more.
The cabling or mesh only feeds the cotton with what it needs. There is little to no excess juice left over on the deck to be boiled over. Nothing remains to feed back down to the tank.
Mess is reduced to basically no mess at all. The only time fresh juice comes in to play is when the tank needs to be filled again. There isn’t enough juice left over on the deck to leak out the airflow.
There is no discernible difference between the flavor of the juice fed up the cable vs dripped down through the drip tip. It may be more saturated if you drop a few drops down the drip tip, sure. But only for the first or second pull.
Since I’ve rediscovered RDTAs and combined them with mesh my squonker and RDA have been sitting idle and I’ve had a much more convenient, much less messy, far more flavorful time of things.
Vape on Vapers
~ yoshi.poshi
TLDR: As of July 2025 there are roughly 11 standard sized (22mm-25mm) top coilers that employ braided steel cable or mesh (mostly if not all steel cable, actually at present) to feed cotton wicked coils. Which is essentially an old tech that has since been revived. But I hypothesize a number of other RDTAs that just use cotton danglers can be adapted to benefit from the same tech. I argue that this technology allows for the least compromise in achieving a vape comparable to an RDA without the inconvenience of dripping all day. Yes, even better than squonking.