Need some advice on how to chain vape

[alex8039]

Hey guys, I'm a pretty heavily addicted to nicotine (and vaping) so I find I'm chain vaping pretty much all day. The issue I'm having here is that from the moment I build my RDA, it takes maybe 10-15 minutes before it starts to taste a bit like burnt, another 10-15 minutes before the vape is consistently awful tasting and another 10 minutes before I have to rebuild entirely or suffer awful vape production and taste. The coil just gets too gunked up doesn't wick properly anymore and the burning taste happens too often no matter how much I drip (and at times starts sizzling all the time).

What I use:
*Tsunami RDA
*Japanese pad cotton or native wicks rolled up scottish style
*80% VG DIY juice (not my own)
*Evic VTC mini
*0.7ohm coils (sometimes 1.2)
*30-40watt (about 4-5V) where I get the best production and taste


The possible issues here:
*I'm not wicking properly, although at first the vape production is perfect
*Small tsunami chambers make it too tight to properly distribute the e-juice as the wick bunches up at the bottom
*The coil remains very hot for a while, maybe I'm not waiting long enough before re-dripping and vaping

Any advice appreciated

Edit: I took some pics of the last build I made, about 5-10 minutes in to usage

 

[Vandal]

I'll be interested to see what responses you get. I am also a chain vaper. I have yet to build a coil- I use 510 atties- but I'm in the process of buying all the stuff to build due to The Deeming. I even have trouble chain vaping on an atty with throat hit dropping off unless I wait a while to take a puff. I've been concerned how this is going to work out on RBAs (I have purchased RTAs and RDAs).

I use 100% VG DIY w/ a drop of flavor added to a 15mL bottle. I tried a Nautilus mini once and didn't like it. I assume the high VG didn't work well for it (this was with the older BVC coils). I have purchased some PG and will be trying thinning out my liquid for tank usage.

Anyway, I'll be watching to see what advice is offered here.

 

[ScandaLeX]

Hey guys, I'm a pretty heavily addicted to nicotine (and vaping) so I find I'm chain vaping pretty much all day. The issue I'm having here is that from the moment I build my RDA, it takes maybe 10-15 minutes before it starts to taste a bit like burnt, another 10-15 minutes before the vape is consistently awful tasting and another 10 minutes before I have to rebuild entirely or suffer awful vape production and taste. The coil just gets too gunked up doesn't wick properly anymore and the burning taste happens too often no matter how much I drip (and at times starts sizzling all the time).

What I use:
*Tsunami RDA
*Japanese pad cotton or native wicks rolled up scottish style
*80% VG DIY juice (not my own)
*Evic VTC mini
*0.7ohm coils (sometimes 1.2)
*30-40watt (about 4-5V) where I get the best production and taste


The possible issues here:
*I'm not wicking properly, although at first the vape production is perfect
*Small tsunami chambers make it too tight to properly distribute the e-juice as the wick bunches up at the bottom
*The coil remains very hot for a while, maybe I'm not waiting long enough before re-dripping and vaping

Any advice appreciated

Are you doing full rebuilds or just dry burning the coil & replacing the cotton?
What you describe sounds to me like you're using too much cotton which is causing it to not wick as fast as you're vaping.
Looking forward to what others may suggest.

 

[tpedwards]

Thinner gauge wire would be better for chain vaping in my opinion, as it heats up andccools down quicker. Say 30 or 32 awg, thats my 2cents anyway.

 

[alex8039]

Thinner gauge wire would be better for chain vaping in my opinion, as it heats up andccools down quicker. Say 30 or 32 awg, thats my 2cents anyway.

I would never be able to get a 32awg to work lol. I have about 29ft left of 29awg which is just too malleable and fickle where I end up crushing or moving around the coils too much during insertion. Plus I can't for the life of me get a low ohm using them, my last attempts were 1.5-2.7ohm! Even then, same issue to be honest.

One piece of advice I just got is that I should try Temp control, since chain vaping makes the coil hotter and hotter otherwise. However as far as I know, my VTC mini doesn't support TC for kanthal

 

[IMFire3605]

I'd try 26awg, it's my go to on RDA's, simple dual coil 8/7wrap on a 2.5mm will get you down in the 0.4 to 0.6ish range depending on your ID, stiff enough to keep shape and maleable enough to work with. 28awg you'll cap out at about 30ish to 40ish watts, 30 about 25ish watts, 32 about 15 to 20watts, 26awg 50ish to 60ish per coil. Next would be in your wicking, just snug enough but also just loose enough, if you have to force it through you are to tight, perfect you have just enough friction to keep it in place but also loose enough to adjust it and pull free without deforming your coils. As it stands now, to tight a wick and to high a power for the wire.

 

[dbrandt01]

You mentioned in a reply, you can't get a low enough ohm. Why do you need low ohms? Especially on a regulated mod. I use a mechanical squonker. I'm at 0.4 ohms and I can chain vape and have the same cotton and kanthal in for 1-2 months easily. Then I just dry burn the kanthal and rewick.

