KangerTech SUBTANK Mini

[Mr.Reliant]

Day 10 of my new subtank mini; have uped the wattage to 18 on the OCC 1.2 coil. Still on the same coil I started with. Ive never had a OCC coil last this long with any tank and I'm a heavy vaper.

I would lay money that you are vaping a light colored juice (prolly a fruit type flavor). You prolly also vape with airflow wide open using short duration heavy lung hits. This is the style of vaping this thing is designed for. It is where it shines more than ever.

The heavy tobacco flavors that use actual extracts from tobacco leaves is where you will see your worst coil gunk problems arise. Tobacco extracts contain rather large organic molecules that do not like to vaporize at the coil. So there they stay and accumulate and cook into what we collectively term as coil gunk. Juice with lots of added sweeteners have the same problem. Sugars and artificial sweeteners have large hard to vaporize molecules as well.

 

[antitux]

Someone mentioned recently tapping it on a hard surface. Seems to work for me. In the past I have put it down in frustration only to come back and have it unscrew without effort. I hardly tighten it all now and don't get leaks.
It's a combination of tight threads and thin steel. I'm not sure there is much they can do about it.

One thing I've been doing lately, is taking the RBA out, letting it sit for 10 minutes, and then unscrewing it after performing very slight percussive maintenance on it. If the coil or chimney is hot, it does seem to swell and make it slightly harder to take off.

 

[Flapstick]

Thanks a million, Mr. Reliant!

I sort of knew the principle, but your explanations made it crystal-clear!

Yes, I was/am at 1 hole (tightest opening, bar totally shut), and I also drew hard. (Would be improper to say I sucked hard )

I have a theoretically high VG (100% it says on the bottle, made in Germany) juice, but it isn't in any way as thick as I saw these usually are in the US. I can't explain why.

I'll get back at you after rewicking the OCC (or wicking the RBA fitted with a coil of my own).

Thank you once more!

 

[silversmok]

Hey all, I am getting tons of spitback .... What are you guys doing to prevent this? I use the 1.2 coil and it happens above 17 watts. It's crazy amounts of spit and it's hot. Thanks

 

[MacTechVpr]

I am guessing you prolly have the airflow down on the single or double hole setting to get a tight draw. (may be wrong)
The booms (on ANY coil) are the result of excess juice on a hot coil. The way these tanks (any tank) works is a balance of air pressure between the air trapped in the top of the tank and the air on the other side on your juice holes inside the coil chamber. At rest the air trapped in the top of the tank helps to keep the juice from flowing into the chamber and flooding it or even leaking out the air holes. I call it the thumb on soda straw effect. When you draw air through the chamber during a vape you create negative pressure inside the chamber. The air bubble in the top of the tank will seek to balance to this new lower pressure which allows it to expand which causes juice to move into the chamber. After the draw is over and pressure chamber returns to normal the top bubble seeks to shrink back to balance pressure again. This causes bubbles of air to be sucked out of the chamber and the top bubble gets more air to replace the volume of the juice you just vaped.
SO the tighter your draw the more negative the chamber pressure becomes. This forces more juice through the holes into your chamber. If you put too much juice on a hot coil you can get pops & bangs.

IN THEORY you should be able to mitigate the effect by either opening the airflow a notch and/or not pulling quite as hard. If you re-wick your OCC then a thicker wick can help reduce the juice flow (this can also create dry hits so be careful). Also thicker higher VG juice can help this problem as well.

Good Luck

I would lay money that you are vaping a light colored juice (prolly a fruit type flavor). You prolly also vape with airflow wide open using short duration heavy lung hits. This is the style of vaping this thing is designed for. It is where it shines more than ever.

The heavy tobacco flavors that use actual extracts from tobacco leaves is where you will see your worst coil gunk problems arise. Tobacco extracts contain rather large organic molecules that do not like to vaporize at the coil. So there they stay and accumulate and cook into what we collectively term as coil gunk. Juice with lots of added sweeteners have the same problem. Sugars and artificial sweeteners have large hard to vaporize molecules as well.

You and I are from the same tribe!

G'luck R.

 

[Mr.Reliant]

Hey all, I am getting tons of spitback .... What are you guys doing to prevent this? I use the 1.2 coil and it happens above 17 watts. It's crazy amounts of spit and it's hot. Thanks

See post 540 above... Spitting is the same as pops and "booms" just to a lesser degree. Too much juice on coil and/or too much heat on coil. More air = less heat but if you have your airflow restricted and have to pull hard to GET that extra air you increase negative pressure in the system and increase juice flow.

Heat being constant... Spitting & popping = too much juice flow.
To reduce juice flow you can open air flow to reduce negative pressure, you can do lighter pulls, you can use thicker juice (high VG), you can putt more cotton into your juice flow to reduce it... or a combination of all of the above.
One caveat though... gunked up coils can reduce the vaporization efficiency of the coil itself. If your coil is covered in gunk it can spit and pop no matter what you do. The solution to THIS is to remove the wick, clean the coil (no dry burns on OCCs though), then re-wick. Coils WILL get gunked sooner or later it is a fact of life. If you vape heavy juices like strong tobaccos & highly sweet desserts then gunk will happen faster and you will need to clean coils more often. Lighter colored juices (often fruits) will stretch the gunk window by an amazing amount.

