SOLVED: Dry hits chain vaping Wotofo Profile RDTA

[PeterKay]

DIY I do 50/50, I think the store-bought ones are 70% VG. No appreciable difference with wicking performance.

your 50/50 should wick much better than 70/30. Maybe you won't feel a great difference between 70/30 and 50/50 in rda's/rta's (other than some rta's being more likely to leak with 50/50), but on smaller, low power mtl vape tanks with drop-in coils, difference is definitely noticeable. For example: I have a horizontech magico stick with magico tank. With 1.8 ohm coils 50/50 vapes fine. But when I tried 70/30 in it, I burned the coil in like 5-6h

 

[Superuser187]

For me 50/50 would be harsh on the throat with those attys but that's me

 

[Seiggy]

I'm running the Profile RDTA using SS mesh in TC mode w/40W @ 400F. I placed three (3) - 3mm cotton shoe string strips of Wotofo Xfiber cotton (1st usage). I trimmed the top 3mm about 1mm from the mesh to give me a shoulder. The bottom half (6mm) I did thin out about 30%. My problem was my tails were too short and not touching the SS wire ropes good enough. I just lifted my tails and added a small amount of cotton over the ropes and then placed my tails back down. When I look at my wick it is always soaked and goes though the juice. In looking at your last pic, it does not seem to be getting enough to the mesