TC beyond Ni200: Nickel Purity, Dicodes; Ti, SS, Resistherm NiFe30; Coefficient of Resistance

[soulseek]

So my Ti finally arrived. I've put it in my Dicodes and I can't be more satisfied. Up till now I've made a non-contact coil for TC but I tried a microcoil and it works great. I did the water test and it always went to max 103 celsius. The flavour is the best I've ever gotten from my dripper and my tank (maybe it has to do with the fact that I also switched to Koh Gen Do from Rayon).

 

[TheBloke]

First testing on Resistherm NiFe30

I've made my first NiFe coil and am vaping on it at the moment on my Aqua SE RTA.

It seems to work well. 0.28mm / 29G is a bit of a pain as expected, thicker would be much preferable, but as we know that's unlikely to happen any time soon, if ever. So something I plan to try pretty soon, maybe tomorrow, is twisted.

I did a single coil build: a contact coil of 9 x 3.0mm wraps reading 0.53Ω on the SXK. Real resistance should be 0.60Ω - 0.61Ω according to Steam Engine.

It was pretty easy to coil on the Kuro, and straightforward to adjust - though the thinness did make this a little more fiddly than I would like. It did shift a bit when I was pulling the rayon wick in - the wire being thin enough to move pretty easily.

Overall I would say it handles similarly to Kanthal wire of a similar size/gauge.

Just like SS and Kanthal, it was necessary to dry pulse the coil to get it heating properly. I left the mod in TC but set the watts to 15W for the first pulses. I tweaked it a bit, Kanthal style, and after a few seconds of pulsing @ 15W, TC kicked in as normal. On the first pulses, just as with SS, resistance did not rise properly so it was in effect a non-TC, power-mode fire (hence setting it to 15W for those first pulses.)

I did not try pre-pulsing it to pre-oxidise it in the hope it would work immediately as a contact coil. That didn't work at all with an SS coil but does seem to with Ti, so it is worth a try.

I set the SXK to NP41 for this first coil, based on calculations and then refinements I'll explain in the next post. With NP41 it's vaping well - a nice cloudy vape, decent flavour, and no dry hits during the vape or when draining the tank dry.

Thoughts on Resistherm NiFe30 thus far

I like it, and my first experience is, as expected, much nicer than with Ni200. Had I tried this before Ti and SS, I would be really impressed. But I didn't, and as a result it's merely 'fine', not anything amazing or new in its own right.

Quite possibly I won't stick with it after I finish this spool. It's very early days but so far it doesn't seem dramatically better than SS or Titanium, if it's really better at all.

It has handling benefits over Ti, and there's no need to pre-pulse, but then both are also true of SS. SS is right at the lower limits of accurate TC, but, as Dicodes themselves said, it will be very 'repeatable' - it might take a little longer to find the right settings, but once they are found, they will work every time. NiFe does share the advantage with Ti of being usable on any mod with appropriate temp adjustments.

I will do more Resistherm testing tomorrow and in particular with twisted wire. I'd like to use dual strand most of the time if possible - which would make it handle much better. But then the trouble is that I'm now, for the first time with any wire, counting the cost. €13/10m is bad enough, but €26/10m or €13/5m for twisted begins to feel a little silly!

So there's a lot to consider and testing to be done to compare each to the others. There are plusses and minuses on all the wires. I can see how Resistherm might technically be the best combination of immediate usability with reasonable TCR, but cost and availability is another important factor and there it loses out a lot.

 

[TheBloke]

Calibration of NiFe on the SXK NP scale

As described above, my first NiFe coil was 9 x 3.00mm wraps of 0.28mm/29G, giving an estimated resistance (Steam Engine @ 5.5Ω/m) of 0.60Ω - 0.61Ω but reading 0.53Ω on the SXK chip.

For this coil I set my SXK to NP41, rather higher than the 32 which would be suggested by its 0.0032 TCR (and the assumption that 32 actually is 0.0032, but I am now almost certain that it is.)

