I am new to tank systems so I apologize for any potential ignorance. My understanding was that surface tension was supposed to keep the liquid in the tank. Could you clarify what you mean by "wick too well". Additionally are there any other measures that could be taken to prevent potential leakage?
Jimmy basically covered it, but to expand a bit:
If you take a genesis style tank, which uses a vertical SS mesh wick, and tip it upside down juice will usually flood out through the wick. Silica seems to do a better job at "stopping" the juice than SS mesh does. With the eRoll, the tank cartridge sits above the atomizer, and a little spike goes into the tank, and wicks juice down to the coil.
The silica wick which helps bring juice from the tank to the coil also acts as a "plug" to stop juice from just continually pouring from the tank onto the coil. Just like how juice will leak through a SS wick on a genesis style tank, I'd imagine the same thing might happen with the eRoll if you throw a SS wick in there.
I've heard a few reports that even in the stock setup the tank will leak if you leave it in your pocket with the mouthpiece end facing up, because with the mouthpiece end facing up, the hole in the tank is facing down, and the silica wick doesn't completely stop the juice from leaking out, or else it wouldn't be able to feed juice to the coil obviously. I'm just theorizing that this phenomenon will potentially get worse with SS in place of silica.
If you roll your SS wick super tight, and stuff it in the eRoll very snug you should cut down on any potential leaking, but the side effect of this is that you might cut down on the amount of juice being fed to the coil, which could lead to dry hits. Juice feeding is always a balancing act on pretty much all devices.
A carto-tank kind of uses surface tension to hold the juice at bay. The holes in the carto are small enough, and the juice thick enough, that there is already a little resistance for the juice to flow into the carto. Then on the inside of the carto you have filler material, which while still porous to allow juice to feed, is tight enough to stop the juice flooding into the carto. The key to juice feeding in a carto-tank is that when you take a puff on the tank, it creates negative pressure inside the carto, which then quite literally sucks in juice from the tank.
It's really a combination or air pressure, juice viscosity, and capillary action that controls all juice feeding and retention.
There's also the possibility of something shorting out in there too. It's a very small area that you'd be putting the SS mesh into, and unless you did a perfect job oxidizing the mesh I could see it having many areas that it could possibly short out against. I'm not sure what type of protection the eRoll has to deal with that sort of thing, but I'm assuming (hoping) there is some sort of over-current protection.
