Kanthal A1 wire & fiberglass wick diameter size questions

[Kyle&Ann]

Hello from Kyle&Ann...

After receiving some great advice about drip tips from this forum, we now own a Smoktech rda drip tip. We used it for hours last night and have really enjoyed it thus far. I have already come to the conclusion that we need to rebuild our own wicks for this device. We did some research and found a source for the materials. Here are our questions...

1. Kanthal A1 wire - what gauge should we purchase? I am assuming that we should go with a 1.8 ohm wire which would be the 34 awg. We own a Vamo 3.

2. Fiberglass wick size - Should we go with 1mm or 2 mm diameter wicks?

We appreciate all the help the members of this forum have given us. We are looking forward to hearing from y'all regarding this topic.

Kyle&Ann

 

[Snicks]

I use 28AWG kanthal for my rba's and 2mm and 3mm silica wick.

I use 32AWG kanthal for my t3's and protanks.

 

[Kyle&Ann]

I use 28AWG kanthal for my RBA's and 2mm and 3mm silica wick.

I use 32AWG kanthal for my t3's and protanks.

May we ask if there is a reason for such low ohms (28 awg) for the RBA? Wouldn't that translate to approximately .5-.6 ohms? Please forgive the ignorance on this subject.

 

[ronjamesmajor]

Kyle & Ann.

28awg in my experience tends to hold up better under stress than higher gauge wire.
A Lot of people use 28awg in rebuildable atomisers and tanks because of the low ohms, and the handling of stress.
The resistance in ohms is only dictated by the length of your wire, versus the gauge.

So if you're using 28 gauge and want to achieve 1.8 ohms you will need to adjust the length accordingly. This will of course result in there being more wraps around your silica (fibreglass/glass fiber) material.

There are several charts and calculators for which you can use online to determine power / voltage / ohms /resistance.

A good one (though it is designed for genesis style atomizers) is from taste your juice .com.
http://www.tasteyourjuice.com/TasteYourJuice/ResistanceWireCalculator.xlsm

That might help.

 

[ronjamesmajor]

Kyle & Ann.

28awg in my experience tends to hold up better under stress than higher gauge wire.
A Lot of people use 28awg in rebuildable atomisers and tanks because of the low ohms, and the handling of stress.
The resistance in ohms is only dictated by the length of your wire, versus the gauge.

So if you're using 28 gauge and want to achieve 1.8 ohms you will need to adjust the length accordingly. This will of course result in there being more wraps around your silica (fibreglass/glass fiber) material.

There are several charts and calculators for which you can use online to determine power / voltage / ohms /resistance.

A good one (though it is designed for genesis style atomizers) is from taste your juice .com.
http://www.tasteyourjuice.com/TasteYourJuice/ResistanceWireCalculator.xlsm

That might help.

 

[Snicks]

What he said ^

I also found that the flavor is better with the thicker wire.

 

[Kyle&Ann]

Kyle & Ann.

28awg in my experience tends to hold up better under stress than higher gauge wire.
A Lot of people use 28awg in rebuildable atomisers and tanks because of the low ohms, and the handling of stress.
The resistance in ohms is only dictated by the length of your wire, versus the gauge.

So if you're using 28 gauge and want to achieve 1.8 ohms you will need to adjust the length accordingly. This will of course result in there being more wraps around your silica (fibreglass/glass fiber) material.

There are several charts and calculators for which you can use online to determine power / voltage / ohms /resistance.

A good one (though it is designed for genesis style atomizers) is from taste your juice .com.
http://www.tasteyourjuice.com/TasteYourJuice/ResistanceWireCalculator.xlsm

That might help.

Thanks so much! Great info.

I checked out your link but I still to figure out the length issue. If I use 28 awg and it produces so many ohms per inch, how do I know how long of wire to use?

Kyle&Ann

 

[Kyle&Ann]

Kyle & Ann.

28awg in my experience tends to hold up better under stress than higher gauge wire.
A Lot of people use 28awg in rebuildable atomisers and tanks because of the low ohms, and the handling of stress.
The resistance in ohms is only dictated by the length of your wire, versus the gauge.

So if you're using 28 gauge and want to achieve 1.8 ohms you will need to adjust the length accordingly. This will of course result in there being more wraps around your silica (fibreglass/glass fiber) material.

There are several charts and calculators for which you can use online to determine power / voltage / ohms /resistance.

A good one (though it is designed for genesis style atomizers) is from taste your juice .com.
http://www.tasteyourjuice.com/TasteYourJuice/ResistanceWireCalculator.xlsm

That might help.

Thanks so much! Great info.

I checked out your link but I still to figure out the length issue. If I use 28 awg and it produces so many ohms per inch, how do I know how long of wire to use?

Kyle&Ann

 

[awsum140]

Simply divide the desired coil resistance by the ohms per inch to determine the overall wire length.

 

[Kyle&Ann]

So after looking up some ohms/foot for specific (Kanthal A1 wire), this is what I am seeing...

28 awg = 5.7 ohm's/ foot at room temp
5.7/12= .44 ohms / inch

32 awg = 13.1 ohm's / foot at room temp
13.1 / 12 = 1.1 ohm's / inch

I am not sure how long the wire should be when building a coil for a Smoktech RDA atomizer. I am assuming after wrapping the wire around the wick a number of times that it will be longer than an inch.

