Can someone explain hardware basics? Ohms, watts, # coils, etc.

[Javamon]

Can someone explain the basics of the hardware variables and how each affects the vaping experience, both in length of charge times and more important, the quality of pull?

1. Ohms of coil - i.e. 1.5 v.s 2.5
2. Watts - why do I care?
3. Battery capacity - i.e. 650mAh v.s. 1900 mAh
4. Single coil v.s. dual coil
5. Bottom or top setup

Sorry to ask. It's hard to collect all this up among the massive amount of information out there.

I am enjoying the Kanger EVOD. The original. I see there are a ton of other EVOD variants, and the answers to the above will help me navigate those waters.
Thank you.

 

[Javamon]

This tells me at least about single and dual coil. Interesting.

Clearomizer vs Cartomizer vs Atomizer: The Real Difference

I'll get there.

 

[Maiar]

I can field a few of those. Though most of it will probably be wrong. lol

Battery Capacity. The higher the mAh the more power the battery stores for use. The little 650 sticks will power a clearomizer for a few hours. The 2600mAh in the MVP2.0 will power the same thing for a couple days of comparable use.

Single coil and Dual coils. These are pretty easy to understand. A single coil has one thread of wire around the wicking material that fires to produce vapor the wicking material absorbs. Dual coil is the same thing, only there's two of these instead of one. This produces more vapor and ofter warmer vapor. But this also uses more power from your battery. If you're using Evods, don't be afraid to take the post off the top of the coil and have a look see. You should see a few pieces of loose wick. These are flavor wicks that absorb extra fluid to prevent flooding, Underneath you'll see some wire wrapped around more wick. That's the single coil. In a dual there would be another wire wrapped around another piece of wicking below the top one. Evod 2's use this setup.

Bottom and Top feeders. I assume this is top vs bottom coil. In the evod, a bottom coil, the coil sits at the bottom of the tank so it's being constantly fed with juice. A top coil has the coil setup at the top of the tank. I imagine this makes the vapor warmer since it's closer to your mouth. These ones aren't fed as constantly as bottom feeders though so you may have to physically manipulate the device, by flippin er upside down, to make sure enough juice is on the coil.

I'll someone with a more firm grasp of electrical theory tackle the wattage and voltage though. All I really know is that whatever voltage is suitable to use depends on the resistance of the coil whereas wattage is essentially how much heat the coil produces. 8W for instance gets you the same amount of heat at 1.5ohm as at 2.5. And each of those resistances would need to be used at a different voltage to achieve the same performance.

I think.... lol

 

[Buzz87]

Like he said ! LOL

 

[Javamon]

I can field a few of those...

Thanks so much. That was super helpful.

 

[bullet08]

since i only use mech mode, i didn't bother looking into W. but Ohm is basically resistance of the atty with coil in it. lower the Ohm, more less resistance. that will draw more current from the battery, therefore, it will produce more warmer vape. depending on the liquid you are using, that could be good or bad. some lose flavor at high temp. typically, i run my atties at .4-.8 Ohm.. depends on the setup and liquid i use. i don't do those really low subohm thing.

 

[Debadoo]

Much of this has been answered.......but never feel bad about asking questions. It'll drive you mad trying to learn it all, it did most all of us when we started. Much of it still drives me mad! lol
as
I'll just mention that a good basic guide to determine what voltage to vape at is........

Start with the Ohm of the coil (atomizer), add 2 pts then subtract .2

so...... coil is 2.1 + 2 = 4.1 minus .2 = 3.9 volts to vape that. that's a good starting place, then adjust up or down a bit to taste. But always make sure you're vaping around this area. you can get too high and melt wires, or too low and wonder why you can't taste anything. There are also guides that will tell you the basic "safe" range. I lost my links to those, but maybe someone can put one up.

 

[rurwin]

Volts is the force pushing the electricity through the coil. Amps is the rate that the electricity flows at. There's some differences, but you can think of it like water pressure and flow rate in pipes. Watts is the power that is delivered to the coil by the electricity. If the pressure is higher then the coil gets more power, and if the flow rate is higher, the coil also gets more power. Think of the difference between a fire hose and a garden hose. The former has more pressure and more water per second and it can knock you off your feet.

