DNA 40, NR, Nickel Builds

[Podunk Steam]

I ended up with a couple In'Ax MkII clones in a trade so I had to give it a try with nickle. Since I was experimenting I went with triple twisted 30 Ni200 from LV. It isn't exactly stellar as far as the taste goes which I think would be better with smaller gauge twisted but it does perform and has reasonably good flavor.

It was likely the temp in the room at the time but I exclaimed "nailed it!" when I set the resistance on the SX350J and it read .065.

Short tugs are possible at 50J but I'm not pushing it because it seems like it would go dry quick. It feels more comfortable around 40J and there's a bit more flavor with a reasonably short drag which I don't think heats the atomizer up as much as longer puffs at lower power settings. This seems strange to me but I have the temp way down at 320F and the power setting is on standard, I can hold the fire button for about three seconds before it gets close to 320F on the display.

I went with the typical 20mmX40mm single piece of mesh that looked to be 500 and I did angle a cut at the bottom hoping for more liquid uptake.
It's a little different anyway.

I just went to fill up and change batteries, bumped the coil just lightly and I'm getting a dry coil message now.

 

[Rikk]

Well, it refined down to .19 which is about right and unfortunately it killed the great vape I was getting :-/ I'm going to try and intentionally build up to .21 and see if I can get it back. The fun never ends

What exactly happened that you no longer enjoy it when it refined down? And .19 is higher than I usually shoot for. I'm always at about .13, 14 and get an awesome vape from that at 17 watts. Are you hitting TP too quickly, is it not producing enough vapor? I'm just curious as to what happened. Well I think I do know what happened, your temp was off before and now it's settled where it should be and it changed the vape. So like what was said above, can't you just increase your power? If you can tell us what happened exactly, we should be able to walk you through it.

Let the build work for you and don't fight it. It sounds like you have a pretty good build.

 

[JasumX]

I've found that when I'm constantly hitting TP the vapor isn't as warm and dense as I like it. Along with that, the throat hit gets harsher than I like it. I can dial the wattage down in that case, but then I lose flavor. I tried upping the temp on that .19 coil to 470, but I was still hitting TP and had to dial it back below 13w to get it below 470. It just want the same. I suppose I could have pushed 500 degrees, but I'm afraid at that point I'm not really protecting myself from nastiness anymore.

I'm not sure what changed or was different for that little bit, but I definitely want to chase that vape. I did replace the coil with a .21 coil (which immediately read correctly) and it's just ok now. About 11.7w around 450 degrees. I have plenty of wire and wick, so I'll keep playing around with it.

This is with mouth to lung hits as well. With lung hits I don't have as many problems with lung hits, but when doing those I tend to draw really hard. My goal for the squape is not to be a sub ohm style tank though I'd really like to use it for flavorful MTL.

 

[Rikk]

I've found that when I'm constantly hitting TP the vapor isn't as warm and dense as I like it. Along with that, the throat hit gets harsher than I like it. I can dial the wattage down in that case, but then I lose flavor. I tried upping the temp on that .19 coil to 470, but I was still hitting TP and had to dial it back below 13w to get it below 470. It just want the same. I suppose I could have pushed 500 degrees, but I'm afraid at that point I'm not really protecting myself from nastiness anymore.

I'm not sure what changed or was different for that little bit, but I definitely want to chase that vape. I did replace the coil with a .21 coil (which immediately read correctly) and it's just ok now. About 11.7w around 450 degrees. I have plenty of wire and wick, so I'll keep playing around with it.

This is with mouth to lung hits as well. With lung hits I don't have as many problems with lung hits, but when doing those I tend to draw really hard. My goal for the squape is not to be a sub ohm style tank though I'd really like to use it for flavorful MTL.

I would love to see what your wick looks like. Have you seen some of the photos of wicking on the squape thread. I use a lot of cotton. My coil ID is 3mm and I use a piece of KGD that is about 6mm wide. I peel off a very thin, and it's thin outer layer and pull it through the coil. I don't compress the cotton at all. I keep it very fluffy. I pull the cotton back and forth a few times inside the coil to work the portion in side the coil. But the outsides are full.

