Thanks for the advise guys. As always
@suprtrkr I will bow to your superior knowledge. I will certainly look at the Plume Veil. In fact I will look at all of the suggestions with the same obsessive ferocity that I do everything else. I really needed a starting point and you have all helped.
@sonicbomb I have quickly realised that vaping preferences are very subjective. I guess I'll give the suggestions a shot and see whether it works for me.
I have always been really good with my hands, more in an art sense than a mechanical one but I'm sure I can apply the general principal to coil building. I'm also a perfectionist in the extreme so I think I'll enjoy mastering a build. Saying that, maybe I'll cheat to start with some pre coiled wire thingies. I had a look on Fasttech and they were offered in varying resistances (I understand that bit) and sizes. How do I work out which size I need if I decide to take the cheater route?
Another question, is it much cheaper to build your own coils? Does it make a significant difference to the vape? If so, how?
I guess I'll apologise now for so many questions. The ones I've asked and the ones that are bound to come later
.
It is
much cheaper to build your own coils. You'll have to spend some coin up front to get set up. You need a basic selection of tools, plus an ohmmeter. But once that cost is sunk, if you spent the price of a 5-pack of coils on wire and wick, you'd have enough to last a year or two. It can make a significant difference in the vape as well, but this requires some care and attention-- something you'll have no trouble with given your "obsessive ferocity." To me, the cost is actually a secondary issue. I'd build my own coils even if it were more expensive, partly because I like it, but mostly because i am in
control. I can make it do anything I want and am not limited to somebody else's idea of the right thing to do. Of course, I have to know what I want, and that takes some trial and error.
As to how... There are a number of issues involved, and they are interdependent. The wire you will be using has a specific resistance per length. I like to build coils between 4 and 10 wraps, depending on the deck I am putting them on. To make my desired resistance, I can change the mandrel size to use more (bigger mandrel) or less (smaller mandrel) wire in the same number of wraps, thus varying the end resistance.
Another point-- I told you it was interdependent-- is the bigger mandrel you use, the more wick you can get in the middle of the coil, and the fatter the tails are. Some tanks like more wick, others less. Adjusting the mandrel helps put you in the right ball park. Similarly power levels: a high power coil vaporizes more juice per second than a low power coil, and it needs more wick to do so. And on and on.
Vapor is produced by power radiating from the coil surface in contact with wet wick. The more surface area, and the more power, the more vapor you get. It is possible to build, say, a 20ga wire coil at X ohms, and a 2 x 28ga twisted wire to the same resistance. In power level they will be the same. But the twist will have more surface area than the round wire, and thus make more of the heat energy available to make vapor.
A really good tool for this is
Steam Engine, a coil calculator that is the best I have ever found. Let me suggest you bring it up on your screen. When it pops up, it will display a coil of 30ga Kanthal A1 round wire for a dual coil setup at .5 ohms on a 1.3mm mandrel. Look over to the right at the "Results" box. The top two lines show how many wraps to make on that mandrel to give the desired resistance; in this case 6 "full" wraps or 6/5 "half" wraps. A full wrap coil ends up with the coil legs pointing in opposite directions and is primarily used in single coil setups. A half wrap coil winds up with the legs pointing in the same directions and is normally used for duals. If you go and change any variable-- highlight the 1.3 mandrel and change it to 2mm-- you will change the results; in this case it drops the wraps to 4 or 4/3.
Now below that on the 6th line, you will see the "heat flux" box. That tells you how much power the surface of the specified coil is making at a specified wattage. You can change the wattage by clicking the arrows. on our 4/3 wrap 30ga .5 ohm build, you can see the color is green at 6 watts for 107 milliwatts per millimeter squared (mW/mm^2). Raise the watts to 12, and the green takes on a decidedly orange tint and the value raises to 217 mW/mm^2. This tells you the wire is starting to get hot at the surface, and may scorch your juice.
So, below 6, it's too cool, and above 12, it's getting too hot. The 100-200 mW/mm^2 thing is not absolute: you might like 85 or maybe 225. That doesn't matter, really. Once you know what you like, you can adjust the coil design to give you that power level at whatever wattage you want to vape.
