A weird question: I'd like to use only ONE wire (material, type, and possibly diameter) for all of my needs, that is TC mods (DNA40), non-TC mods and mechs. Yeah, I know..
The only logical choice would seem to be SS wire, because of its low TCR and dry-burnability (geez, is that a word?)
The only problem is that SS wire sports a very low resistance, thus for non-TC mods that'd mean either huge coils or extremely low resistance, with which I'm not exactly comfortable on mechs *.
What might be the best tradeoff, among the plethora of SS wires available? 317L? 430? Or possibly some other (dry-burnable) materials?
Note: a higher TCR would indeed provide sort of an initial boost on a mech, quickly followed by a mellower vape when the resistance increases.
Thanks for any suggestions, and feel free to bring me back to sanity if you see any flaws with my reasoning..
* Ideal target for me would be around 0.4-0.5ohm, can probably adapt to live with something around 0.25ohm.
All of my mech batteries can cope with at least 20A continuous, so no worries.
As
@f1vefour said, the resistance of SS is very good - it's the best (highest) of all the wires we talk about here.
So yeah, SS sounds like a good choice for you, given you want low TCR and high resistance. That stated requirement pretty much rules out the NiFes, although they do vape VW very well.
Excluding dual coil, I would say a common lower-end NiFe70 resistance might be 0.16Ω - that is 8 x 3mm wraps of 26G. For NiFe52, that will go up to about 0.30Ω. If you want 24G or dual coils, obviously a lot less.
But the TCRs are high, higher than Titanium. Some people actually do vape Titanium on mechs, because they like that "slanting" vape. But maybe you'd rather not have it? In any case, it will be more extreme with NiFe52 (0.004 vs Titanium's 0.0035) and even more so with NiFe70 (0.005)
And we can't yet comment on the usability of the NiFes on normal-sized spools. I don't know if it will be springy, strong, etc. Based on the thinner NiFe70 I have, it will be a little springy. But I have no idea for NiFe52 - I hope to know in 1-2 weeks.
Use of SS assumes that every one of your TC mods supports TCR adjustment? Or at least, that you're OK with vaping any non-TCR adjusting TC mods in VW mode.
If you do choose SS, then on current experience, SS 304 is the one to go for. Beautiful usability - soft but strong, zero spring, malleable, just lovely. TCR a little higher than 316/317, always above 0.001 in the vaping range: this is a useful attribute for TC given 0.001 is the lower limit on nearly all TCR adjusting mods, and it's only slightly higher so it's not going to be so much more noticeable on your non-TC vapes.
SS 430 is quite new to us. It has a 40% higher TCR, around 0.0014. That will be a benefit to ultimate accuracy, but whether that interferes with your low TCR requirement, I'm not sure.
It has 0% Nickel content, unlike SS 304 (8%) and NiFes (52-70%).
I believe resistance is basically the same as 304, so no difference there.
SS 430 currently has three known downsides:
- It's only known to be available from one vendor: Unkamen in the US
- It's currently only available in one size: 28G
- Based on @Landman 's early experience, it is not quite as nice to use as SS 304; it is springy, perhaps nearly as springy as Titanium.
- Not the end of the world by any means, but it's a nice attribute of SS that is not there.
So it's up to you whether the potential downside in usability, and the limits on availability and sizes, are worth an increased TCR and 0% Nickel (versus 8% in SS304). Given your use case, I would assume higher TCR is probably not such a big deal.