I might add that all these factors pertain to vaping in general and not just the SubTank series. Prolly the reason these issues seem to be surfacing here with these devices is that the SubTank is one of the first high performance sub ohm tanks on the market. It is an altogether different beast than most of the similar products that have come before it. It's kinda like folks are trading in their VW bugs for Corvettes and can't figure out why the tires keep melting when they pull off from a stop sign. Heh Heh (no disrespect to anyone intended here!!!)

Using the 1.2 OCC at lower wattages will help but you are already doing that. Other simple solutions are going to higher VG lower nic clean juices and opening the airflow up and taking short heavy lung hits. Changing your style of draw is a hard thing to do I know... but if you can get it down then the results will be well worth the effort. Once you get on to it, it will become second nature. If you have been using older style tanks for a long time it will be harder to do. For the folks who have been using high end drippers they will most likely not have any problem at all.

Hope this helps and GOOD LUCK!

 

[Mr.Reliant]

You and I are from the same tribe!

G'luck R.

LOL! Thanks mate!... I think

 

[silversmok]

See post 540 above... Spitting is the same as pops and "booms" just to a lesser degree. Too much juice on coil and/or too much heat on coil. More air = less heat but if you have your airflow restricted and have to pull hard to GET that extra air you increase negative pressure in the system and increase juice flow.

Heat being constant... Spitting & popping = too much juice flow.
To reduce juice flow you can open air flow to reduce negative pressure, you can do lighter pulls, you can use thicker juice (high VG), you can putt more cotton into your juice flow to reduce it... or a combination of all of the above.
One caveat though... gunked up coils can reduce the vaporization efficiency of the coil itself. If your coil is covered in gunk it can spit and pop no matter what you do. The solution to THIS is to remove the wick, clean the coil (no dry burns on OCCs though), then re-wick. Coils WILL get gunked sooner or later it is a fact of life. If you vape heavy juices like strong tobaccos & highly sweet desserts then gunk will happen faster and you will need to clean coils more often. Lighter colored juices (often fruits) will stretch the gunk window by an amazing amount.

I might add that all these factors pertain to vaping in general and not just the SubTank series. Prolly the reason these issues seem to be surfacing here with these devices is that the SubTank is one of the first high performance sub ohm tanks on the market. It is an altogether deferent beast than most of the similar products that have come before it. It's kinda like folks are trading in their VW bugs for Corvettes and can't figure out why the tires keep melting when they pull off from a stop sign. Heh Heh (no disrespect to anyone intended here!!!)

Using the 1.2 OCC at lower wattages will help but you are already doing that. Other simple solutions are going to higher VG lower nic clean juices and opening the airflow up and taking short heavy lung hits. Changing your style of draw is a hard thing to do I know... but if you can get it down then the results will be well worth the effort. Once you get on to it, it will become second nature. If you have been using older style tanks for a long time it will be harder to do. For the folks who have been using high end drippers they will most likely not have any problem at all.

Hope this helps and GOOD LUCK!

Thank you very much for the imformative post. I also read post 540 and it does make sense. I will try opening the afc all the way open and if it still continues, I will not "suck as hard" and see if this mitigates the issue. A gunked up coil can also be the root cause seeing as my coil is 3 weeks old. I am using 70vg juice already so I think I will rewick the coul when I get home, along with the wide open afc I hope mitigates the issue.

Thank you again!

 

[Mr.Reliant]

I am THINKING about doing a rewicking video tutorial on YouTube for the OCCs It takes time to do though and I am currently pressed for that. If anyone would be interested let me know.

I honestly don't know how all those YouTube reviewers find the time to do what they do. Big Kudos and thanks to any of them that might be reading along here!!!

 

[vincom]

ok i was praising the mini but its a pita to unscrew the chimney off the rba base.
idk what u use but we shouldnt need tools, or thumb nails lodged into weeping holes(thanks kanger im gouging a slot into my nails) to unscrew the damn thing apart.
was thinking of buying another one or two but im rethinking this until hopefully kanger redesigns the rba , again.
i know i can use the occ heads but i liked vaping on the rba better.
on my last build i tried to keep the chimney screwed on loose which is pretty hard todo when tightening the rba to the base, after a day or two i will see if its still hard to unscrew

this time i tighten down the rba base b4 screwing down the chimney, lightly screwed down the chimney, when i went to unscrew the glass off the chimney stayed onto the inner tube, thats a very good thing .
if it gets stuck again i will let it cool off for awhile or tap it b4 unscrewing it

 

[Flapstick]

I am THINKING about doing a rewicking video tutorial on YouTube for the OCCs It takes time to do though and I am currently pressed for that. If anyone would be interested let me know.

I honestly don't know how all those YouTube reviewers find the time to do what they do. Big Kudos and thanks to any of them that might be reading along here!!!

And here I find myself thanking you once again, it's a good idea - but honestly rewicking (and/or recoiling) the OCC has a few videos on YouTube already; you might want to focus on other aspects.

