Nickel and Nichrome wire

[Jake287]

I work at a local vape shop, and had a meeting with the owner who is refusing to carry nickel and nichrome wire. Her reasons are safety, and potential health hazards from vaping on nickel based wires. Apparently nickel will release a carcinogenic gas when heated. Does anyone know at what temperature this occurs, and how much of this gas would be inhaled if any at all? Personally, I build with nickel and nichrome and I'm not concerned, there's just a lot of misinformation online, but I like to be well informed, Thanks!

 

[Notfastenough812]

Following this

 

[Walt R]

I work at a local vape shop, and had a meeting with the owner who is refusing to carry nickel and nichrome wire. Her reasons are safety, and potential health hazards from vaping on nickel based wires. Apparently nickel will release a carcinogenic gas when heated. Does anyone know at what temperature this occurs, and how much of this gas would be inhaled if any at all? Personally, I build with nickel and nichrome and I'm not concerned, there's just a lot of misinformation online, but I like to be well informed, Thanks!

I had the same question and found the true answer at the EVOLV DNA 200 early forum you should join and you will find the answer there. Or message ADMIN JOHN and he will give you the real truth. My answer to your question is yes it is safe to vape with nickel you would never reach a temp that will release harmful vapors.
Walt

 

[Hans Wermhat]

There was a thread about it last week I think. It's an ungodly high temp that would singe your tonsils if you tried to vape that hot. I use N80 in all my drippers and I'm not worried about it.

 

[suprtrkr]

Very hot, far hotter than anything likely in vape gear. The Ni has to go well beyond mere incandescence and approach plasticity before it will sublime those gasses. If your wires are that hot, you have more serious and immediate problems than a few nanograms of gas, no matter how toxic.

 

[Completely Average]

Generally speaking nickel wire (Ni200) starts releasing toxins at around 700F, which is why all temperature control mods have maximum temperature settings below that threshold. When vaping you'll usually stay FAR below that threshold as I've yet to find a single juice that doesn't start tasting horribly burnt by 550F, and most people will vape well below 500F.

 

[Walt R]

The only 2 things I don't like about nickel wire are.....
Unstable OHM's
And when you build with it ,,It's like working with silly putty.
Walt

 

[Jake287]

I had the same question and found the true answer at the EVOLV DNA 200 early forum you should join and you will find the answer there. Or message ADMIN JOHN and he will give you the real truth. My answer to your question is yes it is safe to vape with nickel you would never reach a temp that will release harmful vapors.
Walt

That's what I figured, thanks for your reply. When customers ask me why we don't carry nickel or nichrome I'll just tell them about the melting hazard instead of any potential health risks.

 

[Walt R]

Yupper.
I really don't like working with nickel wire either.
It's like working with silly putty compared to kanthal.

 

[Jake287]

The only 2 things I don't like about nickel wire are.....
Unstable OHM's
And when you build with it ,,It's like working with silly putty.
Walt

I hear that. you have to be very careful building your coils, flavor is great and reduces dry hits but nickel's a pain.

 

[Walt R]

Yeah I just stick to good old kanthal.
And forget temp control.
Just set your mod right and keep it well socked with juice.
So much easier.

 

[Jake287]

Generally speaking nickel wire (Ni200) starts releasing toxins at around 700F, which is why all temperature control mods have maximum temperature settings below that threshold. When vaping you'll usually stay FAR below that threshold as I've yet to find a single juice that doesn't start tasting horribly burnt by 550F, and most people will vape well below 500F.

Thanks for the info, I'll relay that to the shop owner and try to dispel her fears about nickel coils. We sell TC devices, seems kinda silly not to sell the wire or coils.

 

[Romano Cheese]

@Jake287 so your shop sells Temp Control mods? That makes no sense if the owner thinks it unsafe to vape to even sell them, or do you sell Titanium wire instead? Plus if your customers have to buy their nickel online, they are probably going to buy their TC mod there too, losing sales to the internet. Nickel is annoying to use, but since I started wrapping it around a machine screw I'm getting perfectly spaced coils that are easy to mount. I haven't used Titanium yet, but looking forward to it.

