My thoughts about sub-ohm and latest VV/VW devices...

[beckdg]

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

The CLT
The zeniths
The Hobo
The plume veil
Likely the castle

We're moving towards a standard of massive adjustable air flow on tri post or better decks in the 22mm RDA market alone. Methinks once again the battery and form factor (as in how many batteries do you want to shove in a tube or box you're then going to have to pocket) are going to be our severe limitations for some time.

I'd wager that 200 W is far from the ceiling in the near future.

 

[rusirius]

Nice to have a mod that can push 120 watts, now what RDA do you plan to use that can handle it?

Take a simple single coil and dry fire it.... it glows red hot.... Now wick it and saturate it with juice and fire again... Does it glow red? No, because the heat generated is being carried away by the vapor.... Same as a boiling pot of water will never exceed 212 degrees....

I think you're getting too wrapped up in the "wattage" portion. Let me explain...

I can take a small RDA, seal it up with no airflow, put a single wrap (At 2mm inner) of 26g for .14 ohms at 20 watts and cook the insulator right off... On the other hand, I can build a much larger coil, disperse the heat over a much larger area, open up the air flow and run 40, 50 or 60 watts without doing much more than warming it up... It's thermodynamics. Yes the wattage directly relates to heat, but as long as you are vaporizing juice, you're liberating that heat from the coils as vapor... As long as you then (via airflow) remove that heat from the chamber, you're .... well.... removing the heat....

When you run high wattages on larger coils you're getting a lower heat flux, more juice can be vaporized so more heat can be removed from the coils. So again as long as you remove that vapor which is carrying the heat, then you aren't allowing it to build up in the rda.

 

[beckdg]

I think it's more like what and how much wick (coil diameter) is going to work well at 120 watts?

Doubt that seriously. I'm not that far off from that on my daily driver and dry wicks are far from an issue with only dual coils. Throw in quads and octo coils or notched coils that can take 2 wicks or more each and there's a long, long way to go before juice delivery to the coil is even the slightest concern. Add in tech like the provape p3 with its burst and the soon to be evolve chip with temp control and I'd venture to say 500+ watt bursts are in our future as soon as someone can make it reasonable in form factor and capacity for a battery.

 

[nyiddle]

Wanna talk about large airflow?

The Doge. 'Nuff said.

(Sorry I'm just so excited, mine's in the mail!)

 

[skoony]

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.

wrap to wrap your right. however a sub ohm build at .4 ohms ans 28 gauge would have less surface area than a 1.5 build using 32 gauge.
the larger build needing a lot more wraps.

 

[ukeman]

The guy that built one of my Raptor120w boxes goes full throttle; good test pilot too...

Don't forget a good heat dispersing D/T...

I doubt I'll ever get that high, but will definitely look forward to trying that 40 wrap (dual)...

 

[ukeman]

Wondering about the physics of wicking, aside from the material... design of the atomizer has got to be important.

My favorite atomizers for the last year or two have an elevated (from the base) air post, in the middle of the pos/neg posts, about 4mm above the base. (the best wick'ers have top fed tank or filler system, although they can wick juice from the base as well).

But one of them (Achilles Ti) has drip wells below that "base". So aside from the build of the coil for one thing (ID size, etc), wicking is a crucial factor. Its got to pull that juice up to the coil.
I've been trying different wick materials to see which wick best.

Does heat of the coil attract juice toward it? I think I'm imagining this... lol.

 

[MikeE3]

At the risk of being redundant - let me also say 'well done/written' to the OP. And to the contributors. How refreshing to read a discussion that didn't break down to - my Ford is better than your Chevy.

This takes me back to another thread where the phrase 'watts do not matter, it's all 'bout wire temp'. We were discussing and working w/ hollow core SS wicks, fat solid SS wicks, and ceramic wicks. They each had a different heat sink effect so there wasn't 'one' value for volts or watts for a given resistance of the coil depending on the wick material to get a 'good' vape.

It really came down to 'wire temp'. What did it take to vaporize the juice efficiently.

Seems similar to this discussion - work with the combination of variables you can change to get the coil to the temperature to vaporize the juice without an undue lag and be able to feed the juice to the coil adequately. Simple - eh?

 

[Ed_C]

E=IR and P=IE should be taught in school. As dependent as we are on electricity, few understand it. Nice post OP.