I set about calculating the NP value by using the TCR calculator:

• I set the target range as 20° to 226°C (440°F), the TC setting I have on the mod.
• I calculated the resistance rise for a 0.60Ω coil at the real coefficient of 0.0032.
  • I chose 0.60Ω for two reasons:
    • The SXK reading was 0.53Ω, and then I assumed a delta of 0.07Ω on the basis of @balazsk's delta of around 0.10 at this level, counteracted by some static resistance (SR)
      • I have no idea the real SR on this atty (Aqua SE authentic) so I just used 0.03Ω - possibly a bit high in reality.
    • I also checked Steam Engine which calculated the coil as being 0.60Ω - 0.61Ω, depending on exact leg length (using 5.5Ω/m as stated by Dicodes.)
  • This gave me a target resistance of 0.99552Ω
• Then I compared that against the SXK reading of 0.53Ω with progressively higher coefficients.
  • I was checking for the TCR which would, for a 0.53Ω reading, give me the closest value at 20°C->226°C to the value given for that same temp range with a 0.60Ω coil with TCR 0.0032
  • The closest I got to 0.99552Ω was 0.999474Ω, achieved at 0.0043 (a delta of 0.00395Ω, or 0.3%)
• So the coefficients were closest together at 0.0043 = NP43, suggesting this as the target NP value for this coil at the target temp of 226°C / 440°F.

However a setting of NP43 gave some dry hits.

I modified it down to first NP42 which was better, then settled on NP41. That vapes well with an initial wattage of setting of anywhere from 30W - 45W. It fairly quickly cuts the watts to ~ 25W so an initial setting of 45 is in effect a pre-heat, with ongoing vape at 25. But I generally keep it to 30-35W which is where I'd have a Kanthal coil with a resistance of around 0.5Ω.

With NP41 I've had both a satisfying vape, and no dry hits at the end of the tank.

One thing I should note is that this could simply have been because 440°F was too high. It might be that 420°F would be better, and then the NP value calculated might be more appropriate. This highlights some of the complexity of calibrating this - two interdependent values are in play. I chose 440 because I've vaped well at that temp on this atty before, but that could be down to inaccuracies with other wires/builds, and doesn't mean it's necessarily the 'right' setting for this atty.

More experimentation is needed to work out the right NP values. Clearly we need a higher NP setting on the SXK to counteract the low resistance, but it might not necessarily be the exact value given by a calculation, at least depending on the temperature setting. Then again, we shouldn't only play with NP - it's equally possible that a temp setting could be wrong, and that needs to be changed and then NP re-calculated for it.

As you see I did quite some work to calculate the TCR here, exactly in the way @ndb70 suggested - and as he said, it requires a setting for a specific temperature. That's not ideal, but I also think it's not going to be too important. When we use Ni200, the correct value is 60 and we tend to use 70. With Titanium, the correct value is 35 and I tended to use 42 in my early tests (guessed at the time, not calculated.) With Resistherm, the correct value is 32 and I am using 41 on this coil.

So with Resistherm I am setting it 18.75% higher, with Titanium I set it 20% higher, and the default for Ni200 is 16.6% higher.

This gives us a range for guesstimating the temperature - if one adds 16 - 20% to the 'real' value, or in simpler terms, just sets it 6 - 10 higher, one will very likely get close enough for a decent vape with zero effort. Some tuning is desirable and gives better results, but equally one can also tune with temperature, which we're already very used to doing with normal Ni200 TC - atty 1 works best at 380, atty 2 at 420, whatever.

So we can pick a temperature then tune with NP using a calculator as I did above, or we can estimate a sensible NP and then tune with temperature. Both do the same thing in different ways, and both can get close enough to the ballpark to give a nice vape with any wire type, quickly.

But I'm also going to work on a spreadsheet or small piece of software that can calculate all of this for us automatically, making it quick and easy to check and adjust for SR and inaccurate mod ohms reading at varying target temperatures.

 

[TheBloke]

So my Ti finally arrived. I've put it in my Dicodes and I can't be more satisfied. Up till now I've made a non-contact coil for TC but I tried a microcoil and it works great. I did the water test and it always went to max 103 celsius. The flavour is the best I've ever gotten from my dripper and my tank (maybe it has to do with the fact that I also switched to Koh Gen Do from Rayon).

That's great to hear, really glad you're immediately impressed!

Interesting to hear you're going away from Rayon! Most move the other way. Is Koh Gen Do different to Muji? I used Muji for the first three months of my vaping, and now Rayon for the last 2-3 weeks. I'd be very interested to hear your longer term findings and comparisons. What prompted you to move back away from Rayon?

 

[druckle]

That's great to hear, really glad you're immediately impressed!

Interesting to hear you're going away from Rayon! Most move the other way. Is Koh Gen Do different to Muji? I used Muji for the first three months of my vaping, and now Rayon for the last 2-3 weeks. I'd be very interested to hear your longer term findings and comparisons. What prompted you to move back away from Rayon?

