Ive been going through some of the posts in here and thought id share my experiences. I started vaping a little more than two months ago after 20 years on death sticks. It was a daunting thing looking through sites and pages researching. I read about the various kinds of devices out there as well as all the 'tech' behind it and decided it was best to look for something purely mechanical and fully rebuild-able and repairable in the field (because i sometimes spend days in the wilderness far from civilization and the nearest cigarette store). lol. yeah..
Anyway.. i started out with a china-made cheap and cheerful device called the Kamry K-100 with a built-in carto and batteries/chargers etc perfect for the starting kit. I was then introduced to tanks (clones) that produced much better flavours and were a little bit more convenient than the cartos. The flavours were clean and rich. From that point onwards upon buying my first AGA-T2 clone, i learnt what people meant when they said they tasted the metal because the tips were chrome plated or stainless steel. Then i learnt about the high quality originals and what differences they made with their surgical steel construction and build. Here i purchased my first surgical steel drip tank and my first original tank. This was the Vicious Ant Cyclone with AFC. That made a difference in flavours especially with my tobacco juices.
At this point, with a lot of experimentation with wicks and coils and airflows, i realised the relationship between vapour production and flavours as a product of coil heating performance and wicking performance against battery performance. I went from single coil to dual coils and finally back to single coils and across numerous wick designs as well as materials. At this point.. you realise that a single coil with the right wick design and airflow produces just as much vapour but with better flavors than a dual coil and you will also realise than smaller chambers produce much stronger flavours than those with larger chambers designed for dual coiling. Then comes the complexity of battery power efficiency and the effect of pins. Some use standard steel pins, others use brass, the best ones use copper and some even silver plate them. IMHO silver plating is a waste of time and money. The plating disappears eventually and the differences between the two are marginal at most. Pure copper is still the best conductor and bang for the buck. So what do these pins do? They simply reduce the loss between your battery contacts and the coil contacts. The faster the electrons flow with little or no loss means the more energy you can put between your coils and faster. A steel pin will work but it just looses some power along the way and your batteries dont last as long due to the wasted energy. Marginal but it makes a little difference in performance.
So then my quest for a good mod starts and after a fair bit of research, looking at other people's mods etc i found a mod that worked well. That was my Grand Vapors Sentinel V4. The reasons i have are these..
1) floating silver plated over pure copper pins.
If the plating disappears, i still have copper. And most importantly, floating pins means i dont waste time screwing and unscrewing adjusting shaking blah blah blah the battery in the mod. I simply put on the tank, drop in a battery and tighten the mod and it fires immediately without the need to adjust batteries.
2) telescoping mod
for 18350-18650 without the need for extensions. I dont need to carry extra stuff around. God knows ive already got to carry batteries and juices.
3) Locking
Opposite locking nut makes such a difference. I bought a Chi You clone where the nut locks in the same direction as the bottom cap and that was hell. Unlocking and unlocking opened up the cap. That mod lasted 3 days before i scraped it. Thank god it was a clone. So now my V4 has a beautiful unlocking mechanism that unlocks the firing mechanism by turning it anti-clock wise and the uncapping was done with a clockwise turning. Little things like these makes a big difference. The lock is the most important part of a mod because without it would mean the difference of a destroyed tank or worst an exploding/melting battery.
4) Vent holes
Most good mods have them.
So now i have a great mod.. but i was still looking for a great drip tank and genesis tank to go with it. At this point, i realised that the vaping pleasure we get is a balance of vapor and flavour with excessive vapour producing oily and monotonous flavours and insufficient vapor reducing our vape satisfaction. Im not going to go into which tank you should buy or which is best. All im going to say to end this here is this.
Nothing beats the flavours from a rebuildable tank (either drip or genesis) that you wick and coil yourself based on the mod and juices you vape.
When you journey the path of the quest for the holy grail of coils and wicks, always use a protected battery and a potentiometer if you can. The protected battery gives added protection against a coil that may be shorted because you either dont have enough coils because of the grade of wire you use or your wick hasnt been insulated enough by the firing and are conducting down the wick. Safety first.