 

[DP2Raja]

I am not having the issues with the RBA that some seem to have as far a trouble getting the sleeve off the deck. I had read about using a light touch when doing that and it has worked perfect for me. I increased the size of the juice channels slightly with a diamond tip dremel bit. Carefully, very carefully. No dry hits on twisted 28g @ o.43 ohm coil. Japanese cotton wicked similar to Kfun style. I can get great flavor from 22-27 watts on my SXmini depending on how much cloud production I want and the air flow setting. Sometimes I go down to the 22 just cause I can't see to drive with the additional cloud production at higher watts. It's like "Damn! where's the road!?"

 

[underwhelmd]

The cap on the rba did stick to the center post once on mine. I think the post is crooked... or my eyes are

 

[DP2Raja]

Happened to me once too Under. I have started tightening the cap to the chamber sleeve nice and tight before screwing on to the deck. Has not happened since. I also make sure the deck is screwed to the base pretty damn snug. The deck usually stays screwed into the base when I take the chamber and cap off together. But once you get a good coil and a good set up on the wick, they will last a good 5-6 days without changing the wick. Messing with these once a week or so is not a major issue to me. Not for the flavor and vaper production I am getting from this thing.

 

[vincom]

rba, im liking it so much i chain vape but the damn thing gets too hot even at low watts, need to buy a delrin/pyrex mouth piece, any1 try one yet that fits, in the mean while i need to take a breaks between drags so i get my naut mini out but that thing sucks now, i couldnt put that down when i was using it b4

 

[IanDVaypes]

rba, im liking it so much i chain vape but the damn thing gets too hot even at low watts, need to buy a delrin/pyrex mouth piece, any1 try one yet that fits, in the mean while i need to take a breaks between drags

I'm using the drip tip from the delta II on mine. No more burnt lips.

 

[Bammer555]

rba, im liking it so much i chain vape but the damn thing gets too hot even at low watts, need to buy a delrin/pyrex mouth piece, any1 try one yet that fits, in the mean while i need to take a breaks between drags so i get my naut mini out but that thing sucks now, i couldnt put that down when i was using it b4

I've got the Sub mini and the Atlantis, so the Nautilus tanks were getting pushed by the wayside until I tried the new BVC coils with the bigger juice holes. I get much better flavor and wicking even with 75vg/25pg juice.

 

[Mr.Reliant]

And here I find myself thanking you once again, it's a good idea - but honestly rewicking (and/or recoiling) the OCC has a few videos on YouTube already; you might want to focus on other aspects.

I just did a quick YouTube search and there ARE a couple vidz on rewicking but most are on rebuilding. I think there are(or will be) lotsa ST mini owners that prefer to use OCCs and not get into the whole coil building game. Coil building is great, don't get me wrong but I know from experience there are a LOT of vapers who just want to USE a simple device that works good and is consistent. I think the ST Mini & Nano will be great solutions for many of them.

Rewicking OCCs can save a ton of money AND if done right is not all that hard. Definitely not as hard as coil building.

SOME of the existing rewick videos make it look harder than it needs to be AND can result in messing up the coil or even your whole tank. Dry burning the coil to "clean" it is one example. These OCCs are NOT meant to be dry burnt. There are 3 different plastic pieces in them. The bottom insulator is made of some sort of rubber type material. I know this from the smell it gives off when it gets burnt. There is also a seal at the bottom of the chamber and another at the top. These seem to be made of a different material that withstands heat better though. Prolly a silicon compound. These will take a fair amount of heat but will puff up and discolor when overheated. For safety I would not recommend overheating an OCC by dry burning the coils in it. Who knows what kind of nastiness gets generated when those materials overheat. When kanthal wire is being vaped on (cooled by juice and air) it likely stays under 500 degrees F (any higher and you will be experiencing the dreaded dry hit). If you remove the juice and air from the equation (like when you dry burn it) it will jump as high as 1000s of degrees.

Another thing that I have seen on some videos is folks priming their OCCs by putting juice on the side juice holes. The proper way is to put the juice down the top directly onto the center of the coil. The reason is that when cotton is dry it is full of air. If you juice up the ends first you will trap air inside the wick and increase the chance of scorching the fresh cotton on the first couple of fires. When you prime from the center the juice pushes the air out the sides as the cotton takes on the juice.

Another thing to watch for is what kind of wick material you are using and how much of it you use. Consistent, uniform, properly sized wick material = consistent high quality vaping.

My OCD may be getting the better of me here but these kinda things just bug me for some reason. LOL Hope I am not coming off as an arrogant know it all. (prolly so) just trying to share my experiences and observations with y'all and help anyone I can.

Can someone help me get off of this dang soap box now?!

Take Care and VAPE SAFE!

 

[vincom]

was building a vertical coil for the occ heads but in my over zealousness i bent the center pin post and when trying to unbend it and it snaped right off, will try on the other head later, i had it coiled and wicked to, damn i was so close

 

[IanDVaypes]

I like to slowly drip juice down the center of the occ until i can see that it's very saturated on the side holes. Then i could vape away without burning.