I went from Koh Gen Do to Rayon and I'm afraid to go back and try cotton again for fear that it might prove I made a mistake.

 

[druckle]

First testing on Resistherm NiFe30

I've made my first NiFe coil and am vaping on it at the moment on my Aqua SE RTA.

It seems to work well. 0.28mm / 29G is a bit of a pain as expected, thicker would be much preferable, but as we know that's unlikely to happen any time soon, if ever. So something I plan to try pretty soon, maybe tomorrow, is twisted.

I did a single coil build: a contact coil of 9 x 3.0mm wraps reading 0.53Ω on the SXK. Real resistance should be 0.60Ω - 0.61Ω according to Steam Engine.

It was pretty easy to coil on the Kuro, and straightforward to adjust - though the thinness did make this a little more fiddly than I would like. It did shift a bit when I was pulling the rayon wick in - the wire being thin enough to move pretty easily.

Overall I would say it handles similarly to Kanthal wire of a similar size/gauge.

Just like SS and Kanthal, it was necessary to dry pulse the coil to get it heating properly. I left the mod in TC but set the watts to 15W for the first pulses. I tweaked it a bit, Kanthal style, and after a few seconds of pulsing @ 15W, TC kicked in as normal. On the first pulses, just as with SS, resistance did not rise properly so it was in effect a non-TC, power-mode fire (hence setting it to 15W for those first pulses.)

I did not try pre-pulsing it to pre-oxidise it in the hope it would work immediately as a contact coil. That didn't work at all with an SS coil but does seem to with Ti, so it is worth a try.

I set the SXK to NP41 for this first coil, based on calculations and then refinements I'll explain in the next post. With NP41 it's vaping well - a nice cloudy vape, decent flavour, and no dry hits during the vape or when draining the tank dry.

Thoughts on Resistherm NiFe30 thus far

I like it, and my first experience is, as expected, much nicer than with Ni200. Had I tried this before Ti and SS, I would be really impressed. But I didn't, and as a result it's merely 'fine', not anything amazing or new in its own right.

Quite possibly I won't stick with it after I finish this spool. It's very early days but so far it doesn't seem dramatically better than SS or Titanium, if it's really better at all.

It has handling benefits over Ti, and there's no need to pre-pulse, but then both are also true of SS. SS is right at the lower limits of accurate TC, but, as Dicodes themselves said, it will be very 'repeatable' - it might take a little longer to find the right settings, but once they are found, they will work every time. NiFe does share the advantage with Ti of being usable on any mod with appropriate temp adjustments.

I will do more Resistherm testing tomorrow and in particular with twisted wire. I'd like to use dual strand most of the time if possible - which would make it handle much better. But then the trouble is that I'm now, for the first time with any wire, counting the cost. €13/10m is bad enough, but €26/10m or €13/5m for twisted begins to feel a little silly!

So there's a lot to consider and testing to be done to compare each to the others. There are plusses and minuses on all the wires. I can see how Resistherm might technically be the best combination of immediate usability with reasonable TCR, but cost and availability is another important factor and there it loses out a lot.

I love that spreadsheet idea! Kudos!! I hope you get it done before my SXK arrives.

 

[druckle]

So my Ti finally arrived. I've put it in my Dicodes and I can't be more satisfied. Up till now I've made a non-contact coil for TC but I tried a microcoil and it works great. I did the water test and it always went to max 103 celsius. The flavour is the best I've ever gotten from my dripper and my tank (maybe it has to do with the fact that I also switched to Koh Gen Do from Rayon).

and the finger of God came down from the heavens and touched the titanium coil and pronounced it perfection.....And It Was So!
and I will keep the faith forever!!

 

[TheBloke]

The Bloke's TCR Adjustment Calculator - for SXK low resistance, high Static Resistance, and general nerdishly-accurate Temp Control!