 

[Jake287]

@Jake287 so your shop sells Temp Control mods? That makes no sense if the owner thinks it unsafe to vape to even sell them, or do you sell Titanium wire instead? Plus if your customers have to buy their nickel online, they are probably going to buy their TC mod there too, losing sales to the internet. Nickel is annoying to use, but since I started wrapping it around a machine screw I'm getting perfectly spaced coils that are easy to mount. I haven't used Titanium yet, but looking forward to it.

She's looking into titanium. And I agree, makes no sense. I think she needs to understand that if someone does something stupid that's on them, not the shop. I used a machine screw too, worked great.

 

[Romano Cheese]

@Jake287 yeah, I agree on making sure something is safe before selling it. I too was worried about Nickel when I first looked into TC, but when all the info I read on it said Nickel doesn't release toxic fumes until a certain degree - which TC mods can't/won't achieve it eased my mind. Even e-liquid heated to a certain ungodly degree can create formaldehyde so it's all relative to how someone is using that item. Does your shop sell mech mods? I think that is a bigger danger to customers, I've seen plenty of threads of vented batteries and clips from news stations doing reports on people injured by mods blowing up...haven't seen anyone reoirting that Nickel has caused them problems.

 

[itskohler]

I work at a local vape shop, and had a meeting with the owner who is refusing to carry nickel and nichrome wire. Her reasons are safety, and potential health hazards from vaping on nickel based wires. Apparently nickel will release a carcinogenic gas when heated. Does anyone know at what temperature this occurs, and how much of this gas would be inhaled if any at all? Personally, I build with nickel and nichrome and I'm not concerned, there's just a lot of misinformation online, but I like to be well informed, Thanks!

Graphitization occurs around 650F, but is minimal and in the beginning stages. Full graphitization occurs around 800F. At this point the gas you are breathing is toxic. NIOSH has standards for the heating of Ni200, and I will see if I can dig up that document.

 

[Jake287]

@Jake287 yeah, I agree on making sure something is safe before selling it. I too was worried about Nickel when I first looked into TC, but when all the info I read on it said Nickel doesn't release toxic fumes until a certain degree - which TC mods can't/won't achieve it eased my mind. Even e-liquid heated to a certain ungodly degree can create formaldehyde so it's all relative to how someone is using that item. Does your shop sell mech mods? I think that is a bigger danger to customers, I've seen plenty of threads of vented batteries and clips from news stations doing reports on people injured by mods blowing up...haven't seen anyone reoirting that Nickel has caused them problems.

We do sell some mech mods, but we're moving away from them. No one wants to pay top dollar for an authentic, and many of the affordable clones are junk, and dangerous. The ones we do sell are Smpl, Panzer, Helmsman, Nemesis and Tree of Life. I've run into A LOT of young cloud chaser wannabes who still think you can only get clouds off of a mech mod. These same customers try building coils without an ohms reader and keep building WAY too low. I do my best to educate these people and preach safety. I don't want anyone getting hurt and putting blame on me or our shop.

 

[Jake287]

Graphitization occurs around 650F, but is minimal and in the beginning stages. Full graphitization occurs around 800F. At this point the gas you are breathing is toxic. NIOSH has standards for the heating of Ni200, and I will see if I can dig up that document.

Awesome, thanks for the accurate info, that's what I needed.

 

[Completely Average]

The only 2 things I don't like about nickel wire are.....
Unstable OHM's

What exactly do you mean by "unstable ohms"?

If you mean the ohms change when the wire is heated, that's not unstable, it's entirely predictable and forms the basis of how temperature control works. If the ohms didn't change you couldn't get temperature control to work (Which is why you don't see any TC mods that work in TC mode with kanthal)