Dual Coil Quality

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rmerriett

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Sep 17, 2010
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I'm looking for Dual coils that have at least some level of quality Control. I'm not having very good luck with the smoketek ones. I get a few that just don't vape right, and now I'm getting them where the threads are all jazzed up and won't even screw on my battery. I love the dual coils that work, but I'm getting tired of 1/3 being defective. I know somewhere there has to be a place were they actually sell you 20 good cartomizers if you pay for 20. As a side note I prefer clear ones.

Thanks in advance,
Rich
 

Sinlak

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SmokTech is aparantly the best, altho I also had horrible luck with them. Super nasty taste, I mean down right disgusting like.. HOLY CRAP WTF DID I JUST VAPE!? Is the world ending!?!?!?..real bad. some just dont heat up quick at all. I have some DCs from Avidvaper that DO work very well tho. Cartomizers - Dual Coil Cartomizers - Avid Vaper I got the xxl
 

Devonmoonshire

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I find this to be very very curious. I have used nothing but Smoktech DC Cartos since I first started using DC Cartos. They have performed Admirably to make an egregious Understatement. I have used them on Ego 650 Batteries, Ego 900 Batteries, Ego 1000 Batteries. Riva 750 Batteries, Alone on my Provari as well as in my Dual Coil Cartomizer Tank from MAP. They have always produced amazing flavor and vapor for me.

I know it will be asked so I will put it out here now. I have used Either Pink Spot Vapors or E-Liquid Emporium 70%PG 30%VG Juices in these cartomizers.

Nate aka Darth Vapor
 

Dougiestyle

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I haven't had a problem from Smoktech DCs, either. I vape high VG liquids, so they gunk up a little faster than some peoples reports. I have yet to try cleaning any with the posted syringe methods. None have produced less than great flavor and vapor thus far unless I screwd a DIY mix or let the filler get too dry.

Sorry for your luck!

I've bought my steel DCs from VaporKings FWIW.
 

Devonmoonshire

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I haven't had a problem from Smoktech DCs, either. I vape high VG liquids, so they gunk up a little faster than some peoples reports. I have yet to try cleaning any with the posted syringe methods. None have produced less than great flavor and vapor thus far unless I screwd a DIY mix or let the filler get too dry.

Sorry for your luck!

I've bought my steel DCs from VaporKings FWIW.

Yes I just today tossed out one that I have been Vaping Like a Freight Train on for over 3 weeks in my DC MAP Tank. First one I ever used and it has gone above and beyond all of my expectations. May it rest in peace in that big Garto Graveyard in the Sky :D


Best of Luck to you in your Search;
Nate aka Darth Vapor
 

erich

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I'll start by saying that smoktech(usually rebranded, though. :( ) dual coils are the best I've found by a wide margin when they work right. That said, I too have had some of the nasty ones. My suspicions (one you can do something about, and one you can't):
  • The middle layer wicking material absorbs slowly, and thus can be dry even when the polyfill is drenched. I'm going to try filling these and letting them sit for a bit to let it saturate. Basically just keep 2 rolling and fill one, attach the other.
  • In the defective ones, the sleeve inside should be around the atomizer, not above it around the connector to the wire. If this is true, then I believe that to be the source of the defect (more on this below)

That's all the suggestions I have on a workaround, so feel free to stop reading here, but I experimented a bit with this.

-----------------------------------------
I gutted one of them to try to see what was the deal with it. You can remove the tube from the clear ones much like disassembling a clearomizer -- just screw it on the battery and rock the plastic back and forth until it slips off. Basically, there are 3 layers inside. There is the filler, which is wrapped around the 2 atomizers. Then each atomizer has another little wrapper around it of denser material, and finally a sleeve directly over the atomizer.

dualcoil2.jpg

In this image, the carto was new, freshly filled to the brim, and gave me the nasty cloud in the first vape. I've removed the filler, and also removed the outer wrapper on the top atomizer. You can see it above, and it's been toasted. If you singe a bit of the *outer* polyfill with a lighter (Hold it at a distance and waft the scent toward you. Don't just sniff it, being burning plastic and what not. :danger:), you'll instantly recognize the odor as the, "HOLY CRAP WTF DID I JUST VAPE!?" from above.

