Best Temp Control wire nowadays?

[illitirit]

Finally ran out of 200 ft of 28g ni200 nickel. That amount lasted me probably a year of rebuilding a new single coil everyday.


Now that I need to purchase some more, has there been any better wire to come out recently than nickel?

I've heard there are titanium and tempered nickel. Are there any others?

Or is ni200 nickel still the best?

 

[JimScotty0]

Finally ran out of 200 ft of 28g ni200 nickel. That amount lasted me probably a year of rebuilding a new single coil everyday.


Now that I need to purchase some more, has there been any better wire to come out recently than nickel?

I've heard there are titanium and tempered nickel. Are there any others?

Or is ni200 nickel still the best?

I used NI200 for several months but for the last several months I now prefer and use Ti grade 1. Cleaner taste. 26ga seems to work well overall for single or dual coils. 24ga is good too if you have the atty space and power to heat the additional wire mass. Clean it well and it has no taste unlike Nickel. I used spaced coils and don't torch or heat. Some do that or even use contact coils but I don't see the need. Build with short legs and it will work well in a mod with Ti mode or using NI200 mode and just less temp. I also like twisting the Ti with Kanthal A1 30ga or 32ga for more surface area.

 

[Bunnykiller]

wow... 6.5 " of wire per day...

 

[Rossum]

Probably a year? When was the DNA40 introduced? I seem to recall it being last October, and it's only August.

Titanium. Grade 1. Been using it for about 9 months now. I replace my coils every couple of months whether they need it or not.

 

[TheBloke]

Ni200 is the worst wire hands down.

Titanium is a great, every-day, affordable wire. Its higher resistance makes it much more practical to use than Ni200 - enabling a wider range of wire gauges, and different builds including easy dual coil. Higher resistance also makes it more accurate for TC in real life vaping situations. That also applies to the other wires mentioned below.

Some people report Titanium having better flavour than Ni200, and no-one is allergic to Titanium unlike Nickel. Like Ni200, Titanium can't be dry burnt.

Stainless Steel has advantages over Titanium, specifically its strength and dry-burnability. It is not as accurate for TC, and requires mods with a TCR adjustment. Currently this means any mod with the new Dicodes chip (Dicodes 2380, Dicodes Dani Extreme v2, Pipeline Pro 2), any mod with the DNA 200, and any mod with the SXK DNA 40 clone chip with the Nickel Purity feature.

SS is at the lower reaches of TC accuracy, and it is more 'repeatable' than highly accurate. In other words, you might not get the exact temperature you set, but you can find a temp that gives a good vape with no dry hits, and once you have found that setting you can repeat it any time. in practice this just means that where I almost always set my Titanium and Resistherm builds to 230 - 240°C, with Stainless I might find myself at 210 or 215°C.

SS is also nice and cheap, as cheap or cheaper than Kanthal. Any of SS 304, 316 or 317 will work - so far I have used SS 317 exclusively, but I do have a spool of 304 to try.

The ultimate TC wire so far is Resistherm, AKA NiFe30, AKA Alloy 120. Dicodes sell it as Resistherm NiFe30 in 29G (0.28mm), for €13/10m. ZiVipf in Germany have just started selling it in 30G (0.25mm) and 29G (0.28mm) - other sizes may be available in future. Their price is €5.50/10m, which is comparable to Titanium.

Because of the thin wire size, I use my Resistherm twisted - 2x29. This gives a size somewhat similar to 26G.

Advantages of Resistherm:

1. It is just as accurate for TC as Titanium and Ni200
2. It is stronger than Titanium
3. It has a much higher temperature maximum, and is thus dry burnable like Stainless Steel. You can literally VW vape with it if you want, like Kanthal.

It's the third advantage which is the big one for me. In practice this is a huge advantage. I can dry burn my coils to clean them, making changing juice dead easy. Dry burning also means I can test fire my coils, checking for nice glowing inside-out. Exactly like we did with Kanthal.

