Help with coils

[qfivenine]

I am fairly new to RBA and have a few questions. Please keep in mind that I am not really ready for micro coils yet. I have a Vamo V4 and a sigelei Zmax.

1. Did I understand correctly, that the more wraps I do, the more liquid gets vaporised and that in turn increases flavour and vapour production?

2. What will give me the best results in terms of flavour and vapour, when I have 2mm silica and 0,20mm NiCr? Building on a Kayfun Lite Plus, how many wraps should I do?

3. When vaping at say 9 watts, the voltage gets automatically adjusted. What is the difference then between a 1.5 and a 2.8 ohm coil?

4. Will flavour wicks help improve flavour or is that just to stop flooding in BCC's?

Thank you very much for any help!

 

[CloudZ]

I am fairly new to RBA and have a few questions. Please keep in mind that I am not really ready for micro coils yet. I have a Vamo V4 and a Sigelei Zmax.

1. Did I understand correctly, that the more wraps I do, the more liquid gets vaporised and that in turn increases flavour and vapour production?

2. What will give me the best results in terms of flavour and vapour, when I have 2mm silica and 0,20mm NiCr? Building on a Kayfun Lite Plus, how many wraps should I do?

3. When vaping at say 9 watts, the voltage gets automatically adjusted. What is the difference then between a 1.5 and a 2.8 ohm coil?

4. Will flavour wicks help improve flavour or is that just to stop flooding in BCC's?

Thank you very much for any help!

First off, I recommend studying and trying microcoils, as it seems like you may eventually be interested in trying them anyway and you should find that they really aren't any more difficult than a normal coil. I assume you intend to wrap directly around your silica, which I think is actually trickier than wrapping around a drill bit and threading cotton through.

To your q's:

1. It's not quite that simple. You really have wattage, surface area, and wire volume. More surface area is always better, provided you can get the volume hot enough with enough watts. Without going into too much detail on this, I recommend you wrap a 3 ohm coil with your 32 gauge and turn up wattage until it vapes well.

2. Double over your silica and wrap 5/4. Drop a wrap if that is too high.

3. It is going to work in harmony with your surface area and wire volume. There are no real rules here, just opinions and preferences. The trend though, is that thinner wire will take less wattage at a given resistance for the same temperature. Too much temperature and your juice burns. Too much volume and response time is painfully slow. It's a balance and it just takes experience to figure out what works best for you.

4. IME, flavor wicks just prevent flooding and keep the main wick saturated a bit better. I'd like to try more rebuilding in a way that eliminates them, but for now my technique requires them.

 

[qfivenine]

Thank you. You told me to wrap a 3 ohm coil and then later said to do 5/4 wrap. By 5/4 I assume you mean to wrap 5 times and then unwrap the first wrap to get the coil into position. I wrap with around 5 wraps already and at 0.20mm (is that 32gauge?) NiCr it comes out around 2.0 ohms. What's my problem there?

About doubling over the wick: I only did the "S" type build myself, that is to wrap the wick 2 times so it has "pockets" on both sides. Is doubling over better or do we mean the same thing there?

And last thing about wattage: if I set the mod to say 9 watts, shouldn't the vape experience be the same with no matter what resistance the coil has? This is puzzling me!

 

[State O' Flux]

My responses to your questions may be similar to those provided by Cloudz (who did offer a well considered response)... just from a different perspective with a different thought process. Think of my commentary more as addendum to what has already been provided.

I am fairly new to RBA and have a few questions. Please keep in mind that I am not really ready for micro coils yet. I have a Vamo V4 and a Sigelei Zmax.

1. Did I understand correctly, that the more wraps I do, the more liquid gets vaporised and that in turn increases flavour and vapour production? The first concept to understand is that the target resistance is a priority for both pure mechanical and regulated devices. With a mechanical battery, the resistance itself is the "control" of wattage/amperage delivered.
As you are using regulated APVs that both have amperage limiters and will not fire below set resistance values, you will be desiring a coil resistance above 'X'... with 'X' probably in the range of 1.5Ω +/-. You select wire size, be it anywhere from 24~32 gauge, to obtain the desired resistance, coil surface area and heat dwell time - or to put it another way, time to optimal heat value.

2. What will give me the best results in terms of flavour and vapour, when I have 2mm silica and 0,20mm NiCr? Building on a Kayfun Lite Plus, how many wraps should I do? In Europe, they tend to use the metric system to identify wire size, while in the US, "gauge" is more common. For example, 0.20mm wire is 0.0079" or 32 gauge, 0.30mm is 0.0126" or 28 gauge and so on.
I would recommend that at some point you obtain some 27, 28 or 30ga Kanthal A1 wire as it (28ga that is) is probably the most popular and most frequently used with a Kayfun type atty. For now, follow Cloudz recommendation as a starting point.

3. When vaping at say 9 watts, the voltage gets automatically adjusted. What is the difference then between a 1.5 and a 2.8 ohm coil? That is correct - when set to wattage, voltage delivered is determined by the microprocessor algorithm and the resistance value read by the microprocessor.
The difference between the two resistances, of the approximate voltage delivery can be found on any vaping volt/amp/resistance chart, or by using a ohms law calculator.

4. Will flavour wicks help improve flavour or is that just to stop flooding in BCC's? "Flavor wicks" are used with BC type clearomizers and glassomizers - they are not necessarily used with Kayfun type atomizers, although with certain types of coil builds, like a vertical coil, and with some horizontal coils, wick material outside the coil ID are used... but no on calls it "flavor wick".