Resistance is like the narrowness of the pipe. The narrower the pipe, the higher the resistance, the more pressure you need to have to deliver the same number of gallons per second.

All these things are related to one another by two simple equations:

V = I x R (V is volts, I is amps and R is resistance in ohms)
P = V x I (P is watts)

You can use algebra to rearrange those. The most useful way for vaping is to get rid of current, because we don't usually know what it is.

P = V² / R

Power heats the coil. The more watts that is delivered to the coil, the hotter it gets. But it is being cooled all the time by the vaporisation of the liquid and by the air flowing past it. The hotter it gets, the more those things cool it down. So it tends to heat up to a certain temperature and stay there, (although if you stop puffing for a second it quickly gets hotter.) The more power you supply, the quicker the coil heats up, and the hotter it gets.

Also, short thin wires heat up faster than long thick wires, even if they have the same resistance. They also have different surface areas so they cool down at different rates too.

All this is a dark art. There are only two groups of people in the world who have any idea how the temperature of a coil works: the guys at Evolv and the people working with Dr Farsalinos. But it is perfectly possible to work with it without understanding it, you just increase the watts until you get a vape that you like.

Different eliquids taste best at different temperatures, but they can all be burned if the temperature is too high. Similarly they all fail to produce vapour if the temperature is too low.

EGOs are designed to produce a good vape at around 5-6 watts. It's a matter of how quickly the wick delivers the liquid to the coil and how much air is flowing over it. You can't simply increase the power and get more vapour, you'll just burn it, and in extreme cases heat the coil so much it melts. Dual coil EGOs split the watts between two coils, so they will be best with about twice the watts. I'm currently puffing on a single-coil Russian 91% at 10-12W. Some vapers manage to build coils that will take 50 watts or more. But all of those coils are more or less at the same temperature, around 400-450F.

Varying the power allows you to do two things. Changing it slightly allows you to tune it for different liquids. Changing it a lot allows you to build coils and wicks that deliver more or less vapour.

 

[Javamon]

Thanks, everyone. It has been super helpful.

The most flavor and vapor enhancing thing I have learned so far since starting is the difference between top and bottom coil designs as reflected in a CE4 type clearo and an EVOD type clearo. I have since thrown out the first two CE4 clearos I owned. A quality EVOD clearo and head v.s. a clone CE4 clearo is making a huge difference in flavor, vapor, and overall enjoyment.

It's a shame there are so many CE4 blister packs out in the wild luring newbs like me, because a bottom coil smaller wick design can be almost the same low starting cost but be so, so much better.

I'm having too much fun with all this stuff.

 

[Debadoo]

Yeah, I never cared for the ce4's much my sil loves them when she does vape which isn't often. I had too many leaking issues with the evod, and I just won't deal with something that leaks (much).

I found my sweet haven with aspire bdc's for now. Tried a full size nautilus and had issues, went back to my bdc's. Will try the naughty again sometime when I have more patience for fiddlin with it. I'm sure I can get it to work well. It did have great flavor. I like bigger tanks, so the 3.5 ml bdc's are nice. My 5 ml naughty will be even nicer when I get it working right.

 

[Javamon]

It's weird - I haven't experienced any leaking, and we have 4 EVODs between me and my daughter - 3 Kangers and a clone.

 

[Debadoo]

Might have been a bad one, maybe it was me doing something wrong, but I tried it once and was done. Plus I had to refill it constantly even if it didn't leak. So not my thing, but a lot of folks love em. When I'm not sleeping especially I have to fill the 3.5 ml tank a couple times a day so the 1.8ml evod or whatever it was, totally didn't work for me. That's when I was on the hunt for a good bottom coil. Now I've found that.

 

[Javamon]

You're not the only one that experienced it. I have read references to linking EVOD tanks many times now. But so far, I have escaped the phenomenon.