Alright, I think I've pretty much got the wrapping part down now, where I'm still struggling though, is the cotton part.
Soooo inconsistent, one wick will suffocate and give dry hits, the next one will flood to hell, leaving me with juice in my mouth.
I agree. Some people get it just right for their vape easily. And I suspect they were relatively light smokers. Really aggressive smokers, chainers, etc. have to have wick materials with a lot more variability than you can select into a sliver of cotton.
So what's a good wicking material other than cotton?
Walmart yarn is out of the question, as I'm in Europe.
Don't know if that Nextel stuff is available in Europe.
Silica and Ekowool is what I'm looking at, for best availability - but what size should I be looking at, for a 1.5 mm coil? That's just a tad smaller, than your 1/16".
Also, by switching to silica or Ekowool, will that require "flavor wicks"/stuffers, to avoid flooding the coil?
Any input is appreciated, as I'm just about to return to conventional coils at the moment
And that brings me to the coil. Can't be a sliver. Cotton or otherwise. Unless your vape is very consistent it's hard to nail down. You need to provide enough wick material (flow potential) for the likely vape. In most cases, that means more wick to accommodate tighter draws, longer pulls and the repeated flow demands of chaining.
No, you're not going to get Nextel over there unfortunately. But German and Russian tight "high quality" (high temperature) Eko braids work well in the KPT. As well as the same configuration in silica braid. Silica is ok but will have to be replaced more frequently. It's merely adequate.
A 1.5mm dia should suffice. However, the cross-section of the wick varies considerably from source of supply. You basically need to find a good source and make sure to build a coil that closest matches that particular media. You definitely want to stay in the slot, not bigger until, when? Until you can make sure it's not the media causing a problem. If for example the wick is not good you need to know for sure it's the wick. If you're still contending with shorting, geometry problems, lack of adhesion, etc. it's really very, very hard to evaluate the differences in wicking material. A good tight coil is the main tool you need in your arsenal.
So LB I'd say try to get a cheap pin vise or screw driver set that contains 1.6, 1.7 and maybe 1.75 and/or 1.8mm. The cross section of 1.5 Eko is usually significantly bigger but nominally around 1.7mm in circumference. Silica can be even thicker. You don't want to compress either too much but if you've been reading above you may know that you can wrap and insert it compressed in plastic wrap to get it into smaller diameter coils. So measure the wick cross section and select a size that best fits. Not enough flow resulting (too many dry hits), you're going to need a bit more wick. Just enough, great. Too often flooding, reduce the coil size slightly. Always make sure you've got enough flavor wick to otherwise prevent excess penetration of fluid beyond the wick itself.
Finally, with some juices that tend to then when really warm I've started to use flavor wicks as in this photo
The juice channel wicks are often enough to stem the loss of vacuum pressure as the tank empties and gets warm. This deters juice from bypassing the flange into the threads of the 510 connection and the terminal itself if severe.
Once you get to the point of a stable vape in general, say with 1.7mm. Then
when you have the essentials of coil construction and termination down, it's possible to experiment with techniques to install larger wick sizes beyond the slot width and you won't be hitting your head against the wall trying to figure out where problems are coming from.
THAT IS WHY I SO STRONGLY ADVISE FOLKS TO STICK TO THE BASIC COIL PROFILE. NOBODY WANTS TO BE DESPERATE FOR A VAPE AND FIND THEMSELVES UNABLE TO GET IT.
If you perfect your base wind/coil/wick combination, you can always get there in a pinch. And settling for a standard wind that we know electrically is prone to problems is just not a solution. It's just replacing one set of issues with a host of others.
Trust me, been there, suffered that. And that's why I'm here. Help you folks not repeat my errors.
I hope this will give you at least a little sense of direction as to what to try. All these methods have been successful for me at one point or another. Some absolutely necessary in combination.
I should add that the techniques you're refining here LB translate well to other devices. These will help. And applying them elsewhere in turn will reveal approaches that will yield results on the clearo's. An example of this would be refining cotton on a good tensioned m.c. for a dripper
That would help your Protank efforts. So you only have a good vape ahead of you if you stick to it.
Good luck LB.
