Well check out the list of comparisons I re-posted for Mad Scientist.
What I mean by dry burning is you can fire the coil exactly like Kanthal. Not little careful bursts, but holding fire down @ 30W or more until it glows bright. I do that to clean it between changing juices, and to pre-fire the coil before coming to TC to check it glows inside-out, like we did with Kanthal. That's very useful for micro/contact or near-micro/contact coils. Less vital for spaced, but I still like to do it when possible and sometimes I find glitches I can fix.
I never do that for Titanium, because I've found the slightest too much power and it goes grey or even breaks. I know some do it carefully, such as
@cigatron . But as general advice, I don't consider it dry burnable - certainly not for testing the coil to see it's glowing evenly.
Ni200 has a bunch of disadvantages, headed by its ultra low resistance which limits usable builds, useful wire gauges, inhibits ultimate TC accuracy, and draws more power and thus more battery for a given size of coil.
I would use any of the wires discussed in this thread over Ni200, including Stainless Steel with its limited accuracy - at least on the TCR adjusting mods I have that
can use it.
Titanium is a great wire, I have and still am using it extensively. I've done three Titanium builds just this morning. If the NiFes didn't exist I would continue using it happily.
But I do prefer the small but useful extra benefits the NiFes provide. I like to be able to dry burn whenever I want. I find Titanium quite weak and springy, and - at least in the thinner gauges currently available - NiFe is less so.
The major raft of benefits comes from not using Ni200. After that, we're talking small % differences. I can't and don't claim NiFe is as a big a difference compared to Titanium as Titanium is from Ni200. But nor does it have to be - it is, at least in my view, a bit better, and soon it will be widely available and at the same cost, so why not use it?
The only question mark I suppose is metal safety. As you say, Titanium is known to be inert, but also has an unknown/varying Dioxide risk which theoretically should never happen but might sometimes. Ditto the fire hazard shouldn't happen, but could occasionally. As for NiFe, well I don't know - maybe it's much less safe, maybe it's the same.
Given that we all know so little about wire safety, I am not including that in my discussions - I can't, I have no data. We know a few miscellaneous facts about them all, and no idea the overall picture.
So far I'm considering purely vaping factors alone - how does it vape? And in that, for me, NiFe is coming out a winner. If tomorrow someone does a study and finds risks, that could change everything: but in my (layman's) view it's just as likely they could find that in Titanium, Stainless Steel or any other wire. We just don't know at this stage.
I do however consider a higher maximum temperature to be a plus, so I'm generally happier with the 600°C/1110°F of NiFes versus the ~ 300°C of Ni200 and (I think?) 400°C of Titanium. Not that we should ever be taking Titanium to 400°C, but mishaps such as shorting do happen.
But as I say, we don't really know, it's all speculation.
What I do is test stuff and post the results, and my opinion of that result. It's up to individual vapers to decide if that is of interest to them and act, or not, accordingly.