Anyway, enough for my first rant here. Hope some of you with find this a bit useful as you find your way. Happy vaping and keep away from those death sticks.
Anyway.. i started out with a china-made cheap and cheerful device called the Kamry K-100 with a built-in carto and batteries/chargers etc perfect for the starting kit. I was then introduced to tanks (clones) that produced much better flavours and were a little bit more convenient than the cartos. The flavours were clean and rich. From that point onwards upon buying my first AGA-T2 clone, i learnt what people meant when they said they tasted the metal because the tips were chrome plated or stainless steel. Then i learnt about the high quality originals and what differences they made with their surgical steel construction and build. Here i purchased my first surgical steel drip tank and my first original tank. This was the Vicious Ant Cyclone with AFC. That made a difference in flavours especially with my tobacco juices.
At this point, with a lot of experimentation with wicks and coils and airflows, i realised the relationship between vapour production and flavours as a product of coil heating performance and wicking performance against battery performance. I went from single coil to dual coils and finally back to single coils and across numerous wick designs as well as materials. At this point.. you realise that a single coil with the right wick design and airflow produces just as much vapour but with better flavors than a dual coil and you will also realise than smaller chambers produce much stronger flavours than those with larger chambers designed for dual coiling. Then comes the complexity of battery power efficiency and the effect of pins. Some use standard steel pins, others use brass, the best ones use copper and some even silver plate them. IMHO silver plating is a waste of time and money. The plating disappears eventually and the differences between the two are marginal at most. Pure copper is still the best conductor and bang for the buck. So what do these pins do? They simply reduce the loss between your battery contacts and the coil contacts. The faster the electrons flow with little or no loss means the more energy you can put between your coils and faster. A steel pin will work but it just looses some power along the way and your batteries dont last as long due to the wasted energy. Marginal but it makes a little difference in performance.
So then my quest for a good mod starts and after a fair bit of research, looking at other people's mods etc i found a mod that worked well. That was my Grand Vapors Sentinel V4. The reasons i have are these..
1) floating silver plated over pure copper pins.
If the plating disappears, i still have copper. And most importantly, floating pins means i dont waste time screwing and unscrewing adjusting shaking blah blah blah the battery in the mod. I simply put on the tank, drop in a battery and tighten the mod and it fires immediately without the need to adjust batteries.
2) telescoping mod
for 18350-18650 without the need for extensions. I dont need to carry extra stuff around. God knows ive already got to carry batteries and juices.
3) Locking
Opposite locking nut makes such a difference. I bought a Chi You clone where the nut locks in the same direction as the bottom cap and that was hell. Unlocking and unlocking opened up the cap. That mod lasted 3 days before i scraped it. Thank god it was a clone. So now my V4 has a beautiful unlocking mechanism that unlocks the firing mechanism by turning it anti-clock wise and the uncapping was done with a clockwise turning. Little things like these makes a big difference. The lock is the most important part of a mod because without it would mean the difference of a destroyed tank or worst an exploding/melting battery.
4) Vent holes
Most good mods have them.
So now i have a great mod.. but i was still looking for a great drip tank and genesis tank to go with it. At this point, i realised that the vaping pleasure we get is a balance of vapor and flavour with excessive vapour producing oily and monotonous flavours and insufficient vapor reducing our vape satisfaction. Im not going to go into which tank you should buy or which is best. All im going to say to end this here is this.
Nothing beats the flavours from a rebuildable tank (either drip or genesis) that you wick and coil yourself based on the mod and juices you vape.
When you journey the path of the quest for the holy grail of coils and wicks, always use a protected battery and a potentiometer if you can. The protected battery gives added protection against a coil that may be shorted because you either dont have enough coils because of the grade of wire you use or your wick hasnt been insulated enough by the firing and are conducting down the wick. Safety first.
Anyway, enough for my first rant here. Hope some of you with find this a bit useful as you find your way. Happy vaping and keep away from those death sticks.
