I'll admit that I'm no engineer, but it occurred to me that the coil shape may not be the best for utilizing as much heat produced by the wire for generating vapor. Certainly there are a lot of factors. The ones that occur to me are even heat distribution, proper air flow. I'm not sure whether having wick material on both sides of the wire is better, or whether the wick should be on the inside or outside of a coil (depending on coil orientation). I'd like to think that there is an industrial heating element used for some kind of vapor production that could be emulated but I wouldn't know where to start. Has anyone researched something like this?
Coil design for efficient application of heat
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I haven't researched it from a scientific perspective, but from experience both configurations have their strengths and weaknesses. I have attys with both horizontal coils with the wick inside, and vertical coils with the wick outside and I feel horizontal coil taste better with certain juices and vertical coils taste better with other juices.
This is just personal preference obviously, but that's my point, I don't think there is any scientific "best" configuration, people desire different qualities in a vape and different configurations offer different performance so "the best" is going to vary from person to person.
This is just personal preference obviously, but that's my point, I don't think there is any scientific "best" configuration, people desire different qualities in a vape and different configurations offer different performance so "the best" is going to vary from person to person.
I am fairly sure that the optimal configuration is "chimney, vertical type" with wick on its outside. In that case, for contemporary RTA's, proper juice flow becomes a problem. Its not impossible to solve but I dont have tools or money to make prototypes so I am trying not to think about it.
My only experience building coils is on the Kanger STank Mini, but from trial and error, research, and variable tweaking, i found this to work:
Microcoil of 24g kanthal, horizontal (4/5 rounds) with the cotton wick twisted tight, passed through insidr of coil, and left long.
I recommend keeping the ends long because twisting the wick cuts down on absorption of juice... the trick is to also coil the excess wick as well, to fit inside as close to the deck as possible.
Then, the KEY:
KEEP THE WICK AWAY FROM THE WIRE COIL'S LEGS! This was the only way i could both; not burn the wick with dry hits due to clogged juice channels AND not have the sonic boom of juice popping and spitting.
Ask away of any of this is confused you, i want to share this method because there are tons of tips out there that simply did not work for me at all. This was a case of variable tweaking until i found what worked, and it works very well.
Microcoil of 24g kanthal, horizontal (4/5 rounds) with the cotton wick twisted tight, passed through insidr of coil, and left long.
I recommend keeping the ends long because twisting the wick cuts down on absorption of juice... the trick is to also coil the excess wick as well, to fit inside as close to the deck as possible.
Then, the KEY:
KEEP THE WICK AWAY FROM THE WIRE COIL'S LEGS! This was the only way i could both; not burn the wick with dry hits due to clogged juice channels AND not have the sonic boom of juice popping and spitting.
Ask away of any of this is confused you, i want to share this method because there are tons of tips out there that simply did not work for me at all. This was a case of variable tweaking until i found what worked, and it works very well.
most efficient 'looking' setup I've seen was the one that riptrippers did in the petri dot mod, horizontal coil where the inner of the coil lined up with both airholes - then the wire was wicked on the outside. The main factor is airflow to cool down the power being put into the coil. Then you get all the crazier coil builds people do to hold more juice on the surface area of the coil itself. This question cant really be pinpointed really.
My thoughts were more along the lines of taking an industrial heating element design and adapting it for our purposes. I'm just not confident that the current method that is used for vapor production is optimal. It's simple, cheap and relatively effective, but I have a hunch that there may be a better solution to how we heat liquid for vaporization.
Here are a few things you could check out for inspiration, including their patents (at uspto.gov) to get diagrams and details of their materials and construction...
- spa steam generators
- home steam shower units
- clothing irons
- industrial steam generators
- pressurized steam cleaners for removing gum, etc., when cleaning sidewalks
submerge the coil!!!
I did this in accident one time(laid the coil to low and it was half covered by the juice in the well, it actually worked out pretty well for me. Lots of crackling.... This is mostly in jest, but it may be worth a shot
I did this in accident one time(laid the coil to low and it was half covered by the juice in the well, it actually worked out pretty well for me. Lots of crackling.... This is mostly in jest, but it may be worth a shot
I think by coil shape you are referring to the cylindrical shape of the coil;
however, the shape of the wire might be the more important issue.
A flattened wire - ribbon wire would be more efficient that the standard round wire.
Pretty sure there used to be a long thread about magic ribbon wire.
Then there are the twisted wire types like the claptons, which effectively give increased area of the ribbon wire, but using regular round wire.
In terms of industrial heating elements, I do believe some of them use a coiled-coiled wire; that is, a wire which is first finely coiled in a thin long long coil, then that long thing is then coiled into a bigger coil. Like a Clapton but without the center wire.
So yesterday I discovered an extremely efficient coil, or wire should I say.
Ribbon wire. Although I bought .1mm by .5mm size and the wire is more flimsy than nickel. The only good use I found for it was twisted it with its self, to get some rigidity. Although I did make a coil using a single stand of it using something like 6-9 wraps. Because of how soft or flimsy the wire is the coil was not pretty but it heated evenly, or close enough. I found at something like 15 watts I could blow pretty big clouds. I tried torching the wire before I wrapped a coil but it was still impossible to build a decent coil if any at all. Because the wire is so thin it heats up incredible quick, if you can build a coil with it.
Ribbon wire. Although I bought .1mm by .5mm size and the wire is more flimsy than nickel. The only good use I found for it was twisted it with its self, to get some rigidity. Although I did make a coil using a single stand of it using something like 6-9 wraps. Because of how soft or flimsy the wire is the coil was not pretty but it heated evenly, or close enough. I found at something like 15 watts I could blow pretty big clouds. I tried torching the wire before I wrapped a coil but it was still impossible to build a decent coil if any at all. Because the wire is so thin it heats up incredible quick, if you can build a coil with it.
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