Petar K Method with a hybrid Wick

[EDO]

I came across a little tool at the local liquidators yesterday which does an amazing job adjusting the coils, beats a needle tip hands down: Dental Scaler


What I did on my AGA-T2 is oxidize only the bottom tip of the wick, a drop of juice on it, burn with BIC lighter ... and repeat 3 times. I did this as a precaution as my wick is touching the bottom of my tank and it's not shorting out.

That tool would be great to visually adjust the coils so that they are all nice and evenly spaced. But for adjusting when the coils are hot.... a syringe should be used. A good video on adjusting coils is at provape...under the Zenesis Atomizer. Mike Zens method is excellent but most people adjust the coils incorrectly after watching it. The most important part when adjusting coils is pulsing the power on/off constantly....he does it in the video but you can't see it unfortunately. Just by pulsing and nothing else for a minute or two all your coils will glow perfectly. The Syringe tip can be used during the pulsing to tap and very lightly prod the coils while you are pulsing to speed up the process.

Just to try it out I deliberately shoved my wick all the way so it touches the bottom and nothing happened when I fired it up and no error messages. I wouldn't do liquid burns too much because it actually clogs up the wick. I know a lot of videos show people doing that but it really doesn't do anything. A lot of videos show people cutting the wick at an angle in the bottom.....that is actually counter productive.

 

[sachavaca]

I am not certain why the coils need adjusting, If wraped around a drill bit it should be as good as it gets. I find the imperfection is the wick and that is what I adjust. I did glow coil dry before adding liquid but seemed to cause more problems, not sure why. Now I just add juice and pulse, if flavor is off I simply twist wick and try again. Normaly by second try all is good, if not my wick has improper size. YMMV

 

[gdeal]

I am not certain why the coils need adjusting, If wraped around a drill bit it should be as good as it gets. I find the imperfection is the wick and that is what I adjust. I did glow coil dry before adding liquid but seemed to cause more problems, not sure why. Now I just add juice and pulse, if flavor is off I simply twist wick and try again. Normaly by second try all is good, if not my wick has improper size. YMMV

gotta agree here with sachavaca 100%. This is exactly what I do too. Perfect coil first. Then adjust wick to coils. Once you start adjusting coils, it will impede you ability to remove and clean the wick and then dry burn the coil. So re-insertion of the clean wick should be just as easy as the first set-up of the coil/wick. Easy-peasy.

 

[EDO]

Gdeal...I am not sure if we are talking about the same thing here....maybe I am not being precise enough in my explanation. If I understand correctly, Sachavaca is adjusting the wick after he adds liquid...that is not the ideal way to do it. You want to make the perfect coil and adjust the wick to the coil as best as possible, then you want fire it up dry to see if all the coils are glowing evenly. IF not you have to readjust the wick so that they are. If most of the coils are firing you can just pulse the power until all of them are firing evenly.....To me that is adjusting the coil. If I am doing a 8 or 10 wrap coil....I have to also use a syringe needle to speed up the process. I tap on hot spots while pulsing the power and in under a minute I can have all ten coils glowing perfectly. I can still take the wick out afterwards. You don't need the syringe or pulsing when doing a four wrap coil.

 

[EDO]

I am not certain why the coils need adjusting, If wraped around a drill bit it should be as good as it gets. I find the imperfection is the wick and that is what I adjust. I did glow coil dry before adding liquid but seemed to cause more problems, not sure why. Now I just add juice and pulse, if flavor is off I simply twist wick and try again. Normally by second try all is good, if not my wick has improper size. YMMV

Sachavaca....believe me your vape would be so much better if all your coils are glowing evenly before starting to vape. Just do the same as before but do everything dry. YOU should adjust the wick to the coil as best as you can. Usually this will lead to all your coils glowing evenly. But lets say your doing a six wrap coil and 4 of them are glowing while the bottom two are not. If you just keep pulsing while dry within 30 seconds you will notice all the coils will glow evenly. To me this adjusting the coils. Only on extreme coils that I do I bring out the syringe needle...it is near impossible to get all coils to glow evenly when doing a 10 wrap coil just by adjusting the wick.

Can I ask you How many wraps are you doing? What is your wick diameter? Why are you using .20mm Kanthal on the Sdog?

 

[gdeal]

Hmm. Now I need to re-read all of this.... Ok. I may do it a bit different.

I dont ever fire my wick completely dry. But I am not filling my tank with juice either.

I set up my coil via the drill bit method, Then I check to see if all coils are glowing evenly. I increase voltage and pulse time gradually.

Then I insert the wick. If I dont have good apposition (dry wick to coil) for all coils, I will twist, pull it out, etc until I see good apposition. Not a tight fit, just enough so there are no gaps when you look at the coil from above or below.

