Calling all AGA-T2 experts

[holcombgl]

I just got my AGA T2 today couldn't wait to give it a shot.

So far not so good. Here is what I have.

I purchased some Kanthal A awg 30awg wire
I also Purchased Mesh Here are the specs:
Size: 4in x 6in
Mesh: 400 x 400 mesh per 2.54 cm (per inch)
Opening Size: 0.03 mm (0.0013")
Wire Diameter: 0.0305 mm (0.0012")
Open Area Percentage: 27 %
Overall Thickness: 0.0610 mm (0.002")
Weight per Square Foot: 0.20 Kg (0.04 pounds)
Weave Type: TWILL Finish
Coating: Mill Finish
Material: STAINLESS STEEL 316L (gray, can easily bend by hand and cut with scissors.)Size: 4in x 6in

I only have a VAMO no mech mod as of yet.

I wanted to give it a shot first so I used the Mesh that came with it and some of my Kanthal 30 wire. I oxidized the wick before rolling it over my gas stove 3 times. Then I rolled and did the process over again. Then I did some e-juice burns over it. I wrapped the coil 5 times. When I put it on my Vamo it read .8 ohms didn't think it was right with 5 wraps so I adjusted and it shot up to 3.2 ohms. After messing with it some more I scratched it and did a new coil 7 wraps. Vamo read 1.8 started my dry burn to check for hot spots it went down to .8 again and flashed low. Moved the coils a little back to 1.7 to 1.8?

Now here is my first question should I drill out the wick hole to 1/8 I guess that would give me a bigger mesh increasing my coil size? But it still doesn't explain why it fluctuates so much. I made sure the wick was not touching the center post so if there is a short I guess it would be the wick though I oxidized really well I thought. If yes what size mesh should I cut to use? I am a little slow when it comes to this so little words help lol if this is like the thousandth post on it and no one can help if you could be so kind to point me to some posts that might help me with this it would also be appreciated. Thanks

 

[MF DOOM]

Your problems are 100% spot on, you are not slow.

I thought I had this e-cig system licked...then I took an arr...erm, then I got an AGA-T+.

People are going to be short with us (no pun intended), for they expect our lives to STOP, and for us to go through the vast banks of info on here. Yet they want to be helpful.
Don't be short with us...you don't want to help that bad if you refer us to the search function.

 

[thefleck]

Hi, long reply coming (editing this post)...hopefully I have an answer for ya, hang in there

Ok...lol...I know what you mean about being short. Love the pun too hahaha.

So first things first, how much do you really understand electrical? You get what ohms are? That it is a unit for resistance? And what resistance is...and what a short is? Etc...it's hard to start from ground zero and hit all the pertinent info but it sounds like maybe we should...

A short ... or "HOT SPOT," occurs when the electrical pathway is changed...you get a jump of electricity down an unwanted path because, like gravity, it will take the shortest path towards the direction it wants to go. An obvious example is your AGA coil...you have a wire going from A to B...it is in a coil shape but it is as far as electricity is converned, in a straight line. Now if you connect two of the coils, you have made a shorter route for it to travel -- it jumps across the new path, skips part of the wire now, and gets really hot over the new "short" pathway.

If you watched this happen with a resistance meter (ohm meter) ...which is what your provari is, it would look like this:

1. You build the coil
2. 1.8 ohms (full path)...tastes great.
3, Short occurs
4, 0.8 ohms (or whatever the new resistance is of your "short" circuit...it is literally shorter and has less resistance!)
5. Tastes like metal, hits too hard
6. you go online and ask for help

This all might occur as you assemble it on the provari and test it ("pulse it") over the course of a few seconds, before you have time to even fill it with juice and hit it. But rest assured, you are not alone. This occurs to a lot of people within an hour of assembling it, for a variety of reasons, and they end up with what they think is just a crappy RBA. Lol.

One problem is that you don't have a mechanical. I simply don't know enough about how they work..the pv...to explain why, but I do know that in theory if you set an RBA/Gen Atty up on a mechanical first, make it solid, and transfer to the PV, it should be ok. As long as the resistance is within acceptable range for the provari.

Problem is, you CANNOT (in theory) use a "pulse method" on a PV or non-mechanical battery...It will, at least, be introducing a lot of variables you have no way of accounting for. Pulsing works by literally burning away the non-oxidized shorts that were in your setup...you in a sense manually create a short until it melts away, leaving your desired circuit (coil). It doesn't work well on an AGA tank bc the wick hole is not insulated...unlike other gennies, the AGA wick MUST be oxidized well to create a good circuit on the coil.

Seems to me like you should make sure there's no possible way you have a short, and build a coil you know the PV can handle. It should work if you do it right. Not to be "short" at all, I'm saying that it really should work...it's just hard to eliminate ALL the variables when you are first learning. There could be 1 fatal flaw in your procedure that we/you won't discover until you watch videos and see common similarities in the way they are set up. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions.

 

[Aubie80]

pbusardo recently posted a video on 3 different techniques on how to set up an rba tons of good info in those videos

 

[Aubie80]

A PBusardo Review - The AGA-T(s) - Part 2 - Assembly & Building Tutorial - YouTube

 

[SteveW]

First off, and not related to your problem, but is your Vamo in rms mode (n02)? If not you may run into other problems. Possible causes for the wide swings in resistance may be: Your center post insulators are broken, or, one of your screws/ nuts may not be holding the resistance wire properly (whenever is see swings in resistance I check if the screws are tight and this is normally the problem). Is your wick significantly higher than your center post where the coil is coming into contact with the top cap? have you made sure that any tails you leave on the res wire are tucked away where they cannot short against anything? These are some things you could start to check. Hope you get it sorted.

 

[NoleintheNati]

I have had trouble with hot spots also, but initially the only wire I could get my hands on was 32 and 34...doing a 30 build this weekend.
May have to get Washer and Spring as others have suggested in other posts, dunno.
If you are grounding, check the negative end of the coil, make sure your wick is hovering over the bottom of the tank, you could try re-oxidizing the portion of the wick that the coils come in contact with.
Good luck.

 

[NoleintheNati]

Duplicate posting

 

[holcombgl]

Thanks for the responses. Aubie I saw the Busardo video I was watching it as I made it but if I am not mistaking he did them on a mech mod so he wouldn't have my vamo issues I can't test the coil because the first pulse it lights up then it throws low ohms. Steve I made sure my vamo is in N02 mode I set it to that when I first got it and never changed it but I checked again to make sure. I clipped the ends of my wick to match the height of my center post. The screw that is for positive is a pita I read about the spring & washer mod but haven't tried it yet so that could be possibly an issue. I will look for a spring and small washer. I will also check the center post insulator.

 

[Aubie80]

Try tightening the second nut to the top nut. use middle nut and twist that so you use that nut to tighten with opposed to using the top nut to tighten with
also i have put electrical tape on my center post to eliminate any way of that causing a problem.

 

[thefleck]

Deleting double post

 

[thefleck]

Ya basically, you have a short and this is a way to eliminate them.

Another way is to take your whole wick/coil setup and (trying not to roast your AGA too much) oxidize the whole thing.

See when you wrap the coil it almost ALWAYS creates some fray and and coil is never 100% perfect...it will have an itty bitty hotspot/short. A mechanical blasts the short away -- your provari will tell you you have an "error". There's no way to really eliminate this problem by wrapping a better coil...it's a problem inherent to the RBA. that said, an insulated wick RbA like the AC9 or RSST might let you do this a little easier. Because of the insulated wick hole. Still, I almost always have a couple seconds of "hotspot" I need to pulse away even with a (beautifully rolled!) oxidized wick on an RSST.

I'm saying....

