My thoughts about sub-ohm and latest VV/VW devices...
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All I can say is wow... I certainly didn't expect this much positive response when I posted this!
I'll take a few minutes to try to address some of the questions/comments up to this point, but before doing so I just wanted to give a very sincere thank you for all the positive response!
That's true, but I have to look at it from a broad perspective. Taste and preference are two very subjective things. I have a friend of mine who absolutely loves brussel sprouts. I can't stand the darn things. I know one guy who can't stand anything but a raw carrot, while others can't stand them raw and want them as mushy as possible.
I can no more get on a "Carrot Forum" and insist that the ONLY way to enjoy a carrot is if it's raw, than I can get on here and insist that high resistance high voltage vaping is the ONLY way to enjoy vaping. So I tried to stay away from that sort of mentality and instead tried to focus on giving the underlying reasonings for why I do things the way I do them. In that way I hope to open some people's eyes, re-enforce the ideas that many already have, and at the very least give some something to think about and perhaps not get so locked in to one specific ideal.
One of the things I've recently had tremendous success with lately is increasing surface area through "double barrel" or "V" coils. The issue is one of wicking. As pointed out, more surface area means more vapor, but the wick throws up a road block. If the coil gets too long, then as juice is wicked in it can be vaporized on the outer edges of the coil before it reaches the middle, resulting in dry spots in the center of the coil. To solve this, I've been wrapping longer coils and "bending" them in the middle... If there's room, this means bending them over completely and forming two "barrels". Or in a tighter area I can bend them in a V shape and often let them stand vertical. The advantage to this is, despite having a "long" coil with lots of surface area, I can get twice as much wicking in it than if it were a single coil... So what would normally be a dual coil build comes out as essentially a quad coil build, two coils in series and the two groups in parallel. You'd be AMAZED at just how much vapor you can throw off a setup like this.
Thank you friend. It takes a lot to get me angry these days... I wasn't really ...... off at him frankly, I just realized that this guy rather through his own past experience of "coming up" with mechs or through information he had found on the internet had it so firmly ingrained in his head that the ONLY way to go was ultra sub-ohm builds. That combined with posts I had seen around ECF on numerous occasions just kinda made me realize that maybe getting a little information out there might help others from getting wrapped up in that same notion.
The T5 is great in my opinion, and the 75W firmware update is awesome as well, but you have to be careful with it. The T5 because of it's wiring has a 10A limit. The 75W firmware does not enforce this limit. If you've seen the horror stories of people updating and melting their T5, that's why... There were running .2, .3, .4, .5, .6 etc ohm builds on it and immediately tried to crank it to 75W... Which melted the wiring... At 75W .8 is the absolute lowest build it can handle without exceeding it's 10A limit.
The BEC Pro is really a nice device... 50W in a tube is just awesome... It does however have it's issues. However, they are (hopefully soon) releasing the XPro which is either 100 or 150W (can't remember), out of the box it's still 50W, but supposedly will hit 100 or 150... plus it fixes a LOT of the shortcomings of the BT50, and is a box mod.... That's one I'm seriously keeping my eye on!
Nobody is stupid for running even a .2 ohm build... Again everything is subjective... However... On your tug... Here's what I would suggest... The next time you build it, try moving to 28g at 1.4ohm (total). That will give you more surface area, an almost identical heat flux, and about 1/5 less lag time. See how it compares. Shoot for a 30g next and try that as well!
Yeah, for most new vapers I'm sure this would be all but meaningless. For someone who is starting to venture into building their own coils or wants to make that step up, or who has just purchased a high voltage regulated mod it could certainly be a help. Or at least I hope it could be!
Technically that depends... The Raptor can handle up to 13+ volts if I recall. If I was building a mod with one, I personally would probably find a DC-DC to output 12v and feed the raptor with that. That way it gets a steady 12v supply and can PWM to any level. At that point you could push 120W on a 1.2ohm build.
You made a lot of references to the "Safe Vaping Chart". You know what's funny about that chart? I can't find ANY axis on it where I choose how much airflow I have... Or an axis for the gauge of wire I'm using... etc...etc...etc....
