Easy Way To Calculate Ohms or Wraps Needed For Alien / Clapton / Hive / Twisted Wire?

[ModBox]

I'm looking to buy some of the more exotic wires such as alien wire but can't work out what gauge to get if say I want a coil of 4 wraps and a resistance of 0.5 ohms. I want to get wire that has a balance between surface area, ramp up time and battery life usage and tend to vape at a maximum of 50w.

Most vendors won't give you the actual total combined gauge but will give you the resistance per meter such as:

Kanthal A1 Type Wire - "Alien Wire" - 0.3mm x 0.8mm Flat Wrapped With 0.2mm (32 AWG)
Measured Resistance - 6.60 ohms/m

Kanthal A1 Type Wire - "Hive Wire" - 0.25mm + 0.25mm (30 AWG + 30 AWG) x 2 - 8.70 ohms/m

I've been trying to work out how to input these into steam engine online coil calculator but can't figure it out.

Thanks

 

[APathos]

Well you could figure out how many wraps give what resistance at least. i.e. Kanthal A1 using just ribbon on steam engine with 0.3 x 0.8, with 6.6 resistance is 1092.4mm. 0.3 x 0.7331 with 6.6 ohms comes out to 1001.1mm. So a single 4 wrap would be ~0.4ohms. 5 wrap would give you 0.5ohms.

Generally the resistance is just the fat wire in the combo (close enough for me anyway, when making claptons). I assume ramp up would be the same; the core wire. It never really made me pay attention, so it can't be that different (or I didn't care enough). Twisted of the same gauge I just treat as dual coils and it comes out correct (divide a single resistance in half, close enough). The steam engine does have a Round twisted/parallel setting though.

Not sure how you could guesstimate surface area with out lengths of the individual wires. But its more

 

[ModBox]

Thanks very much for your help. Ah so if I I just change the target resistance it will help me work that out. I notice you ribbon wire can allow you to put in 2 wire gauges. Where did the second 0.7331 figure come from?

 

[APathos]

No problem. To fake it, i just changed the dimensions of the wire to hit your stated "Measured Resistance - 6.60 ohms/m". So "Dimensions of wire" to the "0.3" mm x "0.7331" mm is "Results" - "Resistance wire length" of 1.0011 meters for 6.6 ohms. Then you can mess with target resistance, inner diameter, etc like you normally would.