It should be and if it's not, at least in my state, the teacher is not following the frameworks.

http://www.arkansased.org/public/userfiles/Learning_Services/Curriculum%20and%20Instruction/Frameworks/Science/physical_sci_9_12_050508.pdf

 

[Ryedan]

I think it's more like what and how much wick (coil diameter) is going to work well at 120 watts?

Yup. I've just started working with the Mutation X. I used a 3mm drill bit with 24 gauge Kanthal for my first couple of builds. My normal is 2mm in my typical 25-30 watt ADV, but I thought I might be better off with more wick inside the coil. Now that I know how that vapes, I'm going to go smaller and see what happens. It will be interesting.

I'm using rayon, so I've got the fastest wicking I know of in there and the deck has a pretty high lip so it holds a lot of juice. So far, as long as I have juice on the deck I have not run a coil dry even with a 8 second hit so it's working just fine

 

[JeremyR]

@ OP

Good lookin out.

I'll preface with there are different ways to get to the same result.

I feel you and have been preaching similar for a long while. Getting similar feed back at times. All you can do is shake your head and fog em out with 2 second pulls. While they are still waiting for it to heat up.

I was still building with 32g exclusively, up until just recently. Chucking respectful instant clouds pushing 6v to 1.4 ohm parallel 32g 18 wraps between the two. Instant heat up, great flavor and vapor. In the past, Before I had the zmax v3 stacked up to take 4 amps. I was rocking 2.4-3.2ohm builds. The 2.4- 3 ohm builds of single 32 at 6v heated fast, real fast and good clouds. People wouldn't take it. I showed how instant the heat up was with lighter gauge wire. For some reason lots of people thought that lower gauge automatically heats faster.

The thicker the wire the more power it needs to heat fast. With a 3 second pull on 32 it's just as good as many high sub ohm builds. And compared to the 28g @1.4 ohm 6v, the parallel 32g holds its own and heats slightly faster and hotter than 28 because the wire is smaller. Maybe also the amount of wick coverage is involved.. Sure a 26 or 24 can heat as fast but it needs to be super low ohm and high amperage. It's all about what we want.

Right now at 6v & 24w, to me , the parallel 32 out vapes the same ohm 28 gauge. Hotter faster In this power range.

A regulated mod is much safer, hands down. 2 years and I still haven't gone mech, I don't seem to need to. I have a couple power blogs with some of my posts on this subject. But you seem to have a good grasp on it! Good to see.

 

[Asbestos4004]

Hey great post...and for the most part, great responses! I started a similar thread awhile back but it wasn't met with the same love! So I'm kinda mad at you and the rest of the world. Then again, it was only about half a paragraph and I had no science to back it up. It was written like a guy who tears down buildings for a living wrote it... yours was written perfectly! Jerk.
I have about half of my rdas over the 1 ohm mark and about half below. Below for me is about .3...nothing crazy. I love the variety! The sub ohm builds go on mechs and the 1+ ohm builds go on vw devices. It's a great time to be a vaper!
Thank you for taking the time to write this post...well done, sir.

 

[WharfRat1976]

Here are 59 Safe Vape Charts. Whether you build Macros, Nanos or Micros; whether you use 4 wraps, 8 wraps, 16 wraps or 324 wraps; whether you vape at 5 watts or 105 watts just refer to one of the hundreds of charts to make sure you are relatively in a "safe zone."
https://www.google.com/search?q=saf...v&sa=X&ei=rMU1VKC8HpPisATPr4H4AQ&ved=0CB0QsAQ

In it's simplistic form, longer coils take much longer to heat up then shorter coils- it's a matter of science

 

[readeuler]

Does heat of the coil attract juice toward it? I think I'm imagining this... lol.

Given what I've experienced with rayon, it boils down to this, but there's an extra step. What I've noticed is that wicks want to be evenly saturated. So when the coil dries out a portion of the wick, the liquid is attracted to that dryer portion. So the heat does dry out the wick, which induces more liquid to take its place.

At least that's how I think it should happen, from what I've seen.