There's a better image on the smoktech site where you can zoom in here. I'm not sure if this is suggesting that the sleeve is not supposed to go over the atomizer, or just that it's been pulled back to pose for the photo. It's quite possible that my removal of the outer layers deformed the atomizer coil, but having been as gentle as I could with it, in its present state it doesn't even seem possible that the sleeve can go over the coils. The diameter of the coils is greater than the diameter of the sleeve. I recall that it was with single coil carts, BOGE, etc.

I suspect they all come from the same production line, and thus it's a bit of a roll of the dice. Every factory has an acceptable margin of defective items per unit which they then work into the final price of the lot under the agreement that the dealer will take care of (which in general for a bad carto, they don't). It's generally around 5% for small, inexpensive items, but who knows in China. I don't know what the unit size is, nor the acceptable level of failures. Since they won't sell less than 500 at a time, lets assume that's a unit, and give them the benefit of the doubt that 5% is their QC number. That leaves 25 bad cartos in the batch. Hiccups on production lines often happen in succession before being corrected over the next few units, so while the hope is that they all get spread around and every now and then someone gets a bad one in a pack, it's entirely possible (though improbable) that some unlucky person out there buys 5 packs of 5 and they're all junk. :(
 
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YetiHunter

Full Member
May 26, 2011
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Chicagoland
Smoketech 1.5 ohm dual coils, no matter what vendor, have always performed, inconsistently, for me.
So much so, after going through 50 or so, I don't even know what's "normal" behavior from this product.

Draw goes from sucking a lemon through a straw to putting your mouth over a blasting fire house.
Heat goes from room temperature to sucking on a hair dryer. Neither of these variables are connected
to each other. Furthermore, these variances can occur within one drag. Sometimes they produce vapor, immediately.
Sometimes nothing comes out for a full second and then: "SNAP! POP!" and you feel like you're sucking grease off a hot frying pan.

When they're good, you get a half hour of said good or maybe even a day if you're a very very very light user.
Then it's all down hill from there. What's consistent is that they act like they're overfilled when they're dry and they act like they're dry when they're overfilled. :)

I recall the first clear smoketech dc I used: I got a nasty drag of burnt polyfil, yanked it out of my mouth and saw
a good centimeter circumference of nothingness where said polyfill used to be.

I have mostly used the ss dc's; they've killed 1 riva, 3 egos, 1 ego passthrough, 1 brother and 1 lea.
The lea incident was quite notorious. The lea went into bomberman advance "revenge mode". No, it
wasn't the "click 7 times, then click four times, then click ten times while fully charged and hooked up to a computer"
phenomena; I wasn't even using it as a passthrough. However, it wouldn't shut off until the battery connector and battery
innards fried.

The damage to the other pv's seems to be one of two things: either they trash the actual battery, while everything
else functions correctly; or they mess up the switch in a way in which it stays on until automatic shutoff, or it assumes
the battery is dead, when it ain't.

Nonetheless, I'm certain someone out there has had the same experience with any other cartomizer out on the market.
 

440BB

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Wow, it's amazing to me how different our experiences are in this vaping community. I've had great experiences with steel dcc's so far (4 months) on everything from 650mah eGo clones to a 4.8 volt 18650 box mod. Like most filler-based cartos they are happiest with thinner juices, but other than that I can't kill 'em. I'm hitting on a two month old carto that I've cleaned twice and it's still going strong after 75+ ml of TW Red Label Strawberry, and the one I keep filled with Halo Menthol Ice is older, 100+ ml so far, cleaned once. I'm feeling lucky.

I hope you just got a bad batch because my stock is a couple months old. They're lasting so long I probably won't need more until next summer maybe, so I hope any QC issues get resolved soon. Of course by then there'll be another new big thing to try out!
 
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