Version 1:

Accurate Temp Control via TCR adjustment - Google Sheets​

Instructions:

1. File -> Copy this to your own Drive so you can edit it. Alternatively, File -> Download As -> Excel to use locally.
   1. You will need a Google account to do the former.
2. Only yellow highlighted fields should be edited
   1. The rest are not actually protected, so you can edit anything you want, if you want to.
3. Enter target temperature number with C/F suffix, eg: 215C or 440F.
   1. There is a note to remind you of this format, but it is not actually validated - because =OR() didn't seem to work on Google Spreadsheets in a validation, so I couldn't enforce it. If you do it wrong the sheet will break until it's corrected.
   2. Note that all calculations are done in °C, converted from °F if used.
4. Select your wire type from the Wire Type dropdown, which will look up the correct Resistivity value from a lookup-table on the right hand side.
5. Stating temp can usually be left to 20°C but adjust if necessary.
6. Enter the Ω reading on the mod, and the actual Ω value : use to adjust for low SXK resistance, and/or high Static Resistance on any mod.
7. The best resistivity (closest to actual Ω value at target temp) will be highlighted above the table
   1. You can also scroll through table where the row will be highlighted in green, and you can see surrounding values.
8. New wires can be added by appending them to the Resistivity table on the right. They will then automatically appear in the Wire Type dropdown.

Notes:

1. Pretty self explanatory once you look at the sheet.
2. I have only given View permissions, not edit, as else we'd all be editing the same single sheet - you need to Copy the master sheet to your own Drive and edit there; or Download As Excel and do it locally.
   1. Everything should work OK in Excel locally (but tested only Excel 2013) - remember to click Enable Editing.
   2. At the minimum you will need a version that can support .xlsx documents (but that's Office 2007 onwards so if you don't have that, maybe it's time to upgrade anyway )
3. I've now implemented a "Best Resistivity" indicator in a simple field, which wasn't in the first version I put up a little while ago - so check/copy it again if you happened to view it within 30 mins of it going up.

 

[TheBloke]

Various fixes made to above sheet, finished as of time of this post. If you already copied/downloaded it before this post, do it again.

I'm calling that a wrap on v1 and I'm going to bed

 

[druckle]

The Bloke's TCR Adjustment Calculator - for SXK low resistance, high Static Resistance, and general nerdishly-accurate Temp Control!

Version 1:

Accurate Temp Control via TCR adjustment - Google Sheets​

Instructions:

1. File -> Copy this to your own Drive so you can edit it. Alternatively, File -> Download As -> Excel to use locally.
   1. You will need a Google account to do the former.
2. Only yellow highlighted fields should be edited
   1. The rest are not actually protected, so you can edit anything you want, if you want to.
3. Enter target temperature number with C/F suffix, eg: 215C or 440F.
   1. There is a note to remind you of this format, but it is not actually validated - because =OR() didn't seem to work on Google Spreadsheets in a validation, so I couldn't enforce it. If you do it wrong the sheet will break until it's corrected.
   2. Note that all calculations are done in °C, converted from °F if used.
4. Select your wire type from the Wire Type dropdown, which will look up the correct Resistivity value from a lookup-table on the right hand side.
5. Stating temp can usually be left to 20°C but adjust if necessary.
6. Enter the Ω reading on the mod, and the actual Ω value : use to adjust for low SXK resistance, and/or high Static Resistance on any mod.
7. The best resistivity (closest to actual Ω value at target temp) will be highlighted above the table
   1. You can also scroll through table where the row will be highlighted in green, and you can see surrounding values.
8. New wires can be added by appending them to the Resistivity table on the right. They will then automatically appear in the Wire Type dropdown.

Notes:

1. Pretty self explanatory once you look at the sheet.
2. I have only given View permissions, not edit, as else we'd all be editing the same single sheet - you need to Copy the master sheet to your own Drive and edit there; or Download As Excel and do it locally.
3. I've now implemented a "Best Resistivity" indicator in a simple field, which wasn't in the first version I put up a little while ago - so check/copy it again if you happened to view it within 30 mins of it going up.

VERY NICE INDEED! Thank you Sir.

Duane

 

[dems86]

I've got a couple of spoils of the Dicodes Resistherm NiFe30 stuff on the way to try out on the 2380. I'll be curious to compare to you results Bloke

 

[TheBloke]

I've got a couple of spoils of the Dicodes Resistherm NiFe30 stuff on the way to try out on the 2380. I'll be curious to compare to you results Bloke

Cool. I might well get a Dicodes 2380 soon as well - looking to see what possessions/pets/bits of my soul are available to be sold.

Didn't you get a sample spool with your mod? I thought Dicodes were adding them to all their mods - soulseek and ndb70 both got one, I believe. Or did you use yours already?