 

[pls0138]

As someone who is pretty new to the vaping scene (about four months) and who has just in the past month really begun to research and understand all the stuff that's out there now, I really appreciate this post. One of the main things I love about vaping is the endless possibilities that are available to modify and customize your own personal "experience." Unfortunately, having endless possibilities can be bad thing. I was an engineering major in my early college years, but switched my major to actuarial science (that's insurance based probability and statistics) because I realized I was more into the math stuff than I was science. I mention this because when I first started reading up on all the sub-ohm/advanced mod stuff,my math brain was instantly intrigued by it and I thought "wow I gotta get into this! This is the proper way to vape!". The more I thought about it the more I realized that maybe it wasn't as superior as I originally thought. Like I said I have more of a math brain so I thought back to the basic equation we've all seen on those lovely colored voltage charts: wattage equals voltage squared divided by resistance. All this equation really says to me is that for any resistance there is a wattage and voltage that is most efficient in a given device. Like you (and I think most people who vape), I am after the best flavor first and foremost. So if there is an efficient voltage/wattage range for any given resistance level, is having a really low ohm setting and cranked up wattage necessarily better? My answer would be no, like most things, it comes down to preference.
That being said, people like the guy you talked to really get on my nerves and in my opinion, are bad representatives of the vaping community. Its people like that that would advise a beginner/novice vaper that they have to get a powerful mechanical mod/sub-ohm device and everything else is crap, and that to me could be dangerous. As we all know, a lot of this stuff is trial and error and learning through experience, and I don't what a beginner to try and vape on something that is meant for a veteran because of advice taken from an idiot and god forbid, something bad happens as a result. Something like this is exactly what all those anti-vaping people would need to verify a ban on vaping.

 

[beckdg]

Does heat of the coil attract juice toward it? I think I'm imagining this... lol.

Enough heat to thin the liquid attracts it. Enough heat to vaporize liquid repels it.
Taking a powered pull from your atty goes through both temp ranges.

 

[edyle]

I feel your pain.
I used to teach physics to 17-19 year olds.

Soon it was realized that the lower the resistance of the coil, the more wattage was produced, and therefore more heat was released... Meaning a higher heat flux and more juice getting vaporized.

Sub-ohm was born.... As batteries improved and could handle higher and higher currents, lower and lower resistances could be utilized.

This all culminated into the idea that seems to be ingrained in so many's heads to this very day... The lower the resistance, the more vapor I produce. And in the case of a mechanical mod, that's exactly correct.

Too much focus is put on "ohms" while ignoring wire gauge - or relating to what you wrote surface area.

People didn't just start shorting out batteries by putting lower resistance to get higher power.
What they did was use thicker wire.
But when they used thicker wire, the coil was lower resistance!
Merely using less wraps to get less resistance results in burnt taste;
it is because they used thicker wire, they ended up with lower resistance, and higher power at the same temperature of the thin wire.

It turns out that once you use thicker wire, even if you build the same resistance coil as a thinner wire coils, you actually need more power to get that thick wire coil hot enough.

 

[MattB101]

Correct me if I'm wrong. I have done some research on how a ecig works and my understanding is that coils don't make vapor they make steam. Steam makes vapor. When you heat the coil the juice immediately touching the coil flashes to setam. The steam litterally blasts the e-liquid that is surrounding it to vapor. Therefor the more steam the more vapor. Your explanation still stands. The wick must provide the proper flow to enable the production of steam and vapor. If the flow is too slow the steam produced will blast away all the available liquid and then allow burning to occur. Cranking up the voltage/wattage causes higher temps which produces steam quicker thus providing more energy to atomize e-liquid into vapor. Both a larger amount of steam and a larger amount of vapor are produced requiring more juice. Agree? Great article. Excellent reasoning and logic. Subscribed.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2 Android phone on a keyboard that waaayyy too small (or my thumbs are waaayyy too big).

 

[MattB101]

Ummmmmm, the "science"...LOL

Yes, the science, only by understanding the science will we continue to improve the overall vaing experience.

Sent from my Galaxy Note 2 Android phone on a keyboard that waaayyy too small (or my thumbs are waaayyy too big).

 

[edyle]

Wow, what a well thought out explanation. Thank you ever so much for taking the time to enlighten the class, I certainly learned a thing or two.

Now to tear down one of my RDAs and put a big fat 1.8ohm build for my iPV2...mmmm

What you do is put the same amount of coil that you did dual or quad coil, - take that and build it as 1 single single coil.

Example, if you built a 0.25 ohm quad coil to run at 4 volts, you build the same wire as.....
each coils is 1 ohm
total = 4 ohms

1 big 5 ohm coil running at 16 volts.