That's especially a benefit with micro/contact coils. Which admittedly I don't use so much any more, as I find the gunk more. But sometimes they are beneficial. All of Titanium, Stainless and Resistherm can do contact coils - unlike Ni200. I prefer doing this with a dry-burnable material - Stainless or Resistherm - but it is possible without dry burning on Titanium.

I use all of Titanium, Stainless and Resistherm. Titanium is a great wire and will give a great vape, but sometimes I prefer Stainless Steel because it's stronger - Titanium breaks quite often for me in post-hole atomizers.

Resistherm is better than both, and my number one preferred wire. Its only current disadvantage is that it's only easily attainable in 29G meaning it requires twisting to make it most usable and strongest. Sometimes I therefore use Titanium just because I can't be bothered to go twist more Resistherm.

When Resistherm/NiFe30/Alloy 120 is available in 26G I would recommend it hands down as the one true TC wire; I could see no reason to use Titanium any more at that point, as good as it is. For now, I still highly recommend people try Resistherm - especially now it's available from ZiVipf at low prices - but bear in mind unless you like using 29G builds, you will probably want to twist it first.

If you have a mod with TCR adjustment, also consider Stainless Steel. The only reason I don't use this more is that only four out of my 12 TC mods currently support it. But out of my current 12 TC builds, three are Stainless Steel. I use it when I don't have twisted Resistherm on hand and I have got annoyed with Titanium breaking, Then I appreciate its strength and dry-burnability.

TLDR: Don't use Ni200 and your TC will be great!

Lots more info available in these threads:
TC beyond Ni200: Nickel Purity, Dicodes; Ti, SS, Resistherm NiFe30; Coefficient of Resistance
Titanium wire, vaping and safety

 

[Croak]

I'm pretty sure titanium is going to be the "default" TC wire in the not-too-distant-future. Mainstream SS and NiFe30-capable mods are a ways off.

 

[TheBloke]

I'm pretty sure titanium is going to be the "default" TC wire in the not-too-distant-future. Mainstream SS and NiFe30-capable mods are a ways off.

Yeah, Titanium is sweeping the field. I certainly hope it'll overtake Ni200, and we can put the nasty Nickel beast to rest

I don't know if NiFe30 will ever become super popular, but it doesn't really matter for the knowledgeable user - the TCRs are so close that it can be vaped on any Titanium mode even without adjustment with acceptable accuracy, and for optimal accuracy just a 20°C should be enough: set 210°C on the Titanium mod to heat to 230°C. Setting the TCR, or the curve on a DNA 200, is just a bonus.

I do think it's gaining some ground in Germany at least: it was a good sign that ZiVipf started stocking it. Perhaps it'll slowly grow in popularity in the Anglovape world over time.

SS I'm not sure about. if Smok does what they seem to be promising, and drop their TCR scale down to 0.001, then we'll have another mod supporting it. It's not hard for the mod maker to implement a TCR scale. Hell, SXK did it and seemingly without even understanding that they had And now that Evolv have jumped in I can see a lot of cloners trying to copy as much of it as they can. I'm fairly confident TCR adjustment will become common enough. Not mainstream perhaps - I don't see the ELeaf TC v2 having TCR adjustment or an SS mode. But available in a useful range of mods.

The fact that Aspire chose it for their Triton coils was a good sign. If it becomes more common as a standard coiling material, that'll boost TC take up. If anything I'd say SS has a bigger chance than Resistherm of becoming quite popular, despite its handicap of TCR requirements and absolute accuracy. At least it's well understood, and available for purchase in a wide variety of places.

 

[nixpix]

Ni200 is the worst wire hands down.

Titanium is a great, every-day, affordable wire. Its higher resistance makes it much more practical to use than Ni200 - enabling a wider range of wire gauges, and different builds including easy dual coil. Higher resistance also makes it more accurate for TC in real life vaping situations. That also applies to the other wires mentioned below.

Some people report Titanium having better flavour than Ni200, and no-one is allergic to Titanium unlike Nickel. Like Ni200, Titanium can't be dry burnt.