With the Dicodes you can just dial in 320 on the TCR scale and it will work better out of the box than the SXK. For max accuracy you'd want to adjust for the real wire resistance versus the read resistance, ie adjust for Static Resistance in you atty. So whereas with the SXK we set the 'actual resistance' as anything up to 0.10 higher, when adjusting for Static Resistance you'd set the 'actual resistance' from 0.01 - 0.04 lower, with -0.03 being the maximum likely value (eg a KF4 has been measured as adding that much static resistance.)

 

[dems86]

Cool. I might well get a Dicodes 2380 soon as well - looking to see what possessions/pets/bits of my soul are available to be sold.

Didn't you get a sample spool with your mod? I thought Dicodes were adding them to all their mods - soulseek and ndb70 both got one, I believe. Or did you use yours already?

With the Dicodes you can just dial in 320 on the TCR scale and it will work better out of the box than the SXK. For max accuracy you'd want to adjust for the real wire resistance versus the read resistance, ie adjust for Static Resistance in you atty. So whereas with the SXK we set the 'actual resistance' as anything up to 0.10 higher, when adjusting for Static Resistance you'd set the 'actual resistance' from 0.01 - 0.04 lower, with -0.03 being the maximum likely value (eg a KF4 has been measured as adding that much static resistance.)

I unfortunately did not get one with mine, for whatever reason.

 

[TheBloke]

OK I wasn't quite done, now I am. I've added a quick reference for the SXK NP setting to use, and the same for the Dicodes TCR. just in case anyone can't convert 0.0043 to '43' and '430' respectively

I wish there was a better way to handle the Google Spreadsheet sharing. If I set it so anyone can edit, then the master can be overwritten by anyone who sees the link. But with it set to me only, you all have to keep re-copying each time I make a change.

Anyone know a better solution for tihs? It would be nice if you went to the spreadsheet and could change unlocked fields in an automatic local copy, without affecting others - or that you could copy your own but have it linked to mine so any changes I make auto-update to yours.

Oh well, not the end of the world, I'll just post when it's changed and people can re-copy/download.

 

[dems86]

So my Ti finally arrived. I've put it in my Dicodes and I can't be more satisfied. Up till now I've made a non-contact coil for TC but I tried a microcoil and it works great. I did the water test and it always went to max 103 celsius. The flavour is the best I've ever gotten from my dripper and my tank (maybe it has to do with the fact that I also switched to Koh Gen Do from Rayon).

Maybe I missed it...what gauge Ti and where did you pick it up?

Also, what resistance were you running on the Dicodes in TC?

 

[TheBloke]

I unfortunately did not get one with mine, for whatever reason.

Where did you order from?

 

[Shogun1024]

@TheBloke does your sxk mod have the resistance lock/new atty prompt when you plug a new atty on? Just got my sxk zero today and it does.... Coincidentally it also runs Ti perfectly at NP 35 and 420 degrees with the dry burn test and reads ohms almost perfectly..... .14 on Zero and .151 on American meters tester

 

[dems86]

Where did you order from?

UKEcig, back when the 2380 first went up on their site (they were literally the only place with stock for 1-2 weeks, lol)

On a French forum I frequent, there were definitely a few there who didn't receive samples from wherever they ordered

 

[TheBloke]

@TheBloke does your sxk mod have the resistance lock/new atty prompt when you plug a new atty on? Just got my sxk zero today and it does.... Coincidentally it also runs Ti perfectly at NP 35 and 420 degrees with the dry burn test and reads ohms almost perfectly..... .14 on Zero and .151 on American meters tester

Woah woah woah, no it does not!

Major news! SXK Zero ordered from where, and when? Oh that is awesome if they fixed the resistance readings. That is the only weak point of the first versions

Shogun, so they ask "New Atomizer Up/ Same Down" like all other DNA40s? That I'm not bothered about either way, in fact I rather liked not having it because it gets in the way more than it helps.

Just to be clear, by resistance lock you mean it asks that question? Not that it has a separate 'atty lock' like later DNA 40s?

@Quantum Mech fingers crossed yours are this new batch as well! In fact if yours have not shipped, if I were you, I would email them right now and demand to know if they have "new atomiser" question. And not ship until they are.

 

[TheBloke]

@Shogun1024 I will add that NP at 35 won't burn cotton in our earlier SXK's either - because a too-low setting limits temp too quickly, rather than not enough. So the symptom of setting ours to 35 is that we don't get enough vapour because it's limiting too early, as opposed to burnt cotton.

However your accurate ohms reading basically answers the point anyway. Just FYI