Coil Building - Kanthal Fluctuating Ohms & How 2 Solve It

[Yoshi_523]

Ok so I lost the whole post due to ECF login and permision rights not allowing me to post in the modding section yet

So I will re-write this and keep it short and sweet. If you are having issues with your Kanthal A1 coil builds where strangely the readings are fluctuating with your multimeter or have gone from a nice 2.0 ohm coil to a now rediculous 10 or 20 ohm coil here's what I found worked for me... The problem was the whole wire was corroded from torching the crap out of it. The ends of the wire that connected into my protank coil assembly were making poor contact from the corrosion/oxidsation. Once I carefully got a knife and scrapped the ends of the wire all back to shiny metal the coil went back to a solid, steady 2.0 ohms. Oh yeah and the vape was back to kick-.... instead of border-line slight gurgle.

So in future folks remember when torchin those coils try to keep the ends that you are gonna connect, clean and shiny new. I think future I may hold the ends in wet cotton cloth while I torch the coil. This is probably more important in protank or other tank coil assembles as when using screws in an rda or RBA possibly the tightening of the screw *may* scrape enough of the corrosion off the end to get a good connection.

 

[Singaw]

You could also avoid torching the crap out of the wire to clean it or anneal it by wrapping the coil under tension and then dry burn to clean the junk off before adding the wick. If you insist on annealing the wire or torching the crap out of it to clean it then I suppose a wipe with alcohol would clean it. I know in my case trying to scrape the corrosion off would be frustrating, maybe it's my old eyes or lack of patience.

 

[Ryuukon]

You're just torching the wire too much. You only want it to glow a little, not glow bright hot. Just to oxidize it a little and to take the spring out so it's a little easier to wrap your coil. In fact you don't even have to torch the wire at all if you don't mind working with the springiness. Just wrap the coil, install it, and pulse the coil until it glows uniform from the inside out to finish the oxidizing process. Otherwise you will have hotspots from the current jumping between sections of the coil.

You of course want to pulse it without cotton in it. If you build your coils with silica it's fine to pulse it, but cotton will burn instantly. You also can't pulse the wire when it's wet. It's got to be dry or you won't be getting any oxidation on the wire.