Mine does look like a bowtie. I think having that extra cotton that's full and looks like the bowtie helps feed the coil the extra juice it needs to stay at temp. I easily push 17 watts at it and only start to reach temp at the end of my hit. And I take a pretty long hit. And I'm always MTL.

When I rejuice my tank and look at the cotton, it stills looks like a bowtie and hasn't changed after using it for awhile. I really think the wick is the trick.

@Phone Guy said he tried the bowtie trick a few days ago and he was surprised it worked as well as it did for him. You always here less is more, but in this case I think more is more better

I was going to post a photo but Tapatalk won't let me right now..... Urg. But you should find photos on the squape thread. I'll try to post one on a bit. But remember more it better in this case

 

[Rikk]

The first photo is when I'm changing out my wick and coil. It's a little gross but you can see how much cotton there is and how full and saturated it is, especially off to the sides of the wick. And I'm finding myself using

even more cotton now that's in the 2nd photo. But you get the idea.

 

[JasumX]

Hmmm that looks like more cotton than I'm using. I'll give that a shot. Here's the wick I'm currently using. It definitely flattened out a bit more than yours did.

 

[sunnata]

Came up with this idea yesterday for a vertical build on my veritas, I've been calling it variable spacing. The idea is to have less heat near the top where little airflow is available, and to have more heat near the center of the airflow. will report back how it holds up in a few days.impressed with results so far.

sorry for the terrible pic:

tempered 28ga ni200 + rayon

 

[Rikk]

Yea, maybe a little hard to tell, but it looks like you're using about as much cotton as I am. I really feel like that's the trick with the squape though, using a lot of cotton and keeping it full and fluffy in the channels. It just always seems to work for me.

If you can get a little more cotton in there, without condensing it too much. It certainly shouldn't hurt to try. I've never had the issue of using to much cotton and possibly chocking the wick. So I guess that could happen, it's just never happened to me.

Damn.....so close

 

[Rikk]

Came up with this idea yesterday for a vertical build on my veritas, I've been calling it variable spacing. The idea is to have less heat near the top where little airflow is available, and to have more heat near the center of the airflow. will report back how it holds up in a few days.impressed with results so far.

sorry for the terrible pic:

tempered 28ga ni200 + rayon

Very interesting. Would love to here how it holds up over time.

 

[ATylerRose]

Came up with this idea yesterday for a vertical build on my veritas, I've been calling it variable spacing. The idea is to have less heat near the top where little airflow is available, and to have more heat near the center of the airflow. will report back how it holds up in a few days.impressed with results so far.

sorry for the terrible pic:

tempered 28ga ni200 + rayon

I've built many vertical coil builds on my Veritas and Marquis and always have trouble getting enough wick in them once installed due to the tight fit and angle of trying to feed the rayon though. I use 30g tempered Ni200 wrapped around a 3mm screwdriver on the Veritas and the 4mm ID that came with the Marquis. I'll take any tips out there on how to wick them better. They're pretty good now but I know there must be an easier way?


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[sunnata]

I've built many vertical coil builds on my Veritas and Marquis and always have trouble getting enough wick in them once installed due to the tight fit and angle of trying to feed the rayon though. I use 30g tempered Ni200 wrapped around a 3mm screwdriver on the Veritas and the 4mm ID that came with the Marquis. I'll take any tips out there on how to wick them better. They're pretty good now but I know there must be an easier way?

I always had trouble wicking vertical ni200 builds on my veritas too. Until I tried this method (I believe it was JeremyR on the rayon thread who explained it), of pre-wicking then installing. I haven't tried it with 30, but had good results with tempered 28ga and this method. I wrap the coil as usual (I also use 3mm), remove from rod, hold the coil gently between my fingers, and slowly thread the rayon thru. Spinning/Twisting one side while pulling the other. Sometimes you need to pull back to bring the coil back to it's original shape, but to me it's one of advantages of ni200 being a bit more soft than kanthal. And since we pack so much rayon per wick, the coil is stable enough to hold between your fingers while installing.

