Good day vaping friends,
I have some questions and I'd love to draw on your experience. I am beginning to deduce that there is a balance required in builds for tanks as a generality. I take long drags and I like a slightly warm, dense vape. It seems as though if I make a build that would give me the vape I want, the wicking won't keep up. I have to take shorter drags and get much less of that chewy, delicious vapor. Am I chasing a unicorn? Is my wicking bad? It certainly may be; I've got less than two dozen wick jobs under the 'ole belt.
I currently have rayon, organic cotton, PnC yarn and Koga cotton at my disposal. I'm having better luck with cotton, which is odd to me, since all indications are that rayon is less fickle than cotton and technically a better wicking material. I have been mostly sticking to 28 gauge, but I've tried 24, 26 and 30. I've built low, I've built high. I think about a power level I'd like to vape at and model coils at 270-280mw/mm^2 on steam engine to come up with the fastest coil I can make with the most surface area.
An example, I built a tesioned MC for my Erl clone. It's 1.2 ohm, 2.4 mm and wicked with Koga. I use Qorax's instructions from the authentic thread. Big fluffly shoulders that are straight on the vertical plane with the shoulders of the wick channels. Cotton is very thin in the channels stopping where the juice ring would sit if you have it installed. I've ran the tank both ways, I have better luck without the ring. I have no issues with flooding or leaking. In order to get the flavor closest to my single coil magma (incidentally, the same coil build that's in this) I have to run it between 10-11 watts compared to ~18 on the magma clone. Coil wrapping | Steam Engine | free vaping calculators As you can see at 10W, it's humming along at 148mw/mm^2. It's not as cool as you would think, the wicking can keep up, the vapor isn't there, but the flavor is pretty good; it belies the vapor production.
If I set this little fella to run at ~18W, the way I'd prefer to run it, the flavor goes haywire in a bad way and I can only draw for 2-3 seconds before the wicking runs out. To be fair, it's not like I'm having better luck with my RDAs. That spanner in the works, makes me think it's my wicking as a primary cause secondarliy backed up by misinterpretation of coil specifications.
My Aquas give me a vapor that I like, but like everything else, fall short on wicking. If I turn them down to cook cooler, the wicking keeps up but density and temperature suffer. They're built to .6 duals with 28ga. One is 2.4 and the other is 3mm to experiment with wick thickness and coil proportions. It's only been half a day in the running so far, so I haven't been able to make any solid conclusions yet about either thing.
I've seen too many videos of dudes rippin' off 8-10 second draws off of tanks set to higher wattages that I run to know that it's impossible. However, I think I'm just missing something that will make me slap my forehead. Perhaps my expectations are a bit off. I'm not trying to enter cloud comps with my setups, but I swear it feels like I'm missing a lot of performance compared to others.
Also, while I have your attention, do your tanks bubble evenly after taking a hit? Looking at how the tanks I have get their juice, I don't think it's indicative of anything other than letting you know that you've achieved enough vacuum in the tank to make it re-balance itself hysdrostatically. The wrench in that is that I have oriented the tanks multiple ways and it's always the same hole (or holes on my aqua) that bubbles.
Sorry about all the questions and the wall of text that just critted you for over 9000. I'm a really curious guy who needs to understand as many facets as I can about my hobbies. Thanks y'all.
I have some questions and I'd love to draw on your experience. I am beginning to deduce that there is a balance required in builds for tanks as a generality. I take long drags and I like a slightly warm, dense vape. It seems as though if I make a build that would give me the vape I want, the wicking won't keep up. I have to take shorter drags and get much less of that chewy, delicious vapor. Am I chasing a unicorn? Is my wicking bad? It certainly may be; I've got less than two dozen wick jobs under the 'ole belt.
I currently have rayon, organic cotton, PnC yarn and Koga cotton at my disposal. I'm having better luck with cotton, which is odd to me, since all indications are that rayon is less fickle than cotton and technically a better wicking material. I have been mostly sticking to 28 gauge, but I've tried 24, 26 and 30. I've built low, I've built high. I think about a power level I'd like to vape at and model coils at 270-280mw/mm^2 on steam engine to come up with the fastest coil I can make with the most surface area.
An example, I built a tesioned MC for my Erl clone. It's 1.2 ohm, 2.4 mm and wicked with Koga. I use Qorax's instructions from the authentic thread. Big fluffly shoulders that are straight on the vertical plane with the shoulders of the wick channels. Cotton is very thin in the channels stopping where the juice ring would sit if you have it installed. I've ran the tank both ways, I have better luck without the ring. I have no issues with flooding or leaking. In order to get the flavor closest to my single coil magma (incidentally, the same coil build that's in this) I have to run it between 10-11 watts compared to ~18 on the magma clone. Coil wrapping | Steam Engine | free vaping calculators As you can see at 10W, it's humming along at 148mw/mm^2. It's not as cool as you would think, the wicking can keep up, the vapor isn't there, but the flavor is pretty good; it belies the vapor production.
If I set this little fella to run at ~18W, the way I'd prefer to run it, the flavor goes haywire in a bad way and I can only draw for 2-3 seconds before the wicking runs out. To be fair, it's not like I'm having better luck with my RDAs. That spanner in the works, makes me think it's my wicking as a primary cause secondarliy backed up by misinterpretation of coil specifications.
My Aquas give me a vapor that I like, but like everything else, fall short on wicking. If I turn them down to cook cooler, the wicking keeps up but density and temperature suffer. They're built to .6 duals with 28ga. One is 2.4 and the other is 3mm to experiment with wick thickness and coil proportions. It's only been half a day in the running so far, so I haven't been able to make any solid conclusions yet about either thing.
I've seen too many videos of dudes rippin' off 8-10 second draws off of tanks set to higher wattages that I run to know that it's impossible. However, I think I'm just missing something that will make me slap my forehead. Perhaps my expectations are a bit off. I'm not trying to enter cloud comps with my setups, but I swear it feels like I'm missing a lot of performance compared to others.
Also, while I have your attention, do your tanks bubble evenly after taking a hit? Looking at how the tanks I have get their juice, I don't think it's indicative of anything other than letting you know that you've achieved enough vacuum in the tank to make it re-balance itself hysdrostatically. The wrench in that is that I have oriented the tanks multiple ways and it's always the same hole (or holes on my aqua) that bubbles.
Sorry about all the questions and the wall of text that just critted you for over 9000. I'm a really curious guy who needs to understand as many facets as I can about my hobbies. Thanks y'all.
