is there a correct way to vape?

[Roasty]

take a few minutes and help a noob out..

some background info: i have an eGo-c twist and an eVic. vaping on a vCore 2.0 and redoing my cores with Kanthal 0.2 mm 32 AWG wire and 2mm silica wick.

i've read this thread on VV vs VW - http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...e-voltage-vs-variable-wattage-better-why.html

i'm trying to get a consistent vape, ie nice thick plumes of vapour with some decent "heat" and throat hit, but without burning my cores too fast too soon.

is there a correct/proper way to vape? as in, high V and 2-3 seconds of the trigger, or lower V and longer trigger presses. since the ctwist is only V adjustable, i find i have to up the V to get a nice thick vape, but this comes with the downside of burning out too fast.

after reading the thread i posted above, i'm thinking with the eVic i just adjust the W (since the V auto-adjusts in accordance with the W and resistance of the core) -- is this correct? someone lemme know if i'm wrong here..
so i set the eVic to 5.2W thereabouts and find i have to press the trigger longer to get a decent amount of vapour. but the taste of the eliquid is much nicer (as compared to moderate to high V on the ctwist), but the thickness of vapour is somewhat lacking and i feel like i'm missing some "heat".

so which is the "correct" way? high V and short bursts with risk of burning cores faster, or setting W with longer presses of the trigger but having downside of less thick vapour/heat?

 

[OlDogNewTricks]

Hi. You didn't mention the resistance of your coil. 5 watts sounds pretty low to me. I use 7.5-9.5 watts on 2 ohms without burning either the liquid or coil. I am awaiting my shiney new eVic and am completely sold on variable wattage for the reason you mentioned.

 

[fabricator4]

so which is the "correct" way? high V and short bursts with risk of burning cores faster, or setting W with longer presses of the trigger but having downside of less thick vapour/heat?

Well, there's almost as many answers to that as there are vapers. Most of the clearos are what they are - and everyone has different experiences with them. I find I get heaps of vapour with a Protank on 6.5-7 watts, but other people hate them and have endless trouble.

If you want huge clouds of vapour, most people get that with something like a genesis with S/S wick and run higher wattage. The better you can wick, the higher the watts can be. Then there's ceramic wicks, and microcoils and cotton...

I'd say you might need to try a few different things. I know dropped all my Vivis in the bottom draw the first day I got a protank. Your thing might be a pheonix dripper, a cobra or a genesis or anything.

For me, if I don't get at least 2 weeks out of a head then I'd know I've either got a wicking problem or I'm running it too hot, but truthfully since my sense of taste came back I can detect it immediately if I'm burning juice and I do something about it.

 

[InTheShade]

I'll wait for someone to come along and give you a math equation and a long answer why you are either doing it wrong or right.

In the meantime, don't worry too much. Just get the vape you want. 5 Watts sounds a little low to me too, so if you want more vapor, turn it up. If it starts to taste burnt, turn it down.

When you talk about the coil heads burning out too fast, are you cleaning them? How do you clean them? how long do they last on average?

The last thing I would be worried about would be a tiny bit of wire and about an inch of silica. I would be much more concerned with making sure I was getting a vape that kept the nic fits at bay.

 

[Roasty]

thanks everyone for the uber quick replies!

i have a few coils ranging from 2.4 ohm to 3.0 Ohm, some are replacement coils i bought pre-made, and others are done myself and measured with a multimeter.

the heads - i start to get black gunk building up after 1-2 tank refills. after 3-4 refills, the smokey hits come earlier. i dismantle the tanks and rinse everything under water, and use a soft bristle tooth brush to clean off the gunk on the coils. after this is done, i have a good look at the head; the coils are black, and between the evenly spaced coils are decent looking whitish wick (so i assume i'm not burning off the wick..?)

maybe i'm vaping too much without giving the wick sufficient time to soak up the eliquid..

i was looking at the Protank 2, and also the AGA T2.. but building with steel mesh seems daunting for a noob.

how do you guys manage to vape at those wattages (eg above 9.0W)? i'm referring to the chart by pBusardo and trying to stay within the "green" range..

https://www.google.com.sg/search?q=...-wattage-settings-evic-question.html;1024;611

 

[OlDogNewTricks]

Those are a recommendation. As coils age, they change caping characteristics. I run 50/50 juice and have no issues till I get around 10 watts on a 2 ohm. I avoid voltage, since it isn't reliable (IMHO). I have a Protank 2 and love it. There are better vapes, but few that are more fill and go. For an RBA, it looks like the RSST is a better choice for a novice builder, cheap and easy to build. Most reviewers like them very much.

