Wire Rope for Wick?
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I'm getting a quote from here: Unalloyed Commercially Pure (CP) Titanium - Fort Wayne Metals for some grade 1 non lubricated titanium 7x7 in both 1.2mm and 1.5mm diameters. Minimum order is $400 which is fairly rough as an experiment. However, this is the only place I have found that will do a custom order for titanium wire rope.
Wooo!!! Too rich for my blood! I'll stick with my 7x7 SS. I've still yet to try it in anything but my GTUS, but it does actually work. To be honest, I may not have the ideal testing ground though, as the GTUS is setup with the fluid reservoir above the coil for a gravity fed wick. Also, I have found that it seems to heat up very quickly so that it will in fact vape itself dry. In fact, I have had to run it at a lower voltage than I normally would just to keep it from overheating/overwicking. Just food for thought.
In my book, titanium is a good idea and I have looked into it. While slightly more conductive than ss, it can be hard anodized, which should render it nonconductive, like anodized aluminum. One drawback is that it has quite a high contact angle compared to ss and glass, which means that it is relatively hydrophobic compared to these materials, and might not wick well.
The opposite is true, I think. Horizontal wires are "speedbumps" to the juice. They don't let it climb fast, as the juice has to jump over each horizontal wire. It's capillary action holding the juice "up", independent of horizontal wires. Horizontal wires shouldn't affect how high the juice can climb, only how fast it can climb.
Foggybottom, I'd been looking for some info on contact angles and glycerin with respect to other materials...good to know titanium won't work as well.
In other news, I got my 1x19 wire from McMaster tonight. I just worked 14 hrs though, so I'm wiped, I'll have to try it tomorow. Sure looks nice though, the 19 strands means it's very "round" on the outside, not too bumpy....I'm hoping I can get away with wrapping a coil on it directly, skipping the mesh hybrid step.
My info on titanium contact angle pertains to water-titanium only. Couldn't find any regarding titanium-glycerol or titanium-pg. I would expect them however to be greater (worse for wickability) compared to titanium-water, since this holds true for pg and especially vg on glass compared to water - but you never know, the angstrom world can get weird.
Little experiment with a 6"x6" sheet of titanium I have. Deposited 100 microliters of vg on it, a piece of glass and a sheet of aluminum after cleaning them all well with detergent. I used a pipettor to be precise with my volumes. After about 30 minutes, the drop on glass had spread some, the one on titanium maybe a bit, the one on aluminum not at all. Goes along with what I know about water-aluminum contact angle, which is crappy as well. What's worse than a mad scientist? A mad amateur scientist!
What about anodized titanium, since the surface become more porous wouldn't that allow the liquid to spread better? And the titanium composite I was looking at is Ti 6Al-4V which has a higher resistance than normal titanium and stainless steel according to this chart I found: http://www.eddy-current.com/condres.htm
If the titanium can be stranded the same as SS 7x7 wire rope, and anodized to its largest thickness it should provide a good gripping surface for juice to flow up. My first statement still holds true that I knew absolutely nothing of this whole process 48 hours ago and am gripping at the little chunks of information the internet and my brain are feeding me. I wish I could get a materials engineer for a few hours, but the only engineers I know are civil, general, and electrical.
Using these instructions: http://www.instructables.com/id/Anodize-Titanium/ if I can get the titanium rope, I should be able to anodize it myself since I have some pepsi and 9v batteries at home.
If the titanium can be stranded the same as SS 7x7 wire rope, and anodized to its largest thickness it should provide a good gripping surface for juice to flow up. My first statement still holds true that I knew absolutely nothing of this whole process 48 hours ago and am gripping at the little chunks of information the internet and my brain are feeding me. I wish I could get a materials engineer for a few hours, but the only engineers I know are civil, general, and electrical.
Using these instructions: http://www.instructables.com/id/Anodize-Titanium/ if I can get the titanium rope, I should be able to anodize it myself since I have some pepsi and 9v batteries at home.
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I 'NEVER' oxidize SS,nor even juice burn. Oxidizing just makes the wick dirty. Lotta diff ways to make steam but right now flavor,TH & volume is happy,happy,happy. I am going to try that method when my current set up needs changing. It does look promising minus the oxidizing. BTW, I'm using very short SS wick as learned on ECF. Since I hold PV horizontal anyway, The short SS wick, since it is not submersed in liquid prevents reverse wicking into the juice helping keep juice clean & it actually wicks better. I'll fix it when its broke HeHe.
Let the record show that I mentioned this as an idea on here months ago and got shot down by others.
So, uhm, let me know how it turns out
Credit where credit is due LOL. Look @ it this way Plume,you were ahead of the times,a pioneer. The world wasn't ready.
Found a study showing 22 degree hydrophilic UV treated anodized titanium here: Figure 1: A: Mean contact angles (± SD) of H2O on the discs, B: Image of H2O droplet... - Open-i
Sigh, the 1x19 SS rope from mcmaster doesn't wick worth a damn. Really easy to wrap coils around though...
Yep, here's the patent for it.
Medical Implants - Patent application
You have to expose your titanium to UV light of a certain wavelength for 24-48 hours. Changes the surface somehow and increases wettability which aids osseointegration of titanium implants. I actually have a dental implant. Maybe I'll pull it and see if it wicks....
And the "anodized" 22 gauge aluminum wire I bought from a jewelery supply store is completely conductive. Was I mistaken to assume anodized aluminum is non-conductive, or did they false advertise?
Wikipedia says you're right, (I, too, thought anodized aluminum was non-conductive).
Anodizing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Side note: all this talk of contact angles got me thinking, and looking it up it appears 316 SS has a much lower contact angle than 304SS. I wonder if that's why my 304SS 7x19 and 1x19 rope won't wick worth a damn, but my 7x7 316SS rope wick wicks wonderfully?
I got some 1x7 316SS rope wick from Amazon to test next...should arrive Monday. Hoping it has decent wicking like the 7x7 316SS, without the thread running up the middle...
Maybe for the same reason that your original 7x19 didn't wick as well as the 7x7. It must be something to do with the geometry of the spaces between the strands and how that changes with different strand size, because I believe that is where most of the volume of the capillary action is happening, not on the surface of the strands.
Interesting, molybdenum = increased wettability?
Or, you could get yourself a femtosecond laser and change your ss contact angle from 0 to 150 at will...
Control of the wetting properties of an AISI 316L stainless steel surface by femtosecond laser-induced surface modification - Abstract - Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering - IOPscience
Hey, wait a minute, we could use that laser to vaporize our juice!
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