I thought I would drop this out there as it has proven to be an excellent solution for me, and one that I suspect many have moved on from in these sub-ohm, Japanese organic cotton times and would not think to try.
I have always been a fan of SS mesh wicks even after everyone had moved onto the Ekowool, ceramics, non-bleached cotton, and now Japanese organic cotton, I have stuck with the SS mesh because I had a working solution in various RDAs (my favorite being the $12 IGO-S (now discontinued)). The biggest challenge was always the oxidization process, or lack thereof in my case. I never liked the idea of a pre-oxidized wick.
There have been endless discussions on this on this forum, but in the end, a fully torched wick always distorted the flavor for me and additionally some significant (in my mind) questions have been raised about whether oxidization is creating CrIVs which are known carcinogens with significant risk. Thus, I never oxidized in the conventional sense (i.e. heavy torch burn the whole wick until black) and always only self-oxidized the mesh using the peter k method (build the coil, slide un-oxidized mesh wick in, slowly heat with a mech mod working out the shorts so that the only oxidized parts were those that had direct contact with the coil). This has worked for me for several years now, but the downside was that shorts and microshorts were sometimes extremely hard to work out (i.e. hours spent fooling with a new coil / wick setup) and that shorts would pop up during use (i.e. all of a sudden you start getting dry, Kanthal tasting hits from a coil that was previously working fine).
As an early DNA40 adopter, my first thought was that because Nickel wire is deemed non-resistant (hence electricity flows easily through the Nickel), there was a possibility that unlike before, where the shorts against mesh were largely caused by the old principle that electricity tasks the path of least resistance, the least resistant path was now the Nickel coil, and electricity would no longer want to run through the SS but would instead prefer the coil as it was the easiest path back to ground. After building my first coil and sliding in an SS wick, I was delighted to find that this was true in practice. After building a Nickel coil and sliding a completely un-oxidized SS mesh wick in with light coil contact, the coil lit up bright red even with absolutely no oxidization on the SS mesh at all.
This has turned out to be an amazing vape experience. All of the downsides and hassles of SS mesh are all but gone (occasionally the coil needs a little poking and prodding if it does short against the mesh, but this is rare), and all of the benefits still exist (extremely clean, flavorful vape, much less wick deterioration, excellent wick longevity).
The additional benefit of temp control completely negates (for me) all of the concerns regarding overheating SS mesh and the release of CrIVs. It simply cannot get hot enough for the heat / chemical reaction to occur. Also, the flavor with temp regulation on SS wick is (for me) unparalleled.
Its my recommendation that some of those that liked mesh in the past but abandoned it to the hassle associated with setup give this a shot. Additionally, those that didnt try mesh due to the perceived complexities in the oxidization process should give this a whirl. I have found that I can build a fully functional coil with no shorts in 5-10 mins. I trained a buddy up on this method and he too can throw a great coil / wick setup together with little effort after his first try.
I have always been a fan of SS mesh wicks even after everyone had moved onto the Ekowool, ceramics, non-bleached cotton, and now Japanese organic cotton, I have stuck with the SS mesh because I had a working solution in various RDAs (my favorite being the $12 IGO-S (now discontinued)). The biggest challenge was always the oxidization process, or lack thereof in my case. I never liked the idea of a pre-oxidized wick.
There have been endless discussions on this on this forum, but in the end, a fully torched wick always distorted the flavor for me and additionally some significant (in my mind) questions have been raised about whether oxidization is creating CrIVs which are known carcinogens with significant risk. Thus, I never oxidized in the conventional sense (i.e. heavy torch burn the whole wick until black) and always only self-oxidized the mesh using the peter k method (build the coil, slide un-oxidized mesh wick in, slowly heat with a mech mod working out the shorts so that the only oxidized parts were those that had direct contact with the coil). This has worked for me for several years now, but the downside was that shorts and microshorts were sometimes extremely hard to work out (i.e. hours spent fooling with a new coil / wick setup) and that shorts would pop up during use (i.e. all of a sudden you start getting dry, Kanthal tasting hits from a coil that was previously working fine).
As an early DNA40 adopter, my first thought was that because Nickel wire is deemed non-resistant (hence electricity flows easily through the Nickel), there was a possibility that unlike before, where the shorts against mesh were largely caused by the old principle that electricity tasks the path of least resistance, the least resistant path was now the Nickel coil, and electricity would no longer want to run through the SS but would instead prefer the coil as it was the easiest path back to ground. After building my first coil and sliding in an SS wick, I was delighted to find that this was true in practice. After building a Nickel coil and sliding a completely un-oxidized SS mesh wick in with light coil contact, the coil lit up bright red even with absolutely no oxidization on the SS mesh at all.
This has turned out to be an amazing vape experience. All of the downsides and hassles of SS mesh are all but gone (occasionally the coil needs a little poking and prodding if it does short against the mesh, but this is rare), and all of the benefits still exist (extremely clean, flavorful vape, much less wick deterioration, excellent wick longevity).
The additional benefit of temp control completely negates (for me) all of the concerns regarding overheating SS mesh and the release of CrIVs. It simply cannot get hot enough for the heat / chemical reaction to occur. Also, the flavor with temp regulation on SS wick is (for me) unparalleled.
Its my recommendation that some of those that liked mesh in the past but abandoned it to the hassle associated with setup give this a shot. Additionally, those that didnt try mesh due to the perceived complexities in the oxidization process should give this a whirl. I have found that I can build a fully functional coil with no shorts in 5-10 mins. I trained a buddy up on this method and he too can throw a great coil / wick setup together with little effort after his first try.
