Anything specific i should know about building with SS wire?

Status
Not open for further replies.
I mainly build with SS316L but found the same effect on Kanthal A1. I use SS now because noticeably less metallic taste than Kanthal coils. I get to my juice flavour sweet spot REALLY quickly with SS, within a few puffs - certainly much faster than Kanthal which could take best part of a 6ml tankful. Its a great wire to work with too. Also spaced coils all the way; NO hot-spots and considerably less gunk build up. (SS316L, 26g, 3mm id, 9 wraps, 0.5mm spacing, dual coil @ 0.3ohm combined in Big Baby RBA with Native Wicks cotton minimal wicks @ 47w = flavour NIRVANA, no leaks, 1 week between wick changes and 8 months now on same coil!). Looking to try some 28g or 30g coils for a faster ramp up but more importantly for a quicker cool-down as I can still hear hot juice on the coil after I've stopped sucking, even when I've let go the power before I've stopped sucking. I want to keep using between 8 and 10 wraps, maybe going from 3mm to 3.5mm for my id, but I see when using Steam-Engine that my expected ohms will be 1.6 to 1.8 per coil, giving me 0.8 to 0.9 ohms per dual coil set up. Does anyone have experience of just barely sub-ohming like this? If so - what was it like?
 

r055co

Ultra Member
ECF Veteran
Verified Member
Dec 24, 2015
1,948
5,797
Seattle
0.27 ohm when cold and at the first hit it goes up to 0.30 or 0.31 ohm and it goes back down again when it's cold. does it mean that it is normal in wattage mode the resistance fluctuates like that? the flavor beat kanthal and nichrome by far , love this ss wire but i kinda worried about the resistance changes
Perfectly normal and also an advantage of SS with Mech users like myself. Lower resistance when cold so quicker ramp up but higher resistance when the coils have heated up.

Sent from my HTC 10 using Tapatalk
 

Herrick

Super Member
ECF Veteran
Oct 21, 2016
543
1,010
43
Thing is.. I didn't need to clean or anything, and this was on any of my single coil tanks... just did more wraps, stopped caring about my ohm reading and everything works now with 0.4 to 0.9 coils. Note that the same tanks and mods worked just fine with NI200 regardless of the ohm reading, so it wasn't a contact or tank/base resistance issue.

You're basically confirming what I've been saying... more mass, less error, the mods weren't able to read before, and now they can.

Maybe not the most elegant "solution" that some would want as they need something to prove, but hey, sometime the solution is simpler than we think.

Interesting. I've been having TC problems with SS316L coils on a couple DNA250 mods and on my latest mod which is an Aspire Speeder 200W. These mods read the resistance of my coil about .03 to .04 lower than the ohm meter I use. The vape in TC is always weak even at high temperature settings...over 450F. When I lock the DNA mods at the resistance that shows up in the ohm meter, then TC works great.

I know there are ways to tweak a lot of settings with DNA boards but I have been really lazy and only tried one which didn't work.

So today I did more wraps than usual and put in a new build in the Aspire Speeder. It still read the coil .04 lower than the ohm meter but it's been vaping very nicely in TC and I don't have to crank the temperature past 450F. I haven't had a chance to vape a whole lot today so who knows if it's still working...but if it is, I'm going to try this latest build on my Therion 166 and see how it vapes.

I came in late and didn't read the entire thread, just the last 2 pages.
For me, on Yihi 350x chips, DNA 75/200/250 chips I don't believe I've ever gotten a good TC vape with 316L.
Ni, Ti, SS 430, NiFe52, all great. Tried 316L over time on several mod/tank combos. I've even bought wire from different vendors thinking the wire was to blame.
The 316L always vapes great in power mode but switch to TC and it is anemic.

I could beat myself to death trying to make it work. Or, I could do what I did and move to wire that does work well in TC. For me, that is SS 430 and NiFe52. I kinda had to, my lovely coil assistant has disposed of the 316L.

"Why do you want to try this again?" Um, maybe it'll work on this tank?

I never tried another type of SS before. If I still run into problems, then I'll try SS430.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ShowerHead
IMHO The key issues to removing the anaemia from TC vaping with SS for me were letting EVERYTHING cool down, (i.e. mod and head), before locking initial resistance or even expecting my mod to read what my ohm reader said as SS has such marked variations in resistance depending on its temperature - although I did find I could “cheat the system” a little by using the ohms from my reader as a manual initial resistance setting but this was only effective if my mod was at room temp already. I also found it worth checking the TCR that my mod was giving for SS. All types of SS have different TCR, Steam Engine shows SS316L to be 0.000879 which is obv rounded up to 0.00088. I have seen other mods use diff numbers as their default SS setting and this number was an anaemia factor for me. Sometimes I find TC frustrating as I believe I shouldn’t have to leave my mod and head standing awaiting room temperature for an hour or so like a glass of flipping wine or something! Sometimes I think that TC is a 2 mod option - 1 “cooling” awaiting use and one in use! Mainly I just curb my impatience and impetuousness and let nature take its course, the “reward” being a vape that is both satisfying and delicious - as well as appealing to the tech geek in me, (ooh, look how much the resistance of this material varies when heat’s applied!!!! - LOL). If all the above is merely observations and records of experience the one thing I’d offer as advice is to CLEAN YOUR WIRE BEFORE USING. The muck I have cleaned off wire from a variety of manufacturers and suppliers has made me clean it with a spirit every time as I’m concerned that just burning it off might leave a residue. And the consistently clean taste since doing so seems to only reinforce the importance of doing so. Happy vaping - both in TC & VW modes as only with SS can you do both at will.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users who are viewing this thread