Please let me know if this made no sense and I will try to explain it differently. English is not my first language, I get the feeling it might sound weird

 

[ATylerRose]

I always had trouble wicking vertical ni200 builds on my veritas too. Until I tried this method (I believe it was JeremyR on the rayon thread who explained it), of pre-wicking then installing. I haven't tried it with 30, but had good results with tempered 28ga and this method. I wrap the coil as usual (I also use 3mm), remove from rod, hold the coil gently between my fingers, and slowly thread the rayon thru. Spinning/Twisting one side while pulling the other. Sometimes you need to pull back to bring the coil back to it's original shape, but to me it's one of advantages of ni200 being a bit more soft than kanthal. And since we pack so much rayon per wick, the coil is stable enough to hold between your fingers while installing.

Please let me know if this made no sense and I will try to explain it differently. English is not my first language, I get the feeling it might sound weird

I never thought of even trying it that way. I've been trying to wick it installed and well you know how hard that is in a Veritas and the Marquis is the same.....(No Room)...When I saw your pic that's what popped into my mind right away. I will give that a try ASAP and I'll let you know. Thanks so much for the idea. The Marquis is my favorite dripper ever and so easy to build I never even try to re-wick I just rebuild.


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[Rikk]

Hey Jasum - just wondering how it's holding up? Chime in when your back around!

 

[JasumX]

Hi Rikk. I tried a few more builds, but I had to stop for a bit. The harsh vape was starting to give me coughing fits. I've gone back to a gentle 1.8 ohm kanthal build for now while my throat settles down, but I'm not giving up yet!

I now think my problem is definitely somewhere in my coil... The wicking on this kanthal build is identical to what I was doing with nickel and is giving me no problems at all with high vg or 50/50. Could be hot spots maybe? In any case, I'm going to check out stealth vapes and see if I can get some tempered nickel as I know you and others have had great success with it. We'll see if that helps.

Thanks for all the help by the way. It is greatly appreciated! I'll check back when the tempered stuff comes in and let you know how it goes.

 

[Rikk]

Yea, that's too bad. I don't know if I get the harsh vape completely but I know tempered is what saved me. I cram a lot of cotton in my coil and when I used annealed nickel my wraps would move too much and touch and was very unstable

It's hard to explain, but once you use it you noticed the difference.

But even with tempered, there's still a learning curve and it really took me several weeks before I started feeling comfortable using nickel. Once you get your tempered nickel check back.

 

[2legsshrt]

IMO although I am not an expert by any means, tempered wire worked good as far as trying to build the coils you had to build for the DNA but for the SX it's just as easy for me to do one with regular NI200. Of course I am building on a Kanger STM which doesn't require anything fancy.

 

[Rikk]

For me, tempered works so well because the wrapped coils are more stable, the stable coils are much easier to install and secure to the atty. And this is a big plus for me - they're much easier to change wicks between recoiling. I can pull my cotton out, rewick my coil, and the coil still feels and wicks like it's a brand new coil. It sure doesn't look like a new coil tho. Keeping the coil below 450 degrees keeps the coil from turning into that squishy mess I had issues with when I was using annealed. Even just with regular use I could never rewick an annealed nickel coil.

If annealed works then I say use it for sure. But if you're having issues with nickel then I think the best place to start is with the nickel you're using. And then work out from there.

 

[ZaZZy]

Ni200 Clapton
32awg around a 28awg core @0.1 ohms. Ten wraps around a 2.44mm screwdriver
Flavour is awesome in the derringer anyway and even better with a temp controlled clapton.

 

[Phone Guy]

Ni200 Clapton
32awg around a 28awg core @0.1 ohms. Ten wraps around a 2.44mm screwdriver
Flavour is awesome in the derringer anyway and even better with a temp controlled clapton.

View attachment 454774

Is that all ni200? 32g ni200 wrapped around 28g ni200? Annealed or tempered?

I've heard of people wrapper ni200 around kanthal and still being able to have temp control.

 

[ZaZZy]

@Phone Guy it's all ni200 and both wires are annealed.