Old coils accelerating cotton wick aging?

[dripster]

Nope. I have ss316L clapton's in several RTA's + rda's that are 6 months old and a couple that are approaching 8 months. My wicks last the same amount of time. No premature wick aging. Flavor is on par with a new clapton, excellent.

If ss316L clapton's are maintained properly they will last.

What wattage are you dry burning your coils at? Too high is bad.

Are you lighting them up to a bright orange or red glow? If so that's your issue.

SS316L coils should be dry fired at 10-25w in short pulses (0.5-1.0 sec) and the coil should only get to a faint dull orange.

I dry burn 316L at 14-20w. Run a trickle of water into the coil and repeat a couple times. Brush coil off and rewick.

Never go to bright orange or red with ss316L.

If you get ss316L too hot it will damage the wire and bad oxides form.

Here, from AVS, ss316L tips and watch the video at bottom of the page.
Stainless Steel Coil & Wire Instructions and Tips

He has another...


Good luck!

ETA: Just for reference: I get 10-14 days per wick with flavored juices. Up to ~24 with unflavored. That's using rayon or cotton.

Did anyone else but me notice in the video you linked near the end of your post that he has his coils mounted the wrong way? The tail of the wick that has to go over the bottom leg of the coil has no available space to be able to reach the bottom of the build deck so, this guy isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

That said, I find that SS 316L wire tends to be 10-12 times less durable than Ni80 wire. In addition, SS 316L heats up a bit slower than Ni80 so, why bother with SS 316L? I mean, I can understand the fact that some people are allergic to nickel, just like I can understand the fact some people insist on using temperature control─kind of like some people also insist on using training wheels on a bicycle─so, typically, they don't mind the durability problem all that much, as wire is cheap, and wrapping a simple round wire or parallel round wire coil doesn't take much effort or time, which, also typically, happens to be something that they use for a pretext to not get into using complex coils (not trying to point any fingers here, but I see this a lot). But what I really don't get is, why so many people keep complaining about the taste of Ni80? There is no metallic taste with Ni80 if you sufficiently dry fire the coils a few times before the first use. At least not if you always make perfectly sure to avoid the type of Ni80 that contains a trace amount of iron. (I use only the kind of Ni80 wire that is smelted by Sandvik in Sweden─the same company that also owns the official Kanthal brand.)

Further, if going for complex coil types, hot spots are easier to work out with Ni80, and, dry burning to remove the gunking is easier with Ni80 also. That's because, when you're gently pulsing the coils at a low wattage setting, with Ni80 you can pulse them till they glow red-orange so basically all you need to avoid are temperature shocks so don't pour water on them when they're still scaldingly hot and that's it. For complex coils, SS 316L is more about going on instagram to post macro shots of fancy rainbow-colored builds that look like art, but are usually nothing more than a marketing strategy made to look like art, than it is about flavor chasing. So is it really any wonder that so many people wrongfully assume that complex builds have got nothing to do with flavor chasing?

When trying to educate vapers about how to effectively sustain flavor performance, at the end of the day, make sure you go home alive. Here endeth the lesson.

 

[dripster]

Haven't tried "flat wire" but wish I could (my build decks won't allow it... except my one RDA that I don't use much) Many people have convinced me that simple "flat" wire (actually rectangular like 3mm x 9mm) can perform just as well as fancy designs. Much easier to clean too.

My own personal experience has taught me that juice is more easily adsorbed by the coil if using multiple strands of round wires and/or using vertically stacked strands of ribbon wire for the cores, in cohort with using relatively thin (e.g., 36g or 38g) wrap wire that is alien-clapton'd (alien'd) around these same cores in such a particular way that it lies flat against the cores, similar to the claptoning technique, but the eye-catching waviness in the alien'd result does increase the speed of adsorption effect, not just after every hit I take, but also DURING every hit. I find that a simple 3-core alien can very easily give 20% better flavor when compared to a regular (2-core) fused clapton. (The latter coil type is what I call "the Volkswagen" of the flavor realm in the vaping universe, whereas 3-core aliens are more akin to the teleportation system that's used in Star Trek.)

 

[dripster]

a brush to clean exotic coils when dry burning,

I never use a brush to clean my coils. I use sparkling water so it fizzes more vigorously when it boils and evaporates, when compared to tap water. The effectiveness of dry burning a few times, each time after pouring a splash of sparkling water onto the (cooled-down) coils, while being gentle with pulsing to avoid temperature shocks, is pretty much on par with using an ultrasonic cleaner. Whereas a brush will only keep marring the exterior of the coil, and, you still can't get inside the numerous tiny cavities that are located between the cores and the wrap wire that surrounds the cores. (There's a sort of V-shaped trough sitting between the two cores on either side in a fused clapton build, and, the wrap wire bridges these troughs so it blocks access to any soot that got stuck underneath.)

 

[Mordacai]

@AngeNZ, materials technologists such as Professor Mark Miodownik could explain these concepts so much better.

As it's metal aging, thermal stress and the kinetic theory of matter all intertwined.

So, complex. Very complex when you delve into properly.