Here's something to ponder... If that "safe vaping chart" went below the 1.4 to 1 ohm that I typically see them run, what do you think it would say about putting 4.2v into your lower ohm build? In fact, most of the ones I've seen say you should never run more than 3.2 volts at even 1 ohm... Now you say you prefer lower ohm builds, so do you make sure you install a buck circuit in your mod to keep the voltage down to 1 or 2 volts or so?
You do understand what those charts are right? They are a plot of wattage... and generally plotted to show the "safe" area between 4 and 9 watts... To be completely honest, they are NOT relevant to what we're discussing here...
It applies across the board really... More surface area means more juice is atomized assuming enough power to do so efficiently. More juice means more vapor and in general more flavor. I've found flavor to vary though... Some juices to me taste better when the vape is cooler and others taste better (to me) when warmer. So you still need to play around... That's the beauty of these mods though... "playing around" is a simple matter of adjusting the voltage/wattage versus rewrapping a coil.
--------------
Thanks again to everyone for such a great response.
TL/DR: A double-slit what?
I'll take a few minutes to try to address some of the questions/comments up to this point, but before doing so I just wanted to give a very sincere thank you for all the positive response!
That's true, but I have to look at it from a broad perspective. Taste and preference are two very subjective things. I have a friend of mine who absolutely loves brussel sprouts. I can't stand the darn things. I know one guy who can't stand anything but a raw carrot, while others can't stand them raw and want them as mushy as possible.
I can no more get on a "Carrot Forum" and insist that the ONLY way to enjoy a carrot is if it's raw, than I can get on here and insist that high resistance high voltage vaping is the ONLY way to enjoy vaping. So I tried to stay away from that sort of mentality and instead tried to focus on giving the underlying reasonings for why I do things the way I do them. In that way I hope to open some people's eyes, re-enforce the ideas that many already have, and at the very least give some something to think about and perhaps not get so locked in to one specific ideal.
One of the things I've recently had tremendous success with lately is increasing surface area through "double barrel" or "V" coils. The issue is one of wicking. As pointed out, more surface area means more vapor, but the wick throws up a road block. If the coil gets too long, then as juice is wicked in it can be vaporized on the outer edges of the coil before it reaches the middle, resulting in dry spots in the center of the coil. To solve this, I've been wrapping longer coils and "bending" them in the middle... If there's room, this means bending them over completely and forming two "barrels". Or in a tighter area I can bend them in a V shape and often let them stand vertical. The advantage to this is, despite having a "long" coil with lots of surface area, I can get twice as much wicking in it than if it were a single coil... So what would normally be a dual coil build comes out as essentially a quad coil build, two coils in series and the two groups in parallel. You'd be AMAZED at just how much vapor you can throw off a setup like this.
Thank you friend. It takes a lot to get me angry these days... I wasn't really ...... off at him frankly, I just realized that this guy rather through his own past experience of "coming up" with mechs or through information he had found on the internet had it so firmly ingrained in his head that the ONLY way to go was ultra sub-ohm builds. That combined with posts I had seen around ECF on numerous occasions just kinda made me realize that maybe getting a little information out there might help others from getting wrapped up in that same notion.
The T5 is great in my opinion, and the 75W firmware update is awesome as well, but you have to be careful with it. The T5 because of it's wiring has a 10A limit. The 75W firmware does not enforce this limit. If you've seen the horror stories of people updating and melting their T5, that's why... There were running .2, .3, .4, .5, .6 etc ohm builds on it and immediately tried to crank it to 75W... Which melted the wiring... At 75W .8 is the absolute lowest build it can handle without exceeding it's 10A limit.
The BEC Pro is really a nice device... 50W in a tube is just awesome... It does however have it's issues. However, they are (hopefully soon) releasing the XPro which is either 100 or 150W (can't remember), out of the box it's still 50W, but supposedly will hit 100 or 150... plus it fixes a LOT of the shortcomings of the BT50, and is a box mod.... That's one I'm seriously keeping my eye on!
Nobody is stupid for running even a .2 ohm build... Again everything is subjective... However... On your tug... Here's what I would suggest... The next time you build it, try moving to 28g at 1.4ohm (total). That will give you more surface area, an almost identical heat flux, and about 1/5 less lag time. See how it compares. Shoot for a 30g next and try that as well!
Yeah, for most new vapers I'm sure this would be all but meaningless. For someone who is starting to venture into building their own coils or wants to make that step up, or who has just purchased a high voltage regulated mod it could certainly be a help. Or at least I hope it could be!
Technically that depends... The Raptor can handle up to 13+ volts if I recall. If I was building a mod with one, I personally would probably find a DC-DC to output 12v and feed the raptor with that. That way it gets a steady 12v supply and can PWM to any level. At that point you could push 120W on a 1.2ohm build.
You made a lot of references to the "Safe Vaping Chart". You know what's funny about that chart? I can't find ANY axis on it where I choose how much airflow I have... Or an axis for the gauge of wire I'm using... etc...etc...etc....
Here's something to ponder... If that "safe vaping chart" went below the 1.4 to 1 ohm that I typically see them run, what do you think it would say about putting 4.2v into your lower ohm build? In fact, most of the ones I've seen say you should never run more than 3.2 volts at even 1 ohm... Now you say you prefer lower ohm builds, so do you make sure you install a buck circuit in your mod to keep the voltage down to 1 or 2 volts or so?
You do understand what those charts are right? They are a plot of wattage... and generally plotted to show the "safe" area between 4 and 9 watts... To be completely honest, they are NOT relevant to what we're discussing here...
It applies across the board really... More surface area means more juice is atomized assuming enough power to do so efficiently. More juice means more vapor and in general more flavor. I've found flavor to vary though... Some juices to me taste better when the vape is cooler and others taste better (to me) when warmer. So you still need to play around... That's the beauty of these mods though... "playing around" is a simple matter of adjusting the voltage/wattage versus rewrapping a coil.
--------------
Thanks again to everyone for such a great response.
TL/DR: A double-slit what?
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Brilliant post with a lot of pertinent information. Thank you for your time and your "opinion".
thanks for the great post.
i am only after one year still into the ego style batteries and iclear16,'s.
i plan in the future to get a VV or VW type device and upgrade to all steel
and glass tanks for at home use.this info will help me make any decisions concerning
hardware much easier.
regards
mike
i am only after one year still into the ego style batteries and iclear16,'s.
i plan in the future to get a VV or VW type device and upgrade to all steel
and glass tanks for at home use.this info will help me make any decisions concerning
hardware much easier.
regards
mike
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The only thing I would mention is that high resistance/high voltage is STILL high wattage. Which IMO equates to high volume, and the volume of the vape is just as subjective as the taste. Believe it or not there are far more that use high resistance/LOW voltage than there are that use high resistance/high voltage. (or use low resistance)
So we're left with 'I don't like my carrots raw'
Just because I can set up my RDA to run at 50 watts doesn't mean I want to (or have to)
So we're left with 'I don't like my carrots raw'
Just because I can set up my RDA to run at 50 watts doesn't mean I want to (or have to)
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Exactly why I presented this the way I did... This isn't about saying, "here's the way you should do it, it's the best..." but rather the exact opposite of that. Debunking this idea that seems so pervasive that you have to have super low sub-ohm coils, heavy gauge wire and mech mods to "make the clouds man..." There's more than one way to cook a carrot...
And yes, absolutely it's still high wattage...Also exactly the point. Most of these new high wattage VV/VW devices are capable of running high wattage because they boost the voltage beyond the 4.2 volts normally found in a single cell. In fact, many of them are designed with those higher voltages in mind. Which is what lead me to making this post in the first place as there seem to be many out there who either dismiss these devices all together because they can't run ridiculously low sub-ohm builds, or who try to run them exactly the way they would a mech and are surprised when performance isn't what they'd expect.
In a previous post in another thread I made the comparison to revolver's versus autos. Revolver's being similar to our mech mods and autos being like our VV/VW mods.
Imagine for a moment I treated an auto as a single action revolver. I head out to the range and only load 5 rounds in my 16 round magazine... Then I pull the slide back and chamber a round... Fire it, then try to pull the slide back to chamber another round. Then get ...... that it just ejected a round on me. Obviously this is a design flaw. I fire again and pull the slide slower this time. But now the round doesn't eject and instead gets jammed in the chamber.
Then I go on a gun forum and trash the autos talking about how stupid they are. They waste ammunition, they jam up, and obviously are just crap that nobody should bother with.
