Vapor Flask V3 DNA40 Clone thread

[TheBloke]

That looks exactly like the first flask I got with the paint or coating on it. Same box, logo on box, font everything. I Can't speak about the board inside, as I never used it (it was kindly and graciously sold to me broken for retrofit purposes).

I'll say this... And it's only my opinion. I think the waidea from focal has a superior feel and finish for about $10 usd more, and that is only my personal opinion. Ymmv.

The finish may be better, but the chip in the SXK is a whole different ball game. It's slightly tarnished by the low resistance reading, but that can be handled (and hopefully will be fixed in future revisions.)

Spring loaded 510; up to 60W; C temps; Coefficient of Resistance adjustment to use non-Ni200 wires better (or at all) and to do more accurate TC adjusting for atty static resistance; no delay from sleep; working lock; down to 0.06Ω (once the low resistance is fixed)

I can't comment on the black (yet - I may know by next week) and maybe there's more of a finish difference there but the finish on my silver is lovely, really nice feel to it. Good buttons too.

Most significantly, I don't think I've used my Waidea once since I got this. Can't be bothered worrying if an atty is going to be a pain screwing down without the spring 510, so when not using the SXK flask I use the ipv4 or one of my new Kangxin Mini VFs which have the Rayn chip at 50W with spring loaded pin and a flashlight; single battery.

I enjoyed my Waidea, it was a good third mod. But I'd never buy another now. If the SXK black finish turns out to be bad I'd just limit myself to silver.

 

[TheBloke]

I did remove to top plate but it was put on securly.
I pulled it back off and lightly sanded the top of the box and the top plates underside. Also cleaned up the beveled part of the screw holes.
All is golden now, vaping at 60 watts (for the moment)
(sound familiar???)

Dear oh dear! So maybe it's the same silliness. Well at least I won the ground lottery this time - so far at least - as so far mine has been perfect, right down to 3.2V. When you took the top off did it look to you like there was no proper ground, or was it not possible to tell from the amount you saw?

 

[dwcraig1]

Dear oh dear! So maybe it's the same silliness. Well at least I won the ground lottery this time - so far at least - as so far mine has been perfect, right down to 3.2V. When you took the top off did it look to you like there was no proper ground, or was it not possible to tell from the amount you saw?

I couldn't see but I now know it's only the one ground as the screen cut out when I loosened just two of the four screws.

 

[TheBloke]

I couldn't see but I now know it's only the one.

Sorry I don't follow - only the one what?

 

[dwcraig1]

Maybe too early to tell for sure but it appears I'm turning into an Evolv fanboy...LOL

 

[dwcraig1]

Sorry I don't follow - only the one what?

Only one ground point.
The board and the 510 share it.

 

[TheBloke]

Hopefully you just got unlucky. It's still early days for the flasks, but I do know of four confirmed owners and only you reporting any power issues thus far. No complaints on the FT forums either which must cover at least another 5 people who have posted they got one and it was working OK - though the tide of posts was terminated rather prematurely of course.

And many confirmed owners (10+ units at least) of the other SXK mods - rDNAs and Zeroes - who haven't had issue either. Though they could have completely different grounding I suppose.

 

[TheBloke]

These resistance readings are really confusing. Most people confirm they're too low, including @dwcraig1 today with his "batch 2" Flask. But then some people, including @seanol with his batch2 flask, are finding the readings are fine. Eg 0.09 on the VF compared to 0.10 on an ohm reader.

Maybe SXK will get back to me today.

 

[dwcraig1]

These resistance readings are really confusing. Most people confirm they're too low, including @dwcraig1 today with his "batch 2" Flask. But then some people, including @seanol with his batch2 flask, are finding the readings are fine. Eg 0.09 on the VF compared to 0.10 on an ohm reader.

Maybe SXK will get back to me today.

I'd settle for a small difference but....well not a big one.
(it is consistent though) I've taken the atty on and off a dozen time and it always reads the same.
Also it didn't help that the atty I was using on it was almost bone dry, it was in the end. DUH

 

[JAlexander]

So i have been following the Vapor Flask V3 DNA40 Clone thread or some time now, awaiting the day my SXK VF would come in so as to comment on the thread. First posted this in the new member section and now here.

Just came in. it is great with a few quirks, the issues i am having seem to be the same as many others like @TheBloke have been documenting so well.

I believe this is the 2nd run SXK VF, @TheBloke can you confirm?

