Hot spot issue after adding juice?

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j4mmin42

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Jul 1, 2009
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Did you try the juice test?

Glowing coils doesn't necessarily mean a short. People use the terms interchangeably, but they aren't...

If the coils glow evenly when dry, then you either have a wicking issue or possibly too much power.

If you get bright, coil-bursting hotspots, then the juice has nothing to do with it, and you just need to adjust your coil. It's harder with a wet wick, but can be done.
 
Had this several times myself before, by some unknown miracle, I got much better at the wick 'oxidising' lark - dry firing 1.6 to 1.8 Ohms coil on even 5v, get all coils glowing even and the right reading at the meter afterwards, but soon as any juice hit the wick/coils, I'd get hot spots and shorts and the meter reading afterwards would show it too -

- Seems that if the coil was at just-right tightness around the wick, but the wick's oxidised coating wasn't thick or even enough, that the hot coils on hot and dry wick were fine and didn't short, but soon as the coils got cooled with juice they tightened up on the wick and created a short (different heat expansion rates between coils and wick), or at least that's what it was for me - I didn't get this issue sorted properly until I got better at oxidising in the wick before wrapping the coil.

GL!

DV
 

mekks082

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Had this several times myself before, by some unknown miracle, I got much better at the wick 'oxidising' lark - dry firing 1.6 to 1.8 Ohms coil on even 5v, get all coils glowing even and the right reading at the meter afterwards, but soon as any juice hit the wick/coils, I'd get hot spots and shorts and the meter reading afterwards would show it too -

- Seems that if the coil was at just-right tightness around the wick, but the wick's oxidised coating wasn't thick or even enough, that the hot coils on hot and dry wick were fine and didn't short, but soon as the coils got cooled with juice they tightened up on the wick and created a short (different heat expansion rates between coils and wick), or at least that's what it was for me - I didn't get this issue sorted properly until I got better at oxidising in the wick before wrapping the coil.

GL!

DV

what did you change in oxidizing the wick?
 
what did you change in oxidizing the wick?

I just did it 'more' - I started by doing the whole strip until it just glowed orange and slowly raised it out of the flame to cool slow, before rolling it - this just helped it roll and keep its shape far as I could tell.

Then after it was rolled (I rolled once, unrolled and rolled in reverse as many seem to do), I gave the exposed edge a really good flaming and burned or scraped off any glowing strands (I tried the edge fold thing but it didn't work for me - got hotspots under the fold ridge), I gave the whole wick a really good heating up and plunge under running cold tap one time to stiffen it all up slightly, then gave the coil end of the wick 3 really good heatings with the mini-torch until it glowed a good orange colour, then plunged and dried and repeated a total of 3 or 4 times.

In the end it had a good, smooth matt black colour to it, but it was not 'crispy' or brittle - haven't managed to make one go that way personally, but I haven't actually tried either!

It seemed that although I'd thought from what I'd read, that I was perhaps overcooking the mesh previously, it seems I just was undercooking - wasn't actually doing it enough - for me 'brown' = useless and underdone, but 'black' = done perfectly allowing me to wrap very tight (am able to do them too tight in fact) coils without much issue.

As someone pointed out to me here recently (regarding wicking in RBAs) it likely has summink to do with some kind of voodoo - suddenly everything just seems to start working right and coming together and you're left feeling less than certain what has actually changed, heheheh...

be well!

',;~}~

DV
 
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