Help with mech safety and RDA/any builds that work?

[jiveman]

Hey i just got my Igo L and K100 and kick 2. I was wondering if anyone had any links to threads discussing safety. I still don't quite understand how watts work and how low i can go in ohms safely and how high the watts can go. i know vsquared/ohms equals watts, but since i can set the watts with my kick2 i'm kind of confused. i'm guessing my 18500 being 3.7v and ohms at 1.7 i'm at about 8 watts, and setting my kick 2 to anything more than 8 watts wouldn't do much?

I have my kick 2 at 8 watts and runnin an Igo L rebuiild i made that's at 1.7 ohms ( 3 wide wraps of 32g kanthal on a 3 time folded over 2mm silica).

This is the first build that sort of works alright. the wider wraps seemed to help.
but i'm lookin' for more vapor ( i do use like 70/30 vg/pg) i like cooler vapes too. don't care much about flavor/throat hit but i don't really want a build that's going to burn through liquid like crazy but if i have to i have to.

i'm guessing maybe i should drill out the air hole 1/16 from what i read?
and maybe i should get some smaller g kanthal and do microcoils?

My batteries are 18500 AW IMR protected IC 1500mahs.

Most importantly, how low of ohms can I go and what's a good wattage/ohm build if you know any.

Thanks to anyone that can help, mostly the ohm/watt safety would be major. i'm unfortunately finding it pretty difficult to find any good information and it's frustrating me so if anyone's been down this route and has any help i'd appreciate it.

 

[NicoHolic]

FWIW, the AW IMR are NOT "protected" because they don't need to be. They're safer chemistry batteries. The standard AW IMR 18500 1100 mAH has the 15C (15 .x 1.1) 16.5A rating. I can't find specs for the 1500 mAH version, but I'd assume it to be much lower, as is the 2000 mAH 18650 (10A) compared to the 1600 (15C). I personally wouldn't sub-ohm these, but would stick to 1.0Ω as my lower limit. I don't use kicks, but they should have a recommended maximum currrent or minimum resistance, and that's probably more limiting than your battery. If you want to sub-ohm, think about an 18650 without the kick (and with a fuse).

Your 3.7V battery is 4.2V fully charged and you don't want to go lower than about 3.2V, both at rest. You'll get better life pulling them for recharge at 3.6-3.7 volts resting The battery internal resistance causes voltage to drop under load, as does any resistance of the mod. FWIW, you CAN'T measure mod voltage drop alone by comparing the firing voltage on one of those 510 volt meters with the unloaded voltage. That doesn't reflect the drop in battery voltage.

Resistance = Volts / Current and Current = Volts / Resistance

If you don't have a multimeter, get one! They aren't expensive.

IMO, 32 AWG is too thin a gauge for what you want. You can't use very many wraps of this higher resistance wire, so you can't get much wire to wick to juice contact area. I STRONGLY recommend you search on micro coil here and learn them. As recommended by another member here, I've adopted the practice of winding a micro coil with 8 wraps around a 1/16" drill bit or 16 gauge needle, of whatever gauge and material wire gets me the resistance I want. Based on Temco (wire source) specs, I came up with this for my RM2 RBA. Eight wraps gives good contact area, which increases with wire thickness (higher gauge number is thinner)

An 8/7 wrap micro coil on a Reomizer 2:
26 AWG Nichrome 60 = 0.5Ω @ 0.1272" wide
based on the above:
26 AWG Kanthal A1  = 0.6Ω @ 0.1272" wide
27 AWG Kanthal A1  = 0.8Ω @ 0.1136" wide
28 AWG Nichrome 60 = 0.8Ω @ 0.1008" wide
28 AWG Kanthal A1  = 1.0Ω @ 0.1008" wide
29 AWG Kanthal A1  = 1.2Ω @ 0.0904" wide
30 AWG Nichrome 60 = 1.3Ω @ 0.0800" wide
30 AWG Kanthal A1  = 1.6Ω @ 0.0800" wide
31 AWG Kanthal A1  = 2.0Ω @ 0.0712" wide
32 AWG Nichrome 60 = 2.0Ω @ 0.0640" wide
32 AWG Kanthal A1  = 2.5Ω @ 0.0640" wide

Different leg length could vary these ± 0.1Ω due to rounding.

Wire is cheap and with free shipping from Temco. Start out with a spool each of 28 or 29 AWG and 30 AWG Kanthal A1 and use 7-9 wraps to get what you want.

I strongly recommend you try cotton ball wicks, but you can also use 1.5-2.0 mm silica and/or 1 mm ekowool (ekowool is a tube and the size is the internal dimension).