Lets say I do use an inch of 28 awg...is .44 ohm's not too low? I am sorry for so many questions. I just want a good understanding of what I am doing before making a decision on what to purchase.

 

[ronjamesmajor]

No problem at all. Q&A is kind of what the forums are all about.

If you take a look at the resistance calculator spreadsheet, which you may need to "enable editing" with in excel, if you have excel,

You can change the first number on the left to "1.8" to resemble the resistance you're achieving now.
If you then click the drop down list and select "single" coil, as you'll be just building one, and then select 28awg kanthal wire, it should automatically calculate to show you that you'll require 3.3 inches of wire to achieve this resistance.

As you'll probably guess, this is a LOT of wire. Your vamo (as mine does) should be able to fire as low as 1.4 ohms, so you could use as little as 2.5 inches of wire if you so desire. This is from positive to negative post, total wire length.

I can usually achieve a 1.4 to 1.5 ohm coil with 28awg kanthal wire if I do six to seven wraps around with my IGO L. Similar to your smoktech RDA.

I hope this helps some.

 

[Steam Turbine]

2. Fiberglass wick size - Should we go with 1mm or 2 mm diameter wicks?
Kyle&Ann

Just making sure of something: when you say fiberglass wicks, you mean silica right?

Fiberglass is a polymer that contains plastic and wrapping a coil that gets extremely hot around plastic is not a good idea. Silica on the other hand is a molecule that is extremely resistant to heat.

 

[ronjamesmajor]

I too am assuming silica on this one, but there are many vendors selling silica wick labeled as "glass fiber wick".

 

[Kyle&Ann]

Just making sure of something: when you say fiberglass wicks, you mean silica right?

Fiberglass is a polymer that contains plastic and wrapping a coil that gets extremely hot around plastic is not a good idea. Silica on the other hand is a molecule that is extremely resistant to heat.

Yes...I meant silica...thanks for pointing that out!

 

[Kyle&Ann]

No problem at all. Q&A is kind of what the forums are all about.

If you take a look at the resistance calculator spreadsheet, which you may need to "enable editing" with in excel, if you have excel,

You can change the first number on the left to "1.8" to resemble the resistance you're achieving now.
If you then click the drop down list and select "single" coil, as you'll be just building one, and then select 28awg kanthal wire, it should automatically calculate to show you that you'll require 3.3 inches of wire to achieve this resistance.

As you'll probably guess, this is a LOT of wire. Your vamo (as mine does) should be able to fire as low as 1.4 ohms, so you could use as little as 2.5 inches of wire if you so desire. This is from positive to negative post, total wire length.

I can usually achieve a 1.4 to 1.5 ohm coil with 28awg kanthal wire if I do six to seven wraps around with my IGO L. Similar to your smoktech RDA.

I hope this helps some.

I probably need to view this spreadsheet with my pc and not my iPad...that explains why I was scratching my head when looking at it. I will do that tonight when I have more time. Thanks so much for taking the time to help us out!

 

[Kyle&Ann]

Ok...got my 28 awg Kanthal A1 wire and my wick material in today. Used the spreadsheet mentioned in this thread to make a few wicks. According to the spreadsheet, 8.8 cm of wire (single coil) should provide 1.8 ohm's.

Not even close. It has produced a coil with .6 ohms. I did not attempt to fire up the VAMO.

I increased the length of the wire to 10 cm & 13 cm. This also did not produce a usable ohm level. 13 cm produced a 1.0 ohm coil. This was not usable by the VAMO. Against better judgement, I tried to fire it up and it would not work.

What am I doing wrong?

 

[ronjamesmajor]

You may want to refer to youtube and search for build tutorials for your specific rebuildable atomizer. If you test your ohm rating using the vamo, test a couple to three or four times over the course of about 30 seconds. If the ohm rating reads differently during these tests that probably means you have a short in your set up.

Not to worry though, as you'll probably just need to make sure your connections are very tight where the wire meets the positive and negative posts.

If the problem persists, take a picture of the set up you've got and post it here or pm me and we'll see about troubleshooting.

Sent from my SGH-I717D using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[Jazzi Mike]

You were given bad advice on here. While I am sure that there are some people that make coils that are in the 1.5 ohms range with 28 gauge Kanthal, this is not a beginner size especially with a Vamo or any other VV/VW device.

32 seems to be the magic number as far as rebuilding atomizers go. It is pretty flexible and you will get more in the standard resistance range for e-cigs. 34 is a bit thin and I rarely use mine. It breaks very easily.

I can't even believe the above posters: They are newbies, not interested in sub-ohm building with a Vamo. Why in the world would anyone recommend 28 gauge. Ugh sometimes.

 

[Jazzi Mike]

In the meantime, You could try increasing your wick size to increase the size of your loops Kyle&Ann. The Vamo won't fire under like 1.2 Ohms I think.

 

[yaypudding]

i use protanks on my vamo v3, and i wrap my own coils for it. using 32 gauge and 3mm silica wick, i get around 2.5 ohms. usually i judge the length of wire by the number of wraps i do, more wraps = more resistance and vice versa. I would suggest using 32 gauge prob 4 wraps and you should be good, aim for somewhere between 1.5 and 2.0 ohms.