lets talk clapton coils and heat flux.

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TimeWellWasted

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Apr 11, 2017
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Amongst the items I bought when I started rebuilding on a serpent mini was a spool of 26ga + 30ga clapton wire. As I started reading up on the subject, wrong order I know, I discovered steam engine. Putting in the data for a clapton coil I had build, it said the heatflux per watt should be 1.89 mW/mm² . I recalculated this to get a power suggestion like the coil builder page automatically does, which would be 200/1.89 = 105W.

I came to the conclusion my pico was not up to the task at 75W max and decided to use the kanthal spool that came with my coilmaster V3 set instead. I've used up all my kanthal, discovered my 316L spool is mystery wire I wont dare use, so all I had left this holiday weekend was the clapton. I went with a 4 wrap/2.5mm ID/ 0.61Ohm build with the previous mentioned heatflux/W of 1.89 mW/mm² and a heatcapacity of 137.15 mJ/K.

I had set my device at 40W expecting it would be slow cold vape not even expecting much vapor, you know start low and go from there... The reality however was a very hot huge cloud of 'wet' feeling vapor that had me couching pretty hard. Ive since then tweaked my power setting and I ended up in the low 30's for my preferred smoke.
The first tank still felt 'wet', the vapor must be really saturated or something and the coil tends to pop a lot but its not flooding and leaking into my mouth when I suck. I tweaked it a little on the refill , upped my W's a little and dried out the wick and coil by pressing some paper towel on it. Since then its been a dream smoke tbh, it only pops once in a while now and the clouds feel dryer. These are thick big clouds packed with flavor and I cant seem to get a dry hit no matter how hard I try, which was a big issue for me with micro and macro coils.

What puzzles me though is why the math from steam engine, which was great for standard coils, seems so far off with clapton coils. What am I not understanding here ? How do these puppies tick ? And how do I get more accurate prediction for them using steam?
The heat capacity is almost 300% of my old coil , yet there's practically no change in practical use. I can pick up a cold device, fire it and it will blow thick smoke inside of a second with 33W, which is only 40%'ish increase.
 
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sonicbomb

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Seriously though there's more to getting a good vape than the numbers. I use tools like steam-engine for guidance, but my main guide is my experience and gut instinct. I've had builds/attys that should have been great but were rubbish, conversely I've had setups that shouldn't have worked but produced an inexplicably amazing vape.

The Serpent Mini is a prime example, I've always had entirely unsatisfactory experiences with single coils. A single core 24/36 Clapton in my SM produces a vape so rich and satisfying that it has become my ADV for months now. Why to some extent makes little sense in relation to my other devices, but I don't care I just enjoy it.

The point I'm trying make is that are subtleties in the interaction between atomizer, wicking, juice, coil etc that cannot be accurately predicted, and can only be discovered by educated guess work and lots of experimentation.
 
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