I posted what I posted in order to try to educate people as to the potential problems with TC. I've seen many discussions surrounding the very popular Kanger Subtank Mini, for example, and problems people had with it when used for TC. Other specific Atty's have come up multiple times so I assume some Atty's just are not as well engineered in that way. And remember, when this gear was designed, there was no "requirement" that they maintain resistance through all their connections to within 0.02 ohm or so. In a normal mod no one would ever notice or care. But now it's critical.
(I use an STM as my primary TC topper and followed a suggestion from a member here to tighten down the positive pin that extends below the RBA deck. He seemed to think that solved the problem a lot of people seem to have with that topper, and so far it's worked for me too although I was not having as much trouble as others have had, maybe because I tightened down that pin by habit although not as tight as I did after talking to him. That's just one example of a KNOWN issue with a very popular atty.)
My first reply here was as follows: " I think my EVIC-VT does a pretty good job of controlling and, by extension, limiting temp.". I like TC, I use it every day. I'm going to buy an EVIC VTC mini as a 2nd TC mod so I can drip and use a tank without swapping and reconfiguring. I'm a believer, but I'm not a fanboy. it is what it is. So I wanted to point out the *potential* issues so people understand the deal and how to work down the problem resolution tree instead of giving up, as I've seen a few do.
You may not have had problems with your specific Atty's, or your TC mod (I'm not convinced that all the resistance drift is in the Atty, there is just no way to be sure). I have had problems. I had one this morning, after recoiling a Derringer clone with Ti last night. It worked fine last night but this morning I just couldn't get a good strong hit from it. I set it aside and vaped a Troll RBA in TC mode for a couple hours. Then went back to the Derringer and now it is vaping fine in TC mode. Can you tell me why that was so? I doubt you or anyone else can since none of us really have the instrumentation to do the measurements that would be necessary.
"An atty should not randomly change resistance, it's as simple as that."
The fact is that a typical Atty has at least a half dozen mechanical electrical connections. The inside of an Atty is a very hostile environment for such sensitive electrical connections. Everything is coated in juice, and some connections are coated in crud from incompletely vaporized juice components. One of the weak points, in my humble opinion, is the typical coil posts in RDAs. They are typically a threaded tube, with a hole in the side, with a screw that tightens down from the top. In most RDA's, that post is not plugged underneath the hole within which the coil leg is inserted. So in order to tighten the screw enough to get what I think is a good mechanical/electrical connection I would more often than not chop the coil leg in half. I'm thinking about buying a second Royal Hunter dripper for TC, partly because I really like that RDA, but also because the maker put a lot of thought into this problem of broken coil legs, adding a plug under the coil hole and beveling the screws. So I should be able to tighten that RDA down as tight as I want without breaking leads. These are the kinds of things that I know I seem to have to think through to get this right. This is a whole lot more effort than what is needed in a normal mod, where a drift of a tenth of an ohm would never be noticed except maybe in an extremely low subohm build (which personally I am not into). And I think these things should be talked about and discussed so TC newbies know what they *may* be up against.
You are entitled to your opinion that everything should always be perfect, implying that any variance is some sort of failure on the user's part, but my strong opinion is that it is a very problematic environment and resistance drift is more expected behavior than some anomaly. And I think it is proven by all the discussions of problems people have with TC, most of which are likely due to resistance drift.
Despite all the above, I want to stress that I have generally had a very good experience with TC now, with about 6 weeks of TC vaping behind me. But it is not as simple as a normal mod setup, nor has it been 100%.