 

[IMFire3605]

thanks everyone for the uber quick replies!

i have a few coils ranging from 2.4 ohm to 3.0 Ohm, some are replacement coils i bought pre-made, and others are done myself and measured with a multimeter.

the heads - i start to get black gunk building up after 1-2 tank refills. after 3-4 refills, the smokey hits come earlier. i dismantle the tanks and rinse everything under water, and use a soft bristle tooth brush to clean off the gunk on the coils. after this is done, i have a good look at the head; the coils are black, and between the evenly spaced coils are decent looking whitish wick (so i assume i'm not burning off the wick..?)

maybe i'm vaping too much without giving the wick sufficient time to soak up the eliquid..

i was looking at the Protank 2, and also the AGA T2.. but building with steel mesh seems daunting for a noob.

how do you guys manage to vape at those wattages (eg above 9.0W)? i'm referring to the chart by pBusardo and trying to stay within the "green" range..

https://www.google.com.sg/search?q=...-wattage-settings-evic-question.html;1024;611

After a rinse out of the wick, instead of scrubbing the coil wire, attach the head to the base, attach that to your battery/device, without the tank on, on the protank/protank2/kanger bcc types, remove the chimney tube of the head, and top flavor wicks. Then, fire the head dry, called dry burning. Start at 2 second intervals, blowing air down onto the coil. It will eventually atomize what moisture is left in the wicks, then after, start burning off gunk, residue, and carbon off the coil wire. Do not fire longer than 5 second intervals. When the coil wire evenly glows bright orange from center to outer edges after a couple times, then you can reassemble the head, and rinse it out again under warm water. This will extend the life of the coil if done properly, dry burn longer than 5 second intervals can potentially melt the coil or scorch the wick, thus why I state start at 2 second intervals to a max of 5 seconds, doing this at your lowest voltage or wattage setting is also a good safe guard.

 

[Kelevra]

I will try to answer all of your questions, but there are a lot of variables and preference/opinions on much of it. The chart that phil busardo gives is a reference not a rule. Even so taken at 2.4 ohms the green usable power he describes is around 4-9 watts (3.2-4.2V at 1.2-1.9 A). That is a huge area to play in and dial the vape that you're looking for. However when we change to 3 ohms pushing the same 4-9 watts we will now be in the 3.7 to 5 volt range with only 1.1-1.7A. This is one reason lower resistances are so popular, if we have a resistance of 1.5 ohms firing at 3.7 volts we are still vaping at 9 watts of power but now we get 2.5 A. More current, the amps, means the coil will heat up faster. It's this heat input that will produce vapor faster and why lower ohm coils have a hotter draw to them. You might have noticed the heat differences already between your different resistances.

Vapor production is the surface area that the coil comes in contact to the liquid. The more surface area that is being sufficiently heated by a coil the more vapor we can get. This is why you will see people making quad coils and using kanthal flat ribbon, to garner more surface area. If you are already making your own single coils successfully then a micro coil is an easy next step to learn; there are lots of videos on youtube.

Then there is the wicking. Silica is a great all around wicking material, but it can't always keep up (have you seen an iclear 30, the thing has a bajillion wicks). Many people are loving cotton right now and feel it gives superior wicking with better flavor clarity, the down side is it can get burnt easily (no dry burns to clear coils of gunk). Peaches and cream yarn (100% cotton boil in water before using) at walmart is a good way to start getting into cotton wicks. It is braided/twisted so you can use the whole braid or just a few strands depending on what your building. Cotton is also being used as a core in ekowool and with ss mesh.

And then we have air. On most clearomizers there is not a lot that we can do about the air flow. I have read of people doing all sorts of things to improve airflow from using toothpicks or epoxy to close holes all the way to using 510 adapters to somehow get the perfect amount of air. Some people do drill out the air holes on some clearo's but you would probably need a drill press, micro drill bits and a lot of patience to do this. If you do get into RDA/RBA's you will see that a lot of people are drilling the air holes out. A few are even enlarging the wick holes in some attys. There are a few more variable room temp, humidity etc, but you probably will vape where you want to vape regardless of external variables.

As for the gunk on your coils, darker juices tend to gunk them up faster. Holding down the fire button for really long times can also burn a little liquid on them. Some people will use shorter fire times kind of like smoking a pipe puff puff, puff. I use grain alcohol and distilled water to soak my coils, if they're really bad I will dry burn them then rinse them off in the tap.I have a protank 2 it works great for going to work, and the coils are easy to rebuild. I also recommend the rsst if you're going to get into genny style atomizers its super easy to build on, tank section is enclosed so ss mesh can't touch bottom cap, and the positive post uses washer spring combo making it easier to capture the lead (great when just starting out).