Box

Phillips head screws

Instructions

Spring Loaded 510 pin

Battery Caps Do not line up when fully screwed in, but my screen also cut out when i did screw the cap all the way in on the battery beneath the screen

I unscrewed it just a little bit and now it protrudes just a hair, but is still secure and lines up now

First impressions about the finish are great. It is not a finger print magnet. The finish is a mate black, seems anodized. After ordering the black i became worried about the threads and the battery fit. No such issues for me, batteries slide in and out easily. The batteries caps screw on very easily for me, no need to push too hard or anything like some others have reported.

It does ask me if it is a new or the same coil.

As you can see my ohm reading seems a bit off. The ohm meter below is brand new also from FT. Not sure exactly how accurate it is. From the picture below though it seems like about .07 low

This is the device with the Kanger SubTank Mini with a .5 ohh OCC

again seems about .07-.08 off

Just wanted to share some of my experience with this device. Will continue to update as i spend more tine with the device.

I don't have an Ni wire yet but will be picking some up soon.

Let me know if anyone has any more questions and i will try to help. Really excited about having my first TC device!

 

[Matty316]

OK cool. Try that out, hopefully it'll both be a good vape and prevent dry hits.

It's really frustrating this problem - the chip itself is superb, it has a feature found only in this ~$50 mod chip, and $300+ Dicodes mods. But it's been really hampered by this stupid low resistance. I don't get why it has this problem. We really thought it might be fixed int he 'batch 2' with New Atomizer question because one guy with an rDNA 40 is seeing resistances read correctly. But everyone else is not, and you're seeing the same sort of high-ohm delta that we measured on the batch 1.

The higher the ohms of the wire, the more it reads too low. However that also means it has less effect on the TC - so using Ttianium and Stainless Steel and Resistherm, where coils are in the 0.30-0.60 range usually require less severe NP adjustments than the +32 you're needing with Ni200 (NP62 is the actual correct value for Ni200 - they defaulted to 70 to try and counteract the low resistance read I believe.)

I'm thinkng about returning mine. It also has the low resistance reading problem its from batch 2. The low resistance reading gets worse the higher the ohms. An ni200 coil at .16 ohm reads .10 on mine and i just tested a 1.56 ohm kanthal coil and the reading came in at 1.37 ohm.

 

[TheotherSteveS]

my 'maual' for the VF is essentially identical to JAlexnader's save the Flask vs Shark image on the batt paeg. Theye are the same manufacturer clearly..

 

[TheBloke]

@JAlexander yup that's what I call the "Batch 2", with the addition of the 'New coil' message but still the same resistance problems. When I first heard of 'batch2' it was from someone who could not detect any lower resistance. But given every single other person has detected it, I suppose either he somehow got very lucky, or more likely he's get compensating inaccuracies in his reference measurements. He only provided a couple of measurements anyway, not enough to be sure.

If you want to get maximum TC accuracy you can use Nickel Purity to compensate for the low resistance using my Nickel Purity / Static Resistance calculator

Poor base resistance readings unfortunately have a very large effect on TC accuracy, because the calculation the mod does to measure the temperature from resistance has starting resistance as a factor. So if starting resistance is wrong, every temp reading the mod makes is also wrong. We can counteract this with Nickel Purity by telling it to use a different Temperature Coefficient of Resistance value such that the calculations become correct at the target temperature.

This perhaps makes it not an ideal first TC device for standard Ni20 builds - especially as the device is most incorrect at lower resistances: eg a coil that is 0.10Ω will be read as 0.06Ω which is a whopping 40% inaccuracy. Compared to a coil of 0.42 which it will read as 0.35, an inaccuracy of 16% - which is pretty standard across the whole range from there on up. Its always about 16% inaccurate except at the lowest resistances, because for some reason it's never less than 0.04 out.

As long as you adjust NP according to the calculator, you will get an accurate TC vape. You'll just end up adjusting via NP more than adjusting via temperature as most people do on TC vapes.

Anyway $50-60 dual battery 60W flask device is still superb. And it's even more superb if you get into better TC wires like Stainless Steel or Titanium.

 

[TheBloke]

I'm thinkng about returning mine. It also has the low resistance reading problem its from batch 2. The low resistance reading gets worse the higher the ohms. An ni200 coil at .16 ohm reads .10 on mine and i just tested a 1.56 ohm kanthal coil and the reading came in at 1.37 ohm.