Once it looks good, I drip juice on the ss mesh. I then do short pulses at low volts and then up the voltage and pulse time if I dont see hot spots.

If I do see a major hot spot or short, I twist the wick. If the twists of the wick do not solve the major hot spot or short, I pull the wick and start over. I dont ever really touch/move the wire (I dont want to disturb the symmetry of the coils), but I may prod the mesh a bit.

If I get a minor short I may nudge the wick or give it a slight twist. If I have a minor hot spot, I may nudge the wick or if it is really minor, just vape through it.

Usually I am working with a 3/4 or 4/5 coil. Hope that clarifies. Seems similar to what Sachavaca does, but the devil is in the details.

 

[EDO]

Gdeal...you just can't tell if you have perfect coils really when you have liquid in the tank. To me the best vape possible is when I have all the coils glowing evenly before adding liquid. Again with the PetarK method if your doing a 4 wrap coil usually on your first try you will get 3 or even 4 of the 4 coils glowing immediately with a nicely fitting wick. Lets say only 3 of the 4 coils are glowing...if you pulse for another 10 seconds all the coils will be perfectly glowing evenly and your done. The way you are doing it... if lets say your are doing an 6 wrap coil....you might have only 4 of the 6 coils firing and you might not know it. All you know is you don't have a really hot coil or a hot spot but you're not really sure about the dead/weak coils. If you ever try to do it dry like I am suggesting you will see what I am talking about.

 

[sachavaca]

3/4 or 4/5 coil with 30 ga is all I use, If I was new I would check coils but I can tell by taste and vapor production if I have a problem. I just do what I can to keep it very simple and maintain a stable wick. It works for me but it is not the only way for certain.

 

[gdeal]

Gdeal...you just can't tell if you have perfect coils really when you have liquid in the tank. To me the best vape possible is when I have all the coils glowing evenly before adding liquid. Again with the PetarK method if your doing a 4 wrap coil usually on your first try you will get 3 or even 4 of the 4 coils glowing immediately with a nicely fitting wick. Lets say only 3 of the 4 coils are glowing...if you pulse for another 10 seconds all the coils will be perfectly glowing evenly and your done. The way you are doing it... if lets say your are doing an 6 wrap coil....you might have only 4 of the 6 coils firing and you might not know it. All you know is you don't have a really hot coil or a hot spot but you're not really sure about the dead/weak coils. If you ever try to do it dry like I am suggesting you will see what I am talking about.

I dont put liquid in the tank, just some on the mesh for thermal diffusion. I try to minimize the temp my SS mesh is exposed to. (There is a whole thread on this now in the modding section) I see your point on higher number of coils. It will make it more difficult to adjust.

3/4 or 4/5 coil with 30 ga is all I use, If I was new I would check coils but I can tell by taste and vapor production if I have a problem. I just do what I can to keep it very simple and maintain a stable wick. It works for me but it is not the only way for certain.

Yes, agree again here with sachavaca. I prefer 30g (actually, I prefer the flat ribbon equivalent of 30g), but after I get my set up working, I can tell if my coils are perfect and stable just by the vape. If it seems off, I do a slight tweak to the wick.

Its really just comes down to what works for you and what technique you have optimized. I used to spend so much time trying to move my coils around and then once I got them in the "right" position, stress, tension, heat or thermal expansion (wick or coil) shifted and I was back to tweaking the coil. It seemed like a constant chase, especially with minimal friction against the wick. With what I do now, it takes me like 5 minutes to get up and running with a new coil and almost instantly after a coil clean.

 

[sachavaca]

I used to spend so much time trying to move my coils around and then once I got them in the "right" position, stress, tension, heat or thermal expansion (wick or coil) shifted and I was back to tweaking the coil. It seemed like a constant chase, especially with minimal friction against the wick. With what I do now, it takes me like 5 minutes to get up and running with a new coil and almost instantly after a coil clean.

I went down the same road lol

 

[Hello World]

That tool would be great to visually adjust the coils so that they are all nice and evenly spaced. But for adjusting when the coils are hot.... a syringe should be used. A good video on adjusting coils is at provape...under the Zenesis Atomizer. Mike Zens method is excellent but most people adjust the coils incorrectly after watching it. The most important part when adjusting coils is pulsing the power on/off constantly....he does it in the video but you can't see it unfortunately. Just by pulsing and nothing else for a minute or two all your coils will glow perfectly. The Syringe tip can be used during the pulsing to tap and very lightly prod the coils while you are pulsing to speed up the process.

Just to try it out I deliberately shoved my wick all the way so it touches the bottom and nothing happened when I fired it up and no error messages. I wouldn't do liquid burns too much because it actually clogs up the wick. I know a lot of videos show people doing that but it really doesn't do anything. A lot of videos show people cutting the wick at an angle in the bottom.....that is actually counter productive.

Hi Edo ...

The reason I got the scaler is because the syringe tip wasn't doing the trick on my AGA-T2. I never had to adjust ZEN's coils yet, as they ALL light every time I do a dry-burn after a tank is finished.

Even after letting the coils dry-burn at least 10 times, only 2 coils lit up. I played around with the syringe tip while they were hot, and only managed to get a third one going after futzing with it for 5 minutes. That was very frustrating because I precisely did the actions to get all the coils lit up and it wasn't working. With the scaler I move each coil somewhat and then back to the original position and they light up instantly, as the control with this tool is par excellente`. I suspect more coil movement was required than just prodding at them. The scaler is also very fast ... took less than 10 seconds and they were all up and running. Each coil moved away and back into position resulted in the coil lighting up. I have vaped 2 more tanks since, and all coils have remained fully lit.

But I can only speak for the AGA-T2 and the Kanthal 32 ga wire I'm using. Perhaps it works well with a syringe on other setups, but not with mine. To me, the scaler is a magic wand.

 

[EDO]

Gdeal....Ok it makes more sense to me now.....with liquid in the tank it would be very hard to tell whats going on.....so you just add liquid to the mesh before trying to fit the wick. Actually I am using 30g wire as well...it is way better than 32g wire as far as getting a stable build. But I only like it with my slim wicks. Once I set it up I don't adjust it again usually for 4-5 days usually. However, I am just to the point of switching to 28g and just forgetting about VV/VW devices...we'll see.

Sachavaca....0.20 mm wire is 32awg isn't it? I was wondering why such a thin wire when You have a mechanical mod?

 

[EDO]

Hello World....Cool if it works for you then it is very good. I have been doing this for a while so once I set up a coil on the drill bit I only need to pulse a little to get all the coils to light up evenly...and only on my extreme coils I will bring out the needle. Most likely your coils might have been a little off to begin with or your wick wasn't fitting right. You usually want to start pulsing only after you adjust the wick to fit and you have at least the top two coils glowing. Again on 4 wrap coil...just adjusting the wick correctly should get you all coils firing immediately. Most likely the fit of your wick was just a little too tight to begin with.

 

[sachavaca]

3/4 or 4/5 coil with 30 ga is all I use, If I was new I would check coils but I can tell by taste and vapor production if I have a problem. I just do what I can to keep it very simple and maintain a stable wick. It works for me but it is not the only way for certain.

you would be right, I use 30 though

(Igotcha) scott just did his review on sdog

REVIEW OF THE SILVER DOG V2 ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE - YouTube

Its great having a genesis that does not leak all over and goes right in my pocket.

 

[EDO]

Sachavaca,

Sorry I got your post confused...have you tried 28g wire? I am just starting to experiment with it.


The Sdog is a very cool Device. It has an innovative design. I wouldn't be surprised if they cloned it.

This is a recent phenomenon for me....since I started making my wicks considerably thinner than the wick hole, I can put the fill screw in now without it effecting the wicking....it makes my Cobra leak proof. I haven't tried it on my other devices, but i expect it to work out the same.

 

[sachavaca]

I have tried 28 but it was not for me. I agree on trying methods of making leak resistant. it is possible but few manufactures think its worth while I guess. a mouth full of ejuice or all over hands does get annoying

 

[EDO]

This is a video for people to see what I mean when I say you can get all the coils glowing evenly with pulsing. He appears to be using 28g wire. I wouldn't recommend doing it this particular way but it shows that even with a sloppy coil you can get all the coils glowing evenly if you pulse. IF you did this with 32 gauge wire it would take a lot longer, unless you first set up the coil with a drill bit. Obviously it is much easier to do this with a mechanical or unregulated mod.

Genesis setup without a torch - YouTube

 

[48lowes]

air hole not your fill hole or wick hole. The stock air hole on most of these DUDs is 1mm. If you have a 1mm air hole then this might be your problem.

I only have two small holes I'd say they are 1mm, one ground the other is fill/air hole.
I've done about everything else, I'm going for my drill. I figure I'll drill it out and tap it to 6/32 screw size. This will be a #36 drill bit
0.1065 in/2.705 mm.

 

[EDO]

I hope you read this before drilling. The air hole is the small hole on the cap....not the two holes on the base of the genny. The fill hole is the one you use to fill the tank with a needle. Don't touch that one. The wick hole is the one your wick is in....you should drill it out to 7/64. The air hole is the one on the cap that is usually 1mm....drill it out to 1/16.

 

[48lowes]

wick hole drilled to 7/64
hole in the cap as yet untouched. I did sand down the top so that the hole is directly next to the wick
my bad I drilled the fill hole also. good thing is I can fix that if need be
used 400 stainless with the grain facing up and down
6/5 wrap of 32 kanthal 2.0 ohms
Good thing is I've got the thing wicking