Wall-O-Text warning.
Let me just go ahead and get all the small stuff out of the way:
Equipment
smok ZMAX Telescoping mod
Anyvape Davide BDC tanks - Aspire BDC
Supplies - LightningVapes
Kanthal A1 Resistance Wire - 32GA (0.2032 mm) 13.1 Ohms/ft Resistance AWG A1
High Quality Silica Wick - 2mm
503 Pen Style Butane Jet Torch and Lighter
Cartomizer and Atomizer Ohm Meter
Tutorial video - Rip Trippers
Rebuilding The Aspire BDC
History
I got all this stuff in hopes to save some money from buying replacement coils. I already have another thread on failures at cleaning these things. I honestly thought this was going to be a straight-forward process after watching the video. The stock tanks come with a 1.8ohm & a 2.2ohm bottom dual coil. I have either burnt up, or ruined through trying to dry-burn cleaning, all of my 2.2ohm coils and am currently using my 1.8ohm that came extra with the tanks. In the video he doesn't torch his coils either, and recommends not to dry burn as the insulator will cause a plastic hit that is difficult to get out.
Something else to point out is on the stock coils the top one has thin insulator pieces on the legs, which is supposed to prevent the top legs from touching the wraps of the bottom coil...he does not reuse these pieces in the video, but I did on all of the following builds.
My aim was to rebuild these coils to be 2.1 ohm. When I first got my mod and tanks the guy recommended to use the 2.1ohm coils "because people like them better". Hitting at 5.0volts was working good for my setup. Now I'm using my 1.8ohm coils, and hitting with 3.5 - 4.0volts and I cannot really tell a huge difference.
On to the building
So I built my first coil as he does in the video. I'm supposed to get around 1.4ohm like he does, but my ohm meter is reading out at 1.04. Also, the number of wraps on the stock coils is 10 (10/9), not 6 (6/5) like he does in the video...SteamEngine says to get a 2.1ohm coil that I am supposed to use a 6/5 wrap on a dual-coil parallel setup. No torching has been done, and will likely be redoing this one. I should note that the wraps look like crap, as they are nowhere near circular, and crooked as heck trying to hold the wick and needle while wrapping.
My second coil I did 10 wraps (10/9) using the same "wrap around silica wick and needle" process. I'm getting 1.82ohm with that one. No torching here either, and the wraps still look like crap.
My third and fourth coils I did a little different. My "tight wraps" are likely going to be different than his in the video, so I wrapped (10/9) around a 5/64" drill bit (1.97mm dia). I finally put my magnifying soldering helper I picked up at RadioShack 2 years ago for $20 to some good use for this. I torched these coils, then pinched to make them tighter grouped. Then I amazingly was able to thread the wick through, untwist it out so it doesn't slide out. Now I am getting 2.05ohm readout on both of these.
Leg Length/Wire Thickness/Touching Coils - Discrepancies
If you've watched the video you can see how the length of the legs varies between each stock coil, and subsequently on each rebuilt one due to how it is assembled. Once it is assembled the excess legs are cutoff as close to the contact points as possible. Just on one of the stock coils I have measured (with digital caliper) from the coil to the start of the curvature (contact point) for each leg:
Top coil (~8.74mm - ~10.05mm)
Bottom coil (~6.82mm - ~5.86mm)
I have gotten various length measurements between all of the stock coil legs I have measured, which makes it difficult to use SteamEngine to determine the proper ohm's for each coil. But if you will read the building section above, the number of wraps that I must do to achieve a certain ohm level are drastically different than what is suggested in the video or by using SteamEngine.
I have used my digital caliper to measure the diameter of the wire in various places. The advertised diameter of what I ordered is 0.2032mm. However, I have gotten readings of 0.19mm - 0.21mm on various locations. There are several things that affect this gauge of the wire, including how it is wrapped or stretched while being put onto the disk, but the extrusion process is what causes the largest difference.
While on some stock coils there is a small space between the top and bottom coil, this cannot be guaranteed when assembling them, and if your not careful the bottom coil can be pushed up to the top one. I'm fairly certain that the oxidization layer that is on the kanthal will prevent any shorting, but honestly have no idea if this is true or not.
