General Ohm, Wattage, and Volatage Question

[JoppaRoadCruiser]

So I've tried searching the forum and can't seem to find a specific answer to my question. Here goes....

I understand Ohm's law and the relation of resistance to watts, volts, and amps. I undertand how batteries are rated with the amount of amps that can be drawn. My question is in regards to the idea of sub-ohming. I see people vaping on sub-ohm setups in the 30 watt plus range and it confuses me. When I first started vaping one of the first things I did was learn Ohm's law and how it relates to your resistance, wattage, and volatage. I remember coming across this nifty chart that shows ohms on the y axis and volts on the x axis with watts in the middle of the graph. It shows the colors and pretty much any ohm/voltage you are vaping at, the green "sweet spot" is in the 5-8 watt range. Here is a link to a jpg image I found using google image search.

http://www............com/ecig-ohm-voltage-chart.jpg

Here's my question....when people sub ohm at 30 watts plus aren't they just frying their coils and juice? Whenever I started vaping on my aspire 1.8 ohm tank I never went above 4 volts since that would be pushing me into the 8 watt plus "red" area. I'm sure I'm missing something here but I can't seem to find the answer. Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

[JoppaRoadCruiser]

Please ignore the spelling error in the title. Not sure how to edit the thread title. Long day and I was typing fast.

 

[K_Tech]

Here's my question....when people sub ohm at 30 watts plus aren't they just frying their coils and juice? Whenever I started vaping on my aspire 1.8 ohm tank I never went above 4 volts since that would be pushing me into the 8 watt plus "red" area. I'm sure I'm missing something here but I can't seem to find the answer. Thanks in advance for any replies.

That chart is more useful as a starting point for "standard" vaping equipment, and is a tad outdated.

If I can wander a bit...

There are several things that go into a vape. Power (whether you're looking at volts, amps, or watts), coil/wick design and materials, air flow, and the ability of the coil/wick design to consistently "move" e-liquid into the coil area.

The problem (if you want to call it that) with "standard" designs is you can only modify them so far before you've outstripped the capacity of the wick to feed liquid, creating a burnt/dry hit.

With a rebuildable, if you can feed enough e-liquid to the hot spot to keep the wick from drying out, the sky is the limit when it comes to wattage.

 

[Topacka]

In short, no. As long as your wick and wire type can handle the wattage and temperature that you're pushing, nothing is going to 'fry'. You aren't working with extreme temperatures and aren't going to reach the flash point of your juice. Nichrome wire and higher gauge kanthal have a higher chance to snap or melt at lower ohms, but usually only when dry firing.

 

[JoppaRoadCruiser]

Got ya. That was the answer I was looking for. Thanks man.

 

[K_Tech]

And I also wanted to add that with a rebuildable dripper, you'll notice that these folks will do one or two hits (depending on what RDA they're using) and then they add e-liquid to the dripper, making sure everything's nice and saturated for the next vape.

 

[JoppaRoadCruiser]

Yeah I noticed that at the shop yesterday. Also, I bought a patriot clone a while back to try dripping. Got home and built a 1.6 ohm coil with organic cotton and gave it a whirl. Horrible "earthy burnt taste" and crazy throat hit. Put it down after that and thought I was doing something wrong. Well the folks at the shop yesterday informed me that when dripping with organic cotton you usually have to cycle some juice through it in order to get that earthy taste out. Thought I was burning the cotton but it looked fine...I was perplexed as to why dripping wasn't as tasty as everyone made it out to be.

Also if I want to consider dripping more, the guy at the store said I'm going to need to drop my nic levels....that was responsible for the intense throat it. I vape 18 in a tank and out of a dripper is a whole different ball game. For all you dripper and tank users...do you have to buy different strengths of the same juice to accomodate both dripping and tanks? Not sure if I like having to buy 6 and 18 level nic juices just so I can drip and use a tank.

Anyways thanks for the replies everyone!

 

[K_Tech]

Yeah I noticed that at the shop yesterday. Also, I bought a patriot clone a while back to try dripping. Got home and built a 1.6 ohm coil with organic cotton and gave it a whirl. Horrible "earthy burnt taste" and crazy throat hit. Put it down after that and thought I was doing something wrong. Well the folks at the shop yesterday informed me that when dripping with organic cotton you usually have to cycle some juice through it in order to get that earthy taste out. Thought I was burning the cotton but it looked fine...I was perplexed as to why dripping wasn't as tasty as everyone made it out to be.

Also if I want to consider dripping more, the guy at the store said I'm going to need to drop my nic levels....that was responsible for the intense throat it. I vape 18 in a tank and out of a dripper is a whole different ball game. For all you dripper and tank users...do you have to buy different strengths of the same juice to accomodate both dripping and tanks? Not sure if I like having to buy 6 and 18 level nic juices just so I can drip and use a tank.

Anyways thanks for the replies everyone!

Some people boil their cotton to remove any residuals, some don't. I use organic cotton and boil it. Try it, if you feel like it, and see if that changes anything for you. For me, boiled cotton is good to go from the first few hits.

And again, for me, I use 18-24mg e-liquid normally, and 6mg when I use a dripper. You have the potential to go through significantly more e-liquid when dripping, so you're getting more nicotine, of course.

 

[Fizzpop]

To add to what has been said above... I don't sub-ohm as there are some very real safety concerns*, but I do tend to vape low-Ohm coils. One of the real advantages is that the coils heat up very quickly. If you have ever found yourself taking a few puffs to "get your mod going" you've experienced the bad end of this. Having a coil heat up pretty much instantly makes for a fine vape.

*There are those on ECF who I feel sub-ohm safely, but to do so safely, there is a lot to keep up with in order to make sure you are inside the safety zone and that zone is much more narrow in the sub-ohm world. There is simply more room for error and the unexpected >= 1.2 - 1.4 Ohms.