I'd second going to a higher gauge that has been mentioned earlier. I would agree with maybe too much cotton also. Maybe you're choking the coils. But what flavor are you using? I know you said DIY but some sweet flavors I used to use has gunked up coils quickly. I vape unflavored personally now though.

 

[supertrunker]

You could also just increase the nicotine content of your juice or change your wicking material to something more durable.

T

 

[evan le'garde]

Only thing i can actually think of is to clean the tubes and pipes out thoroughly. For example, if i were to just wipe out the chimney in my kayfun with q tips it still leaves a fine film of crap behind, so it would taste burnt when i vape with it. I'm a little lazy and cannot be bothered with stripping it all down and cleaning it every week, so i wet the q tips and give it a thorough wipe and get through about a dozen q tips doing it. While i'm at it i'll clean the air vent out too with some moisened, twisted paper towel, if i didn't, it too would make my vape taste like burnt hair, and i can't even taste the flavour of the juice. Always a load of black crap in there. Just washing it in water isn't enough to get out all the black crap in the tubes.

 

[skiball]

What kinda coil are you building? My guess is your getting a small hot spot. If it tastes burt its prob bc it is or your just over wicking.

Sent from my LG-E980 using Tapatalk

 

[crxess]

No one else fault if you cannot build with thinner wire. It is done all the time.
Heavy Wire and Chain Vaping - cooking e-liquid, making a Gravy from broth.

Try a 28Ga or higher SS Wire.

 

[kross8]

Hey guys, I'm a pretty heavily addicted to nicotine (and vaping) so I find I'm chain vaping pretty much all day. The issue I'm having here is that from the moment I build my RDA, it takes maybe 10-15 minutes before it starts to taste a bit like burnt, another 10-15 minutes before the vape is consistently awful tasting and another 10 minutes before I have to rebuild entirely or suffer awful vape production and taste. The coil just gets too gunked up doesn't wick properly anymore and the burning taste happens too often no matter how much I drip (and at times starts sizzling all the time).

What I use:
*Tsunami RDA
*Japanese pad cotton or native wicks rolled up scottish style
*80% VG DIY juice (not my own)
*Evic VTC mini
*0.7ohm coils (sometimes 1.2)
*30-40watt (about 4-5V) where I get the best production and taste


The possible issues here:
*I'm not wicking properly, although at first the vape production is perfect
*Small tsunami chambers make it too tight to properly distribute the e-juice as the wick bunches up at the bottom
*The coil remains very hot for a while, maybe I'm not waiting long enough before re-dripping and vaping

Any advice appreciated

Edit: I took some pics of the last build I made, about 5-10 minutes in to usage

I don't drip,, but I do chain vape. I use a tank. I have the SXK Corolla but the Theorem or Moonshot would fill your needs. think of it as a tank you can drip, they have small 2ml tanks BELOW the coil. so if you missed a redrip,, your tiny tank will refill you until you can redrip.

that said,,,,,,i just don't have the time to drip,, I am super busy with both hands and I don't have a good technique down so any tank is good for me. currently I use the SXK a lot as well as the Griffin clone.

 

[smokinGAVIN]

I would never be able to get a 32awg to work lol. I have about 29ft left of 29awg which is just too malleable and fickle where I end up crushing or moving around the coils too much during insertion.

The cotton you are inserting may be too thick if you are bending the coils while wicking.

 

[Maiar]

Too much power. I rarely go above 35w on my RDA with a 0.5ohm build. And I chain vape it tons.

 

[GunMonkeyINTL]

Something to try with minimal change to what you're already doing:

I vape almost exactly like the OP, most of the time at a little lower wattage, but I do get up into the 30s sometimes. Everything else is the same.

SPACED COILS.

I know compressed coils seem to be ubiquitous these days, but I went back to spacing them about a year ago.

As soon as I made that change, I went from dry-burning and wicking every day (sometimes twice a day, if I was only using one atty), to getting a week or three between rewicks and dry burns.

I still build like I'm doing a compressed coil, and, right before I mount the coil, grab the outermost wraps and pull the whole thing apart slightly- just enough to see light between the wraps.

Once mounted, it takes a little more fiddling to get it spaced evenly and avoid hot-spots, but, once it's set up right, the build holds just as well as my compressed coils did.

 

[mcclintock]

You didn't mention what size wire or another data point to say what size your coils actually are. Resistance alone ("ohms") is not enough information to say anything, although the pic helps.

Are you using a single coil on a dual coil RDA? (EDIT: Ok after looking through many pictures where they never give you the right angle, one just barely shows the single coil air slot. I may just stop replying to posts where I need to be a vape catalog.)

Frankly, I'd never be able to run 30-40 watts, according to any experience I've had, but I know many do. Your symptoms are of pushing the power level too far though: great vapor production at first only. You may be shooting for instant flavor while it should be more taking a couple seconds to peak and then slowly getting a bit parched if you don't draw harder to increase cooling at that time.