You can do what you're doing in THEORY bUt I'm telling you RBAs are a PITA already...this is going to be a REAL headache for you until you get a mechanical battery


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[XfooYen]

The main problem with the OPs setup is, unfortunately, the VAMO. The AGA-T2 isn't the easiest RBA to deal with because its wick hole is so far from the center post, but that can be remedied with the addition of two #2 brass washers to close that gap. The VAMO uses pulse width modulation to vary its voltage settings. Basically, it is always firing at 6 volts but pulses the duty cycle on and off rapidly to "simulate" a dialed in voltage setting. So even if you are set at 4 volts, the VAMO is pulsing 6 volt currents to your coil. This is why it's so tough to get a good setup on the AGA-T (and other genesis RBAs) without hot legs and hot top coils. Using thicker wire can help but with the low resistance limits of the VAMO, you'd be making too many wraps. It can be done, but it's mighty finicky. Once you start using a mech with the AGA-T2 and 28 gauge wire, most of your troubles will be gone. Most. Keep practicing though. If anything you'll get a feel for working hot spots even if you're unsuccessful.

 

[thefleck]

The main problem with the OPs setup is, unfortunately, the VAMO. The AGA-T2 isn't the easiest RBA to deal with because its wick hole is so far from the center post, but that can be remedied with the addition of two #2 brass washers to close that gap. The VAMO uses pulse width modulation to vary its voltage settings. Basically, it is always firing at 6 volts but pulses the duty cycle on and off rapidly to "simulate" a dialed in voltage setting. So even if you are set at 4 volts, the VAMO is pulsing 6 volt currents to your coil. This is why it's so tough to get a good setup on the AGA-T (and other genesis RBAs) without hot legs and top coils. Using thicker wire can help but with the low resistance limits of the VAMO, you'd be making too many wraps. It can be done, but it's mighty finicky. Once you start using a mech with the AGA-T2 and 28 gauge wire, most of your troubles will be gone. Most. Keep practicing though. If anything you'll get a feel for working hot spots even if you're unsuccessful.

Did he say VAMO? Lol, thought he had a pro-vari. Regardless, same stuff and GREAT explanation of the mechanics behind the "resistance limit."


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[XfooYen]

Did he say VAMO? Lol, thought he had a pro-vari. Regardless, same stuff and GREAT explanation of the mechanics behind the "resistance limit."

Yeah, the VAMO has a duty cycle of 33 Hz which is really low. That's what gives the "rattlesnake" sound when it's firing. It's the sound of the cycles turning on and off. The Provari uses a much higher Hz rate and narrower duty cycle, and also includes a buffer (filter) so the resulting current looks (and vapes) like a direct current (DC) rather than the peaks and valleys of PWM.

 

[MF DOOM]

pbusardo recently posted a video on 3 different techniques on how to set up an rba tons of good info in those videos

And he was bangin' shorts left and right, because he is a paid reviewer who is a provari/boge addict.

@thefleck...thank you for your patience. Besides the rsst, which other RBA's offer insulated wick holes?

 

[SteveW]

I would not worry too much about insulated wick holes. Any time I get an atty with an isulator, I toss it away. If there is a major short where an unisulated wick is a problem, you have a much bigger problem with the coil/ wick contact. Once that is addressed the wick contact with the atty body is irrelevant (top or bottom of the tank). In electrical terms the wick is "floating" in the circuit.

 

[XfooYen]

And he was bangin' shorts left and right, because he is a paid reviewer who is a provari/boge addict.

@thefleck...thank you for your patience. Besides the rsst, which other RBA's offer insulated wick holes?

I beg to differ. Busardo is not paid by any vendor for his reviews. I don't think he has used his Provari since he discovered sub-ohm genesis coils. He certainly was quite the fan though. I think he's pretty objective. He slammed Boge during Bogegate pretty hard.

The AC9 has an insulated wick hole.

 

[SteveW]

The ZAP as well, at least it did till I got my hands on it . AC9 I have has no insulator, version 2?

 

[XfooYen]

The ZAP as well, at least it did till I got my hands on it . AC9 I have has no insulator, version 2?

Come to think of it, I may have been thinking of the ZAP. I thought the AC9 had one originally. Hmmm. Mah bad.