Multimeter
I just put new batteries in my $20 digital multimiter that I picked up from RadioShack a few years ago. I should say right now that I am not an electrician...and this probably wasn't the best investment I have ever made. I have tried several times to use it to get a better readout for the ohms on each coil, but am an idiot and must be doing something drastically wrong here. When I touch both ends of the assembled coil, I may get a very brief reading of varying ranged numbers, but it always goes back to 0. I've tried every ohm setting this thing has and I keep getting the same results. So ultimately I am relying on the cheap ohm meter I got from LightningVapes to gather all of my readings, which was half the cost, yet provides a solid reading.
Where to go from here?
Taking into account all of the micro discrepancies that can happen, I understand that there are going to be variations in ohm readouts. However, I do not understand why I needed to make more wraps than what is suggested in the video or by SteamEngine to get a logical and consistent output. Both top and bottom coil have 10/9 wraps on the stock coils, regardless that the top legs are going to be longer than the bottom legs. I thought that in the video he was just using a different gauge wire, but stock is 32ga as well. The only difference I can really tell is he does use 3mm silica wick in the video as that is what he has on hand, but suggests 2mm. Also 2mm is what is put into SteamEngine to determine the number of wraps, which it suggests 6/5.
At this time I have yet to use any of the coils that I have rebuilt. In all honesty I would like for them all to be the same so that I am not needing to volt up and down to get consistency between tanks. Since I am able to get 2.05ohm from my last two rebuilds I am likely to make the rest of them just like that. However, I would not have made this post just to let everyone know how I did...I wanted to see if I could get some advice on where to go from here in regards to things I may be doing incorrect, things I had not considered, or a better method for rebuilding these. In all honesty any advice I can get would be greatly appreciated.
And if you have read through this wall-o-text, and made it this far, thank you!
Edit I opened up advanced on SteamEngine and found where the discrepancy is, it's on the length of the wire...when I unravelled one of the stock coils it was ~66mm long, not the 46 that was coming up when I selected the gauge. NOW it is showing 10/9 wraps instead of 6/5.
Let me just go ahead and get all the small stuff out of the way:
Equipment
smok ZMAX Telescoping mod
Anyvape Davide BDC tanks - Aspire BDC
Supplies - LightningVapes
Kanthal A1 Resistance Wire - 32GA (0.2032 mm) 13.1 Ohms/ft Resistance AWG A1
High Quality Silica Wick - 2mm
503 Pen Style Butane Jet Torch and Lighter
Cartomizer and Atomizer Ohm Meter
Tutorial video - Rip Trippers
Rebuilding The Aspire BDC
History
I got all this stuff in hopes to save some money from buying replacement coils. I already have another thread on failures at cleaning these things. I honestly thought this was going to be a straight-forward process after watching the video. The stock tanks come with a 1.8ohm & a 2.2ohm bottom dual coil. I have either burnt up, or ruined through trying to dry-burn cleaning, all of my 2.2ohm coils and am currently using my 1.8ohm that came extra with the tanks. In the video he doesn't torch his coils either, and recommends not to dry burn as the insulator will cause a plastic hit that is difficult to get out.
Something else to point out is on the stock coils the top one has thin insulator pieces on the legs, which is supposed to prevent the top legs from touching the wraps of the bottom coil...he does not reuse these pieces in the video, but I did on all of the following builds.
My aim was to rebuild these coils to be 2.1 ohm. When I first got my mod and tanks the guy recommended to use the 2.1ohm coils "because people like them better". Hitting at 5.0volts was working good for my setup. Now I'm using my 1.8ohm coils, and hitting with 3.5 - 4.0volts and I cannot really tell a huge difference.
On to the building
So I built my first coil as he does in the video. I'm supposed to get around 1.4ohm like he does, but my ohm meter is reading out at 1.04. Also, the number of wraps on the stock coils is 10 (10/9), not 6 (6/5) like he does in the video...SteamEngine says to get a 2.1ohm coil that I am supposed to use a 6/5 wrap on a dual-coil parallel setup. No torching has been done, and will likely be redoing this one. I should note that the wraps look like crap, as they are nowhere near circular, and crooked as heck trying to hold the wick and needle while wrapping.