I also make sure I have wick touching the entire wire between the coil and the posts, but this may relate to most of my builds having longer leads and dripping through the top.

 

[GunMonkeyINTL]

You didn't mention what size wire or another data point to say what size your coils actually are. Resistance alone ("ohms") is not enough information to say anything, although the pic helps.

Are you using a single coil on a dual coil RDA? (EDIT: Ok after looking through many pictures where they never give you the right angle, one just barely shows the single coil air slot. I may just stop replying to posts where I need to be a vape catalog.)

Frankly, I'd never be able to run 30-40 watts, according to any experience I've had, but I know many do. Your symptoms are of pushing the power level too far though: great vapor production at first only. You may be shooting for instant flavor while it should be more taking a couple seconds to peak and then slowly getting a bit parched if you don't draw harder to increase cooling at that time.

I also make sure I have wick touching the entire wire between the coil and the posts, but this may relate to most of my builds having longer leads and dripping through the top.

What a condescending post.

The OP provided his resistance, and decent photos of the build. Yes, there may be some guessing involved with figuring out exactly what wire gauge and ID he's using, but, between the resistance and pictures, you at least have a rough idea what he's building.

Beside that, you don't have to guess. Being an internet forum, each thread has room for many, many responses, so you can always, you know, ask and await a response, if there is a data point that you think would be critical to understating and being able to give the OP advice.

Perhaps you should quit replying to posts where you "need to be a vape catalog". I mean, of course, there will be a great many tears shed, but, once the community is done with the gnashing of teeth and rending of hair, it eventually get back to surviving.

 

[mcclintock]

What a condescending post.

I was more concerned with getting to the bottom of the problem than how it sounded. The "vape catalog" comment was a sort of buildup of minor irritations (as much how difficult it is to actually find out stuff from vendors' info as anything here) and yeah I shouldn't have put it anywhere it could be interpreted as singling anyone out. The "ohms" comment also wasn't well stated and blurred the posts together. So, try again:

Re: alex's first post, have you calculated if the coil area is sufficient? Could even be too big. (Need resistance and gauge to calculate, at least.) Or with that out of the way, that leaves wicking and airflow. Do you pull enough air through for that much power? Relates to what I wrote about heat over the duration of the hit.
Re: thinner wire, you don't have to worry about resistance so much (within reason) with regulated mods, of course it will be different, trick is to keep the surface area the same. Thin does respond faster but too thin wears out faster.

 

[alex8039]

Guys I really appreciate all your advice, this is why this is my favourite forum on the internet. I *think* I figured out the problem. Mostly it's because I've been an idiot, making builds and not taking the time to learn about how they work. As you can imagine when you're a beginner, you never make consistent coils, mine are all over the place at 0.5-1.2ohm of various sizes and wrap numbers (I use kanthal 24-28 gauge depending on mood). I guess I figured since I was getting good clouds on one build at 40W+, that I would always get this on all the builds. Obviously, I've been overworking the RDA. I've been keeping my 0.7ohm kanthal build with 26gauge 8 wraps at no more than 25W and it's doing pretty damn well. As long as I don't go all 'clouds bro' I think it will be pretty good for a while. I also have been working on my wicking technique, and it's getting better as I get a better feel for how much to use and how to get around the 22mm Tsunami tight fitting space issues. Finally there's the juice, I've been using 100%VG so naturally this will gunk things up faster.

 

[mcclintock]

Guys I really appreciate all your advice, this is why this is my favourite forum on the internet. I *think* I figured out the problem. Mostly it's because I've been an idiot, making builds and not taking the time to learn about how they work. As you can imagine when you're a beginner, you never make consistent coils, mine are all over the place at 0.5-1.2ohm of various sizes and wrap numbers (I use kanthal 24-28 gauge depending on mood). I guess I figured since I was getting good clouds on one build at 40W+, that I would always get this on all the builds. Obviously, I've been overworking the RDA. I've been keeping my 0.7ohm kanthal build with 26gauge 8 wraps at no more than 25W and it's doing pretty damn well. As long as I don't go all 'clouds bro' I think it will be pretty good for a while. I also have been working on my wicking technique, and it's getting better as I get a better feel for how much to use and how to get around the 22mm Tsunami tight fitting space issues. Finally there's the juice, I've been using 100%VG so naturally this will gunk things up faster.

Checking the heat flux for those builds, I'm showing 8 wraps 26 gauge on 3 mm would be typically 25 watts, but it comes up as 1.2 ohms. Are you dry firing the coils to check for and work out shorts? The .7 ohm coil came up "green" with 14 watts. See steamengine: Coil wrapping
Heat flux is only one limiting factor in builds, but is easy to check.
An essentially equivalent coil with thinner wire would need more wraps to get the same surface area, increasing resistance 2 different ways. And vice versa.