Thank you very much for any help!

Finally, I would suggest reading some of the threads regarding Kayfun builds... most that are building Kayfuns, myself included, are using cotton, for a relatively simple inverted 'U' wick that reaches down to and just touches the juice grove deck.

Merry Christmas

 

[qfivenine]

Thank you. 28gauge (0.30mm) is the thickest I can get from my vendor. I assume it gives the least resistance for a given amount of wire length? If I do 0.20mm with 5/4 wraps I end up with around 2.0 ohms but when I will do it with 28gauge wire, it would become less, right? Should I follow CloudZ advice and do like 7/6 wraps to achieve around 3.0 ohms (that is just a guess) or do it around 1-5 ohms with 5/4 of 28gauge wire?

 

[State O' Flux]

Thank you. 28gauge (0.30mm) is the thickest I can get from my vendor. I assume it gives the least resistance for a given amount of wire length? If I do 0.20mm with 5/4 wraps I end up with around 2.0 ohms but when I will do it with 28gauge wire, it would become less, right? Should I follow CloudZ advice and do like 7/6 wraps to achieve around 3.0 ohms (that is just a guess) or do it around 1-5 ohms with 5/4 of 28gauge wire?

Yes, thicker wire will have less resistance per foot, or inch. Here is some useful resistance value information.

Ga...... Ohms/ft./in. @ 68F
24...... 2.04 - 0.17
26...... 3.31 - 0.28
27...... 4.15 - 0.35
28...... 5.27 - 0.44
29...... 6.55 - 0.55
30...... 8.36 - 0.70
32...... 13.1 - 1.09

And some links that may be of value as well.

 

[DigitalVI]

Also trying to get my head around this. Looking at what is posted above as to resistance. If 29g is 0.55 and 32g is 1.09 you would need twice as many wraps of 29g to = 6 wraps of 32g coil (approx). Making the 29g a longer (more wraps) coil. Longer provides more surface area for wick (cotton) to contact coil so would 29g be prefered over 32g?

To me, old, big hands, failing eyes, lazy. 28g is what I am most comfortable using. The thinner 32g is much smaller (to me) to work with. So far on my russian and KFL I have been using 1.5 ohm coils and like them a lot.

Am I considering this correctly?

 

[CloudZ]

Thank you. You told me to wrap a 3 ohm coil and then later said to do 5/4 wrap. By 5/4 I assume you mean to wrap 5 times and then unwrap the first wrap to get the coil into position. I wrap with around 5 wraps already and at 0.20mm (is that 32gauge?) NiCr it comes out around 2.0 ohms. What's my problem there?

About doubling over the wick: I only did the "S" type build myself, that is to wrap the wick 2 times so it has "pockets" on both sides. Is doubling over better or do we mean the same thing there?

And last thing about wattage: if I set the mod to say 9 watts, shouldn't the vape experience be the same with no matter what resistance the coil has? This is puzzling me!

I am most likely wrong on the wrap number, it was just a guess and seems like a bad one. I haven't wrapped directly around silica in a while, but I was remembering that a 5/4 wrap of 30 gauge kanthal around doubled over 2mm silica was 1.8-2.0 ohms or something like that. 5/4 means you can see 5 wraps on one side, 4 on the other if your coil legs both come out on the same side.

By "doubled over" I just mean to fold it once. It sounds like you are "tripling" it for a total of 6mm thickness (folding twice). I guess my advice is to try wrapping it looser, so it just barely compresses the wick. If you wrap super tight, your coil will smaller in diameter, so less wire and less resistance. It also won't wick very well. I always tried to wrap as loose as possible to prevent cutting into the silica and also letting it wick properly. The trick is to make sure the coil is still touching the wick everywhere.

For the question about watts, it is kind of tricky to explain briefly. It isn't only about the resistance and power, there is also wire volume and surface area. Its probably best if you don't try to understand it all right now, and just assume that your current reasoning is correct enough. It really is close enough for most people. If you start experimenting with different wire gauges, resistances, coil types, etc, it will start to make more sense. If you could get two devices side by side, one at 1.5 ohms and the other at 3 ohms, using the same wire and wattage, you might notice that it is a little different.

 

[CloudZ]

Also trying to get my head around this. Looking at what is posted above as to resistance. If 29g is 0.55 and 32g is 1.09 you would need twice as many wraps of 29g to = 6 wraps of 32g coil (approx). Making the 29g a longer (more wraps) coil. Longer provides more surface area for wick (cotton) to contact coil so would 29g be prefered over 32g?

To me, old, big hands, failing eyes, lazy. 28g is what I am most comfortable using. The thinner 32g is much smaller (to me) to work with. So far on my russian and KFL I have been using 1.5 ohm coils and like them a lot.

Am I considering this correctly?

Thicker wire (lower gauge) needs more power to get to a given temperature. But yes, more surface area is almost always better.

Definitely stick with the 28 gauge @ 1.5 ohms if that is working well for you. Everyone has their preferences, and it just takes experimenting to figure out what you can do well and what you like most.

EDIT: I really should have mentioned that coil temperature is the most important, then surface area. If the coil doesn't get hot enough, all the surface area in the world won't help it. Its a balance.

 

[DigitalVI]

Thank you for the response