Everything in vaping has tradeoffs. Being too frugal and trying to get every last minute of use out of a coil may lead to an unsatisfying vape. Clouds of vapor may not necessarily equate to clouds of flavor. Getting a great hot vapor may burn your liquid. Don't be afraid to experiment a little, maybe your vape is a bottom coil clearo using a 2 ohms kanthal ribbon with a cotton core ekowool wick running at 7 watts. How will you know until you try? Everyone has made mistakes that they have learned not to repeat. There is no perfect vape only the journey to the perfect vape and of course ymmv

 

[Roasty]

Thank you, Kelevra. That was probably the most awesome reply to any question in any thread in any forum i have ever posted..! and your first paragraph really helped me understand the forces at play. tonight i will see if i have some time to coil.. i have some fairly consistent results ie 4 coils of wire usually get me 1.9 Ohm, and 5 coils will get me between 2.3-2.4 Ohm. will go for a 4 coil one then..

i'm looking more and more at the genesis style atomizers. they're a bit tough to get (and eCig stuff on the whole), especially where i'm at.. legislation/laws etc etc... but i suppose where there's a will, there's a way.

i still have oodles of silica wick and kanthal wire. i do use a lighter and torch my kanthal till it glows red. with the silica wick, i havent really prepped them in any way thus far, but have been reading lots of threads on boiling and torching them (till they glow?). unfortunately, i dont have a torch to do that, so will probably try boiling a length tonight and see how that fares.

one question though, in some heads i build, eg say a 5 coil head, and during a test burn, only the innermost 3 coils glow red, and the outermost coils dont glow. is there any particular reason for that?

IMFire3605, thanks for the explanation on dry burning. embarrassingly, after 3 months of vaping, i have not yet performed a dry burn in such a way as you have described it. having said that, i will try it tonight!

 

[IMFire3605]

Thank you, Kelevra. That was probably the most awesome reply to any question in any thread in any forum i have ever posted..! and your first paragraph really helped me understand the forces at play. tonight i will see if i have some time to coil.. i have some fairly consistent results ie 4 coils of wire usually get me 1.9 Ohm, and 5 coils will get me between 2.3-2.4 Ohm. will go for a 4 coil one then..

i'm looking more and more at the genesis style atomizers. they're a bit tough to get (and eCig stuff on the whole), especially where i'm at.. legislation/laws etc etc... but i suppose where there's a will, there's a way.

i still have oodles of silica wick and kanthal wire. i do use a lighter and torch my kanthal till it glows red. with the silica wick, i havent really prepped them in any way thus far, but have been reading lots of threads on boiling and torching them (till they glow?). unfortunately, i dont have a torch to do that, so will probably try boiling a length tonight and see how that fares.

one question though, in some heads i build, eg say a 5 coil head, and during a test burn, only the innermost 3 coils glow red, and the outermost coils dont glow. is there any particular reason for that?

IMFire3605, thanks for the explanation on dry burning. embarrassingly, after 3 months of vaping, i have not yet performed a dry burn in such a way as you have described it. having said that, i will try it tonight!

The inner wraps of the coil produce the most heat as the most resistance is in that particular area, the outer ones have less resistance as their leads are somewhat straight, very little resistance. But definitely look into a micro coil setup, most my Evod/Protank/T3 heads I've rebuilt with micro coils and because the wraps are all bunched together, all the wraps tend to insulate each other, use the heat of the next wrap to it to get heated quicker, and focalizes the heat in one area, dead center of the cup, giving a similar performance as a sub-ohm coil, and are very, very effective in a BCC clearo

 

[Vapeaddikt]

With a quality mod and a good solid built coil/wick setup you will get consistency in your vape Due to the fact that you will get it down to an art being able to do wraps at certain Ω levels consistently. If your on an ego you will wanna stick to 1.5Ω at the lowest with 2Ω to 2.5Ω being safest.

Go check out the RDA/RBA sections, the Reo Mods section, ect... This place is a library of knowledge just waiting to be tapped.

 

[Roasty]

question: if i vape the same clearomizer with the same head at say 4v on my cTwist and 4v on the eVic, why is it the vape on the cTwist is slightly thicker, a bit more flavourful, and the vapour comes sooner/faster than the eVic?

 

[IMFire3605]

1) The Ego might have just that much more room when the clearo is snug to allow more air flow.

2) The Ego is direct power the moment the button is pushed, most APV devices like the Evic, espeically if they have a variable wattage setting, the fire button is hit, it adds minimum power to test resistance of coil, reads that, then spikes to full output set.

 

[Roasty]

1) The Ego might have just that much more room when the clearo is snug to allow more air flow.

2) The Ego is direct power the moment the button is pushed, most APV devices like the Evic, espeically if they have a variable wattage setting, the fire button is hit, it adds minimum power to test resistance of coil, reads that, then spikes to full output set.

thanks for the info!!! for a while there i thought my eVic was crapping out on me... *phew