Stainless Steel has advantages over Titanium, specifically its strength and dry-burnability. It is not as accurate for TC, and requires mods with a TCR adjustment. Currently this means any mod with the new Dicodes chip (Dicodes 2380, Dicodes Dani Extreme v2, Pipeline Pro 2), any mod with the DNA 200, and any mod with the SXK DNA 40 clone chip with the Nickel Purity feature.

SS is at the lower reaches of TC accuracy, and it is more 'repeatable' than highly accurate. In other words, you might not get the exact temperature you set, but you can find a temp that gives a good vape with no dry hits, and once you have found that setting you can repeat it any time. in practice this just means that where I almost always set my Titanium and Resistherm builds to 230 - 240°C, with Stainless I might find myself at 210 or 215°C.

SS is also nice and cheap, as cheap or cheaper than Kanthal. Any of SS 304, 316 or 317 will work - so far I have used SS 317 exclusively, but I do have a spool of 304 to try.

The ultimate TC wire so far is Resistherm, AKA NiFe30, AKA Alloy 120. Dicodes sell it as Resistherm NiFe30 in 29G (0.28mm), for €13/10m. ZiVipf in Germany have just started selling it in 30G (0.25mm) and 29G (0.28mm) - other sizes may be available in future. Their price is €5.50/10m, which is comparable to Titanium.

Because of the thin wire size, I use my Resistherm twisted - 2x29. This gives a size somewhat similar to 26G.

Advantages of Resistherm:

1. It is just as accurate for TC as Titanium and Ni200
2. It is stronger than Titanium
3. It has a much higher temperature maximum, and is thus dry burnable like Stainless Steel. You can literally VW vape with it if you want, like Kanthal.

It's the third advantage which is the big one for me. In practice this is a huge advantage. I can dry burn my coils to clean them, making changing juice dead easy. Dry burning also means I can test fire my coils, checking for nice glowing inside-out. Exactly like we did with Kanthal.

That's especially a benefit with micro/contact coils. Which admittedly I don't use so much any more, as I find the gunk more. But sometimes they are beneficial. All of Titanium, Stainless and Resistherm can do contact coils - unlike Ni200. I prefer doing this with a dry-burnable material - Stainless or Resistherm - but it is possible without dry burning on Titanium.

I use all of Titanium, Stainless and Resistherm. Titanium is a great wire and will give a great vape, but sometimes I prefer Stainless Steel because it's stronger - Titanium breaks quite often for me in post-hole atomizers.

Resistherm is better than both, and my number one preferred wire. Its only current disadvantage is that it's only easily attainable in 29G meaning it requires twisting to make it most usable and strongest. Sometimes I therefore use Titanium just because I can't be bothered to go twist more Resistherm.

When Resistherm/NiFe30/Alloy 120 is available in 26G I would recommend it hands down as the one true TC wire; I could see no reason to use Titanium any more at that point, as good as it is. For now, I still highly recommend people try Resistherm - especially now it's available from ZiVipf at low prices - but bear in mind unless you like using 29G builds, you will probably want to twist it first.

If you have a mod with TCR adjustment, also consider Stainless Steel. The only reason I don't use this more is that only four out of my 12 TC mods currently support it. But out of my current 12 TC builds, three are Stainless Steel. I use it when I don't have twisted Resistherm on hand and I have got annoyed with Titanium breaking, Then I appreciate its strength and dry-burnability.

TLDR: Don't use Ni200 and your TC will be great!

Lots more info available in these threads:
TC beyond Ni200: Nickel Purity, Dicodes; Ti, SS, Resistherm NiFe30; Coefficient of Resistance
Titanium wire, vaping and safety

Thanks you for a very nice and informative post! I am eagerly awaiting my NiFe30 from stealthvape. Just making 100% sure, so I am asking - Is it completely safe to dryburn the NiFe30 like kanthal? The reason I am asking is because, quoting Stealthvape:
"We have analysed all of the information available to ensure that what we will be offering is of the highest quality and reliable for use in suitable TC devices. Being useable up to 600°C makes it more flexible than nickel." End quote
What happens if the temp goes beyond 600C? Does it melt or what? From what I understand a brightly glowing wire/coil can easily surpass 600C.