It's not the device that's caused my unhappiness... It's the fact that I tried to use it in a way it wasn't designed to be used. I tried to apply my previous knowledge of single action revolvers to something that clearly wasn't, and when it didn't work as expected, I trashed the new design.
The max vout of the raptor chip(s) used in mods is ~6.0, so you must subohm to get near the max wattage.
Which isn't inherently meaningful, but that's the point I'm making ... ohms are not that informative a descriptor of a build.
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I stand corrected. I was actually thinking of making a mod recently and had looked into a few options. One of the ones I looked at was essentially just a PWM. You could feed it with up to 13 volts and adjust the PWM via it's input pins to achieve any voltage you wanted. For some reason (maybe because if I recall 120W was it's max handling capacity) I had thought this was the device you were referring to. Looking at the datasheet I see this is a DC-DC that does in fact output .6 to 6 volts... So yeah, you'd need .3 ohm to push 120W through it.
Great post rusirius, you did a hell of a job. I should point out that some people have the argument of lower gauge wire has better flavor. No problem I agree with that. They tell you that there is no space for a coil like that. And i always tell them build a long coil and then bend it. It's a trick I use to convince them to build coils in series. But seriously, you should easily build st least 1.2 ohms coil even with the fattest of wires.
Thanks for the post.
Thanks for the post.
Not that it's related to this post, but I'm still thinking of making my own mod. Just haven't decided if it's best to just invest the time in doing it or wait and see what new ones are released in the upcoming months. My basic idea is to use an MCU (maybe an Atmel since I really love the ATMEGA series) to drive it. Output to a MOSFET to do PWM at probably 20-25Mhz... Feed that FET from probably a 12v DC-DC (possible 15v). Use serial to output to an LCD, and obviously input buttons, use analog inputs for resistance, etc. Eventually I need to figure out exactly what I'm going to use and then figure out the layout to see just exactly how much room I'd need to accomplish what I want to do and see if I could make it work. At the very least it would be fun...
This is truly conjecture at best, but I wonder if some of this is simply a result of the lower gauge wires having more surface area? If I build an 8 wrap coil of 32 gauge and an 8 wrap coil of 28 gauge I'm going to get more flavor and vapor off the 28 gauge (in general) most because of a much larger surface area... But if my surface area is matched or exceeded by a higher gauge wire then in theory it should produce better... Again taste being so subjective it's hard to say for sure, but for me I've generally found the gauge of the wire itself to not really have a direct correlation to flavor. I mean if you think about it, what possible basis would there be for it? To me it would kinda be like saying a cake using the same exact recipe taste so much better if it's baked at 350 degrees in a 7'x7'x7' oven versus a 2'x2'x2' oven... If it's truly 350 degrees it should taste the same... So I have to wonder if this idea that lower gauge wire produces better flavor is actually just other factors (like varied heat flux, surface area, etc) versus anything to do with the actual wire itself.
I did read the majority of your post and initially wasn't sure where you were going before I started reading your initial post
that being said, I agree with what I read anyway. having the ability to sub-ohm is nice, but doesn't necessarily give you a better vape.
that being said, I agree with what I read anyway. having the ability to sub-ohm is nice, but doesn't necessarily give you a better vape.
I have tested the surface area theory by doing high voltage micro coils. What I mean is a 6.5 ohms and above and running them at high voltages. I had a thread somewhere but it's buried now lol. I made sure that the length of the coil using a 34 gauge wire is the same as the length of my 28 gauge coils which my sweet spot was at about 3.2 mm. I still felt the 28 gauge was better in terms of flavor. I cannot say I tested for long so I hope it wasn't a placebo. But my theory is that the amount of liquid vaporized off pure metal is greater with low gauges and that is why you get better flavor. It is just a theory and I will try to retest it soon.
@rusirius, I'm a BSEE '86 from Purdue, and I NEVER had a professor explain ANYTHING with that much clarity.
Props, sir. Thanks for taking the time to get this out here
Props, sir. Thanks for taking the time to get this out here
Been playing around with cloud chasing a bit lately. I'm running a Mutation X RDA with dual coils at around 70 watts with a fresh battery right now on a mechanical mod. From my experience so far, I'm pretty sure that RDA could handle 120 watts without breaking a sweat
I think it's more like what and how much wick (coil diameter) is going to work well at 120 watts?
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