My second coil I did 10 wraps (10/9) using the same "wrap around silica wick and needle" process. I'm getting 1.82ohm with that one. No torching here either, and the wraps still look like crap.
My third and fourth coils I did a little different. My "tight wraps" are likely going to be different than his in the video, so I wrapped (10/9) around a 5/64" drill bit (1.97mm dia). I finally put my magnifying soldering helper I picked up at RadioShack 2 years ago for $20 to some good use for this. I torched these coils, then pinched to make them tighter grouped. Then I amazingly was able to thread the wick through, untwist it out so it doesn't slide out. Now I am getting 2.05ohm readout on both of these.
Leg Length/Wire Thickness/Touching Coils - Discrepancies
If you've watched the video you can see how the length of the legs varies between each stock coil, and subsequently on each rebuilt one due to how it is assembled. Once it is assembled the excess legs are cutoff as close to the contact points as possible. Just on one of the stock coils I have measured (with digital caliper) from the coil to the start of the curvature (contact point) for each leg:
Top coil (~8.74mm - ~10.05mm)
Bottom coil (~6.82mm - ~5.86mm)
I have gotten various length measurements between all of the stock coil legs I have measured, which makes it difficult to use SteamEngine to determine the proper ohm's for each coil. But if you will read the building section above, the number of wraps that I must do to achieve a certain ohm level are drastically different than what is suggested in the video or by using SteamEngine.
I have used my digital caliper to measure the diameter of the wire in various places. The advertised diameter of what I ordered is 0.2032mm. However, I have gotten readings of 0.19mm - 0.21mm on various locations. There are several things that affect this gauge of the wire, including how it is wrapped or stretched while being put onto the disk, but the extrusion process is what causes the largest difference.
While on some stock coils there is a small space between the top and bottom coil, this cannot be guaranteed when assembling them, and if your not careful the bottom coil can be pushed up to the top one. I'm fairly certain that the oxidization layer that is on the kanthal will prevent any shorting, but honestly have no idea if this is true or not.
Multimeter
I just put new batteries in my $20 digital multimiter that I picked up from RadioShack a few years ago. I should say right now that I am not an electrician...and this probably wasn't the best investment I have ever made. I have tried several times to use it to get a better readout for the ohms on each coil, but am an idiot and must be doing something drastically wrong here. When I touch both ends of the assembled coil, I may get a very brief reading of varying ranged numbers, but it always goes back to 0. I've tried every ohm setting this thing has and I keep getting the same results. So ultimately I am relying on the cheap ohm meter I got from LightningVapes to gather all of my readings, which was half the cost, yet provides a solid reading.
Where to go from here?
Taking into account all of the micro discrepancies that can happen, I understand that there are going to be variations in ohm readouts. However, I do not understand why I needed to make more wraps than what is suggested in the video or by SteamEngine to get a logical and consistent output. Both top and bottom coil have 10/9 wraps on the stock coils, regardless that the top legs are going to be longer than the bottom legs. I thought that in the video he was just using a different gauge wire, but stock is 32ga as well. The only difference I can really tell is he does use 3mm silica wick in the video as that is what he has on hand, but suggests 2mm. Also 2mm is what is put into SteamEngine to determine the number of wraps, which it suggests 6/5.
At this time I have yet to use any of the coils that I have rebuilt. In all honesty I would like for them all to be the same so that I am not needing to volt up and down to get consistency between tanks. Since I am able to get 2.05ohm from my last two rebuilds I am likely to make the rest of them just like that. However, I would not have made this post just to let everyone know how I did...I wanted to see if I could get some advice on where to go from here in regards to things I may be doing incorrect, things I had not considered, or a better method for rebuilding these. In all honesty any advice I can get would be greatly appreciated.
And if you have read through this wall-o-text, and made it this far, thank you!
Edit I opened up advanced on SteamEngine and found where the discrepancy is, it's on the length of the wire...when I unravelled one of the stock coils it was ~66mm long, not the 46 that was coming up when I selected the gauge. NOW it is showing 10/9 wraps instead of 6/5.
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