Best NON sub-ohm coil? NON sub-ohm 32ga kanthal?

[HecticEnergy]

I'm newer to rebuilding. I have nothing against sub-ohm, I'm just running my coils on APV and dont have a Mech (yet)
I've done several micro coil rebuilds. Using 8-10 wraps on 5/64 or 1/16 drill bit with 28ga kanthal. I've aligned them as a vertical coil (chimney style) with cotton around it like a carto, or horizontal and threaded.

I was wondering if I've got the best coil for non sub ohm vaping. I was thinking about trying some nano coils (wrapped around a needle noise top juice cap or another piece of kanthal). Could I just do more wraps to get the resistance up? or would that make the coil too wide to be practical for my hardware?

I'm rebuilding KFL+ clone, Fogger v3, octopus dripper (soon to be replaced by igo-w3.. its in the mail). I'm using smoktek SiD for power.

I accidentally bought 100' of the 'wrong' type of wire - the package of wire i bought months ago said 32 on it.. so I bought 32ga A1 kanthal.. turns out it was .32mm.. oops. I've got 28ga on the way...

I'm not sure if the 28ga I have on hand was A1 or not... is A1 higher resistance? I tried to build a micro with the 32ga A1 I bought.. 8 wraps on 5/64s and it was reading at a much higher ohm than the 28ga on the same inner diameter. I thought maybe it was a bad coil, so I did another and it read high too (about a full ohm over the thicker kanthal). Is this standard behavior for the wire or is there possibly something else at play here?
Is there a good NON Sub Ohm use for this 32ga wire?

 

[cghildreth]

Triple twisted strands of 32 = baller. Lots of surface area, with a wicked fast response time.

 

[Richard75]

You could increase the diameter of the microcoil to help get the resistance up.

But that said, I can easily get 1.0 -1.1 ohms with 28g just wrapping around two strands of 2.5mm or 3mm silica. You just have to wrap them carefully, because if you wrap one of the coils wrong or it deforms, I find it impossible to fix!

I've also gotten 1.5 ohms with 32g. Again, just wrap more coils and/or over a larger diameter. (Sorry, didn't realize your question was about the 32 and not the 28!)

 

[Maurice Pudlo]

You can coil multiple strands of 32ga A1 together, which lowers the resistance, then make a coil with more wraps.

For example 4 strands of 32ga made into a 2/3 wrap coil around one of those little screwdrivers or 5/64 drill bit shaft is 0.60 ohms, bumping up to a 4/5 wrap coil would take you out of the sub ohm range in a standard coil setup because you would be using a much longer length of wire.

I've not done nano coils as of yet, I would think they would be best suited to setup that use more than a single coil.

While I find the idea of nano coils very interesting I am more focused on getting the best out of standard and micro coils at the moment. Nano coils might be tough to work with, mainly coil alignment and just having the dexterity to get it right.

Anyway, multiple strands of the 32ga coiled together, more wraps on your coil, non-sub-ohm.

Maurice

 

[Exile]

28g kanthal is for sub-ohm builds.

With 32g kanthal I would recommend a 1.6-1.8 ohm micro coil around a 1/16 drill bit...

 

[Stosh]

I'm not sure if the 28ga I have on hand was A1 or not... is A1 higher resistance? I tried to build a micro with the 32ga A1 I bought.. 8 wraps on 5/64s and it was reading at a much higher ohm than the 28ga on the same inner diameter. I thought maybe it was a bad coil, so I did another and it read high too (about a full ohm over the thicker kanthal). Is this standard behavior for the wire or is there possibly something else at play here?
Is there a good NON Sub Ohm use for this 32ga wire?

One simple solution with the 32 ga, try only 6 wraps on the 5/64s.... The smaller gauge has higher resistance per inch and one or two wraps can make a big difference.

I use 30 ga myself for normal resistance coils in the 1.5Ω - 2.5Ω range, works well for enough wraps while still being a small mass to heat, yet still thick enough to be easy to work with....YMMV....

 

[HecticEnergy]

I updated the above post before submitting, but apparently it didnt take.

additional notes:
I use Efest 2kmAh IMR18650 batteries. I wick with cotton balls.

I have done some nano coils with the 32ga kanthal wrapped on 28ga kanthal. they work good in the dripper, but its a bit hot for my taste (both hot vape and burning through eliquid to fast).

I made some triple twisted wire with the 32ga kanthal. I plan to rebuild a tank with that next time I have an empty one.

Currently, I use a single micro coil of 28ga kanthal at 5/64 inner diameter. They are running about 1.6ohms, but I plan to get those down to about 1.3. I use a horizontal in my kayfun, and a carto style vertical in my fogger v3. they seem to work ok. I'm just looking for some cool builds I can do with the new IGO-W3 or either of my RTA's. I'll probably attempt a double barrel in the kayfun next.

Thanks for the replys!

 

[Christopherja]

I use 30 ga myself for normal resistance coils in the 1.5Ω - 2.5Ω range, works well for enough wraps while still being a small mass to heat, yet still thick enough to be easy to work with....YMMV....

I second this suggestion! I run 30AWG nano-contact-coils (1.2mm) in KFL/Russians, around 1.8-2.0Ω

 

[iowajosh]

I use twisted 31 and 32. It works just fine with the SID.