Yeah that matches our experiences, here's a full table of resistance readings made against a highly accurate micro-ohms reader by @balazsk :

Real Ω | SXK RΩ | Differ | Diff %
1.78 Ω | 1.53 Ω | 0.25 Ω | 13.8%
1.27 Ω | 1.07 Ω | 0.20 Ω | 15.7%
1.08 Ω | 0.92 Ω | 0.16 Ω | 14.8%
0.90 Ω | 0.75 Ω | 0.15 Ω | 16.7%
0.60 Ω | 0.50 Ω | 0.10 Ω | 16.7%
0.42 Ω | 0.35 Ω | 0.07 Ω | 16.7%
0.30 Ω | 0.24 Ω | 0.06 Ω | 20.5%
0.20 Ω | 0.14 Ω | 0.06 Ω | 28.6%
0.16 Ω | 0.12 Ω | 0.04 Ω | 25.9%
0.10 Ω | 0.06 Ω | 0.04 Ω | 40.0%

I emailed a guy at SXK last night and gave him the full detail of these problems. If he replies - or even if he doesn't - I will link him to your post and to any others I can find of people saying the resistance problems are causing them to want to return this mod, or not like it or whatever.

@dwcraig1 how are you feeling about it now, in the cold light of your second day?

 

[dwcraig1]

This morning I'm comparing voltage readings taken off the posts of a dripper atty on my SXK VF and an Evolv powered board. What I seem to have stumbled upon is the resistance on the SXK when not firing doesn't seem to affect the voltage that the board puts to the atty when fired. One would think that given the much lower resistance reading on the SXK that it would output accordingly but my tests show the voltage at almost the same. This test was done with a coil that read 0.09Ω on the Evolv board and 0.05Ω on the SXK (BTW 0.05Ω on the SXK display is where is low atty message appears.
I did another similiar test with a dual coiled Nichrome dripper @ 60 watts, SXK say 4.35 volts, meter on post says 4.27 volts.
SXK says atty is 2.9Ω, Evolv board says atty is 3.6Ω. That's 65 watts using displayed figures and 50.6 watts using the volt meters figures.
Edit/addition: In the test with the ni200 things looked pretty good.
On the 2nd with dual coil nichrome it could have been better but not too bad either. There's always some loss at the atty.

 

[dwcraig1]

I'm pretty good with it, it passed the take it to work and vape it all night test.

 

[TheBloke]

This morning I'm comparing voltage readings taken off the posts of a dripper atty on my SXK VF and an Evolv powered board. What I seem to have stumbled upon is the resistance on the SXK when not firing doesn't seem to affect the voltage that the board puts to the atty when fired. One would think that given the much lower resistance reading on the SXK that it would output accordingly but my tests show the voltage at almost the same. This test was done with a coil that read 0.09Ω on the Evolv board and 0.05Ω on the SXK (BTW 0.05Ω on the SXK display is where is low atty message appears.
I did another similiar test with a dual coiled Nichrome dripper @ 60 watts, SXK say 4.35 volts, meter on post says 4.27 volts.
SXK says atty is 2.9Ω, Evolv board says atty is 3.6Ω. That's 65 watts using displayed figures and 50.6 watts using the volt meters figures.

So you think it's outputting the voltage for the correct resistance, despite displaying a wrong resistance? So it could be just the display that's wrong? But then we know it's more than the display, because the TC is definitely inaccurate. So at the least it's using a wrong resistance figure for display, and for the TC calculation - which is what matters most. But then maybe it's sending the right voltage for the real resistance. Maybe there are two parts of the board that take a resistance measurement, one for power and one for TC?

Stranger and stranger. Thanks- the more measurements and info we can get the better.

I did think about measuring output power using my DMM but it's max 10A so I'd have to be careful not to exceed that.

When you have a minute could you post a picture of your test setup?

 

[dwcraig1]

What does the 10 amp limit have to with measuring voltage? Now if you were measuring amperage it would be a different story.
Test setup? Just probing the screw heads of the posts on a dripper with a volt meter and firing it.

 

[dwcraig1]

I suppose I should put in a single VTC3 so I can run it done to see if the "warming alarm" goes off (their typo not mine)

 

[TheBloke]

What does the 10 amp limit have to with measuring voltage? Now if you were measuring amperage it be a different story.
Test setup? Just probing the screw heads of the posts on a dripper with a volt meter and firing it.

What it has to do with is my not really understanding how any of this works

When a mod fires 4V into a 0.5ohm coil that pulls 8A. So I thought that would mean if I do what you described, and probe the screws and then fire, 8A is going to go into the DMM? (At least if the resistance on the leads if 0.5Ω anyway) Hence I have to be under the max amp limit of the leads and the DMM itself?

So that's not true unless I'm measuring amperage? I can fire any volts into the DMM?

is it that I'm wrong about where that 8A is going? Is it even going into the coil/DMM? Maybe the 8A only applies to what comes out of the battery, not goes into the coil.

As I said, I don't really have a firm grasp on this stuff as yet