Drilling the air hole to 1/16" is something a lot of folks do with the IGO, but undoing that requires soldering and redrilling. You might want to slowly step up with #55 and #54 drill bits. Drilling is something you do when the air is insufficient for the vapor coming off the coil. Overdoing it produces a weak, airy vape.

Hope this helps you get started.

 

[jiveman]

FWIW, the AW IMR are NOT "protected" because they don't need to be. They're safer chemistry batteries. The standard AW IMR 18500 1100 mAH has the 15C (15 .x 1.1) 16.5A rating. I can't find specs for the 1500 mAH version, but I'd assume it to be much lower, as is the 2000 mAH 18650 (10A) compared to the 1600 (15C). I personally wouldn't sub-ohm these, but would stick to 1.0Ω as my lower limit. I don't use kicks, but they should have a recommended maximum currrent or minimum resistance, and that's probably more limiting than your battery. If you want to sub-ohm, think about an 18650 without the kick (and with a fuse).

Your 3.7V battery is 4.2V fully charged and you don't want to go lower than about 3.2V, both at rest. You'll get better life pulling them for recharge at 3.6-3.7 volts resting The battery internal resistance causes voltage to drop under load, as does any resistance of the mod. FWIW, you CAN'T measure mod voltage drop alone by comparing the firing voltage on one of those 510 volt meters with the unloaded voltage. That doesn't reflect the drop in battery voltage.

Resistance = Volts / Current and Current = Volts / Resistance

If you don't have a multimeter, get one! They aren't expensive.

IMO, 32 AWG is too thin a gauge for what you want. You can't use very many wraps of this higher resistance wire, so you can't get much wire to wick to juice contact area. I STRONGLY recommend you search on micro coil here and learn them. As recommended by another member here, I've adopted the practice of winding a micro coil with 8 wraps around a 1/16" drill bit or 16 gauge needle, of whatever gauge and material wire gets me the resistance I want. Based on Temco (wire source) specs, I came up with this for my RM2 RBA. Eight wraps gives good contact area, which increases with wire thickness (higher gauge number is thinner)

An 8/7 wrap micro coil on a Reomizer 2:
26 AWG Nichrome 60 = 0.5Ω @ 0.1272" wide
based on the above:
26 AWG Kanthal A1  = 0.6Ω @ 0.1272" wide
27 AWG Kanthal A1  = 0.8Ω @ 0.1136" wide
28 AWG Nichrome 60 = 0.8Ω @ 0.1008" wide
28 AWG Kanthal A1  = 1.0Ω @ 0.1008" wide
29 AWG Kanthal A1  = 1.2Ω @ 0.0904" wide
30 AWG Nichrome 60 = 1.3Ω @ 0.0800" wide
30 AWG Kanthal A1  = 1.6Ω @ 0.0800" wide
31 AWG Kanthal A1  = 2.0Ω @ 0.0712" wide
32 AWG Nichrome 60 = 2.0Ω @ 0.0640" wide
32 AWG Kanthal A1  = 2.5Ω @ 0.0640" wide

Different leg length could vary these ± 0.1Ω due to rounding.

Wire is cheap and with free shipping from Temco. Start out with a spool each of 28 or 29 AWG and 30 AWG Kanthal A1 and use 7-9 wraps to get what you want.

I strongly recommend you try cotton ball wicks, but you can also use 1.5-2.0 mm silica and/or 1 mm ekowool (ekowool is a tube and the size is the internal dimension).

Drilling the air hole to 1/16" is something a lot of folks do with the IGO, but undoing that requires soldering and redrilling. You might want to slowly step up with #55 and #54 drill bits. Drilling is something you do when the air is insufficient for the vapor coming off the coil. Overdoing it produces a weak, airy vape.

Hope this helps you get started.

Thank you so much, I learned a lot there. Appreciate it!

 

[jiveman]

Thank you so much NicoHog, you helped me find my best vape to date. Since I only had 32g kanthal available, I made a 7 wrap microcoil which measured out to 2.5 ohms exactly, and using my kick 2 screwdriver as a base to build the coil, I threw it on the Igo L. I then got some 100 percent pure cotton balls and tried that as a wick or the first time. I threw in some homemade 12 mg peach juice and set my kick to about 9.5watts. hitting amazing. Tons of vapor, the flavor is crisp and outstanding, mild relaxing throat hit (which was my intention with the juice I made), and it's wicking so much better and lasting much longer between drips. These cotton ball wicks and micro coils are the real deal!

 

[NicoHolic]

Glad I could help by sharing the gospel of micro coils and cotton. IMO, dripping with them is the ultimate in vaping.

The only thing better is doing it one-handed, all day long, with a REO Grand and Reomizer 2.0. Some even use kicks in them.

Here's the big micro coil thread.

Have fun!