 

[CloudZ]

I'm not sure if the 28ga I have on hand was A1 or not... is A1 higher resistance? I tried to build a micro with the 32ga A1 I bought.. 8 wraps on 5/64s and it was reading at a much higher ohm than the 28ga on the same inner diameter. I thought maybe it was a bad coil, so I did another and it read high too (about a full ohm over the thicker kanthal). Is this standard behavior for the wire or is there possibly something else at play here?

The thicker the wire, the lower the ohms per inch are. Thinner wire is higher resistance. Twisting wire together essentially makes it twice as "thick" and therefore decreasing its resistance per inch. It also has quite a bit more surface area than an equivalent single strand of wire.

Your best bet with the IGO-W3 is to run it as a dual coil with twisted 32 if you want to stay above 1 ohm. 28 gauge duals above 1 ohm will need a lot of power to heat up properly. I'd have to think that any quad coil setup would be pretty weak on most regulated mods, pretty much requiring you to run it at 30+ Watts.

 

[sandt38]

I only have one atty that I use 32 ga on (for now, I may try twisted on my Trident), and it works great. I run dual 32ga macros wrapped around an 18ga needle, in my Aqua. My final load is 1.2. They fire fast and deliver some nice vapor.

 

[jersey_emt]

I'm not sure if the 28ga I have on hand was A1 or not... is A1 higher resistance? I tried to build a micro with the 32ga A1 I bought.. 8 wraps on 5/64s and it was reading at a much higher ohm than the 28ga on the same inner diameter. I thought maybe it was a bad coil, so I did another and it read high too (about a full ohm over the thicker kanthal). Is this standard behavior for the wire or is there possibly something else at play here?
Is there a good NON Sub Ohm use for this 32ga wire?

Kanthal A1 has a slightly higher resistance than Kanthal A. Kanthal A has a slightly higher resistance than Kanthal D. But we are talking about extremely tiny differences -- just a couple hundredths of an ohm per inch.

The reason why your 32 gauge coils have so much more resistance compared to your 28 gauge coils is because the 32 gauge wire is much thinner and its resistance is much higher than 28 gauge wire.

28 gauge Kanthal A1 is 0.4 ohms per inch.
32 gauge Kanthal A1 is 1.1 ohms per inch.

I've found that while 32 gauge wire is good for rebuilding Kanger heads (Protank, Evod, etc.), it is not ideal for microcoils on a rebuildable. Even though you generally want a higher resistance coil for regulated mods, 32 gauge wire just has too high of a resistance for microcoils. Only a couple of wraps around a 1/16" drill bit and you're already at 3 ohms.

Your best bet would be to twist the 32 gauge wire. There are plenty of instructions and videos out there -- all you need is a pair of pliers and an allen wrench. An electric drill makes things easier and much quicker, but you can do it by hand and get just as tight of a twist.

The twisted 32 gauge wire will have a much lower resistance than the single strand of 32 gauge. It won't be as low as with 28 gauge wire; it will end up being roughly equivalent to 30 gauge wire. This is good, as I've found 30 gauge microcoils built to 2.0 ohms on a 1/16" or 3/64" drill bit to work best on my regulated mods (iTaste MVP 2.0 and VV 3.0). I use 28 gauge wire to build 0.6 - 1.0 ohm microcoils to use with my mechanical mod.

 

[graffiti]

While I was waiting on my 28ga to show up, I was running double-double twisted (two strands of twisted wire twisted together) 32ga on my AGA-T2. Six (or maybe 7, can't remember) turns on a 7/64" drill bit gave me 1.05Ω. Wicked (not an auto-dripper) with cotton, it chucked vapor beautifully, but took forever to heat up. Like 5-6 seconds. Once you got it going, though, if you chain vaped it just got better and better.

Currently running 4 wraps of 28ga on 500 SS mesh which brings me to... 0.9Ω? I know it's around there, but my ohm reader is downstairs and I don't feel like going to get it. Heats up much, much quicker, almost instantaneous.

Moral of the story is that yes, you can twist 32 ga and get great performance, but it takes longer to heat up.

 

[dice57]

I've built many standard ohm micro coils using 28 awg, with spectacular results. With twisted wire coils, I don't like to go above the .6-.7 ohm range, to much lag time and limits my watts.

 

[HecticEnergy]

Thank you all for the replies!

Dice: .6,.7 is sub ohm, isn't it? Any way, I think my lower end limit is 1ohm..

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk

 

[jersey_emt]

Thank you all for the replies!

Dice: .6,.7 is sub ohm, isn't it? Any way, I think my lower end limit is 1ohm..

Anything less than 1.0 ohms is a "sub-ohm" coil.

On most regulated mods, the lowest you can go is 1.2 ohms. Anything lower will not even fire -- the circuitry won't allow it. And even on the few regulated mods that will fire sub-ohm coils (except for the ones specifically designed for it such as DNA20/DNA30 devices), the amperage limits (maximum current it can pull from the battery) means that it will fire at a very low voltage.

For example, my iTaste MVP will fire coils down to 0.8 ohms, but has a 3.5 amp limit. Regardless of what voltage it is set to (3.3 - 5.0 volts), it will actually fire at only 2.8 volts in order to keep below the maximum allowed current of 3.5 amps.

This is not really something you even need to worry about however. Most people (myself included) find that their regulated mods work best with coils built to a resistance of around 2.0 ohms. Of course, like anything else, you will need to experiment to find out your own personal preferences.

 

[emus]

1/16" ID twisted 32GA 1.2 ohms is an excellent coil.