What Unkamen Supplies (aka Ralph Helmrich) cleaned up his wire? His wire used to be filthy, oily, and gummy. And I have trouble with SS430 wire as it is too springy. Can't torch it, as then it gets brittle. And Ralph says it can't be tempered anyway.
I have a roll of Ziv NiFe48 and KP NiFe70, both are awesome wire but seriously low in resistance. I thought I had 26ga Ni200 the first time I used them.
I torch my Unkamen's SS430 lightly prior to coiling unless I'm drill twisting it and then I torch it before removing it from the drill.Spinning it in a drill gets the springy out
I haven't had any real problems with them. I thought Crown 1 stock SS316L coils with nickel legs would be a huge problem. But I played around with the TCR and I arrived at 0.00125 and it was perfect. Or you can cheat and use Replay and not worry about it.
In that video I just posted earlier, John (Evolv) also explained that sometimes you can get Kanthal to work with Replay. Works best with the legs being nickel, but the atty itself may have its own TCR and that sort of works too.
Interesting video, especially where it starts here:I haven't had any real problems with them. I thought Crown 1 stock SS316L coils with nickel legs would be a huge problem. But I played around with the TCR and I arrived at 0.00125 and it was perfect. Or you can cheat and use Replay and not worry about it.
In that video I just posted earlier, John (Evolv) also explained that sometimes you can get Kanthal to work with Replay. Works best with the legs being nickel, but the atty itself may have its own TCR and that sort of works too.
I have a roll of Ziv NiFe48 and KP NiFe70, both are awesome wire but seriously low in resistance. I thought I had 26ga Ni200 the first time I used them.
Yes, NiFe70 is way low in res but not so much with NiFe52. NiFe52 does have a little lower res than Ti, but a little higher TCR (bonus for TC). I switched most of my Ti builds to NiFe52 and had to add one wrap to my NiFe coils to get a similar res as my Ti coils. Honestly I can't tell the difference in TC performance between Ti and NiFe52 but both seem to be more stable/predictable than SS430 after repeated dryburn/rewick cycles.
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I dunno. Yeah, it's springy off the roll but a light torch, to dull or slightly bright, red works well for me. I've done some twisted 28 gauge and twisting eliminates the spring, enough, to be able to wrap a good, tight, coil.
Me thinks Ralph is wrong.
And it is very clean, no sign of oxides when wiping with IPA on a clean tissue. When flame tempering it, the "burn off" shows very little to no signs of oils being burned, either.
Both of these can be true for low carbon stainless. When you heat the wire to just a dull red hot color you are annealing it, that process makes the iron in the wire soft. If the iron gets heated beyond red hot to say orange or orange/white then the iron becomes very brittle and hard if it has a high carbon content. Generally speaking the term "tempering" is used to describe a controlled low temp long duration heating of high carbon steels to draw the hardness and brittleness out of steel which was created during the high temp forging process.
Most stainless is a low carbon and low iron steel and therefore can be annealed to soften it as Awsum and I have observed.
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I am just a sucker for any video that has John (Evolv) talking. He doesn't like cameras too much, so he is not found in many videos. But he sure can explain how things work very well. And I didn't know, but he must be a fan of Dave Jones of EEVBlog too (so am I), since he is wearing an EEVBlog T-shirt. Anyway I watched it a second time just in case I missed something the first time. I also logged some of the highlights of the video and I thought maybe others would want a copy too. Feel free to edit, correct, and add to it too. As I am not perfect.
00:50 Daniel speaks about Replay
01:42 Paranormal is one of Daniel's favorite mods
02:25 Use the DNA250C as a power bank
09:20 Scoped output of Replay
11:02 Replay reduces spitback
12:40 Drone video of Evolv
13:10 Quick shot of Brandon
13:40 Start of John's lesson (with his Dave Jones EEVBlog T-shirt)
14:00 How Evolv got started
15:12 Tinfoil hat drones
15:50 9 watts... umm ok... 9 watts
16:28 Darwin was born
17:43 TC was born
18:28 TC can work well or can be finicky
21:00 How TC works
22:20 Virtually everything is made with a press fit
23:55 TCR explained
28:00 Replay explained
28:45 Can run Replay and TC at the same time
29:15 Temperature dominate vs power dominate
29:25 TC doesn't really care about wire type?
30:25 Flavors at different temperatures
33:00 Thermal mass
33:45 Favorite puff
40:15 Kanthal and Replay
47:16 It's more of a party trick
50:00 Replay for pods?
52:10 John's Replay pod
54:47 Fancier processors aren't bigger
57:05 Everything that has been invented...
57:30 There are still smokers
58:50 The market is moving towards pods
59:40 Evolv's Darwin
59:38 Evolv Kicks
1:00:26 Two steps forward and two steps back
1:02:25 John's secret lab
1:04:10 Evolv's manufacturing plant
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Well hopefully someone can remove my fears of heating wire beyond vaping temperatures. First a few years back someone posted a pic of their coil and asking if this is rust on their coil (Kanthal) and wick (cotton). And I thought no way. The iron is the core of Kanthal and it is protected through other layers of other metals.
I didn't have their coils to look at, but I had my own Kanthal coils (this is before I got into TC). So I looked at them at high magnification and I'll be. Checking for hotspots and dry burning caused microfractures in the wire (and becoming brittle). Some of them which reached the iron core. So it is possible to get rust. And I did see rust in some of the microfractures, but they didn't surface on my coils yet.
Then Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos came out with his warning about dry burning (Dry-burning metal coils: is it a good thing?). Then many vapers criticised Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos and he kind of backpedaled. Well I thought maybe he was right at first and I need to learn more about this.
Then I got my first Crown 1 and I quickly bought RBAs for it. They came setup with a SS coil already installed. Being sometimes lazy, ok I'll used it and will replace it later. They say it is SS316L and a TCR for SS316L did work fine, so I guess it is (I never used any SS wire before, just Kanthal and Ni200). I did dry burn them from time to time and I hadn't noticed any problems. But one day, I got this awful smell from one of them. I thought well just wick it and juice it and everything will be fine.
Heck no! It tasted exactly like it smelled. It was a smell and taste I have never experienced before. It was metallic like, but very unique to me. I would know it again if I ever smelled or tasted it. I saved all of my used coils in a jar. I dunno why, I would just throw them away when the jar got full anyway. But I dumped them out and found another one I tossed in there. And I smelled it and that had the exact same smell, but very weak.
I pretty much sworn off using SS wire from that point on until awsum or someone convinced me again to try SS wire. And I haven't ran across that smell/taste again, but I don't think I ever dry burned or use contact SS coils ever since either. So I don't check for hotspots either. I pretty much do this for all wire types now. If wiping down with alcohol doesn't work, I just wouldn't use them.
With the cost of wire being so insignificant, and the effort to build a coil being pretty much the same way, why anyone would dry burn a coil is beyond me. Nothing tastes better than a new build! I tried it a total of twice, back in the kanthal days, and each time the taste after a dry burn was putrid. Just ain't worth it, to me.
Pod Mods make great Stealth Mods, especially when they support Replay!
Did you notice how small that was in John's hand.
Did you notice how small that was in John's hand.
Which is funnier if you can read schematics (okay spoiler for others). As that is an op amp with a negative feedback loop.
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Okay some of you might think that was too nerdy to be funny. So how about his one?Which is funnier if you can read schematics (okay spoiler for others). As that is an op amp with a negative feedback loop.
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