Hi, superuser. As promised, here are two pictures of my MD. The one with the wet coil is the current one. I didn't want to rewick today, but I found an older picture with a dry wick.
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Honestly, I find your wick looks much better than mine. But mine works great and your's not
As I told you in our private conversation, the only thing I do is that I make sure that there are no gaps, even the smallest, between the wicking material and the walls of the wicking wells, especially in the edges of the wells.
I really don't know what I'm doing different than you. I had some minor leakage issues in the beginning, but after I got some feeling for the right amount of cotton (or in my case rayon) I never had any trouble. And I've never experienced any overly popping sounds. Just the slight sizzling that is normal.
I normally vape this coil around 14 watts. I just tested 20 watts and it's fine - no burnt taste of whatsoever.
You wrote that you pull up liquid to your mouth, if your wattage is too low. I never experienced this. What is the VG/PG ratio that you're using?
Did you try the coils that came with the atty? I haven't tried them, but I would think they are designed to work fine in this atty. So you could try a build with this coil, just to narrow down the source of error and see if it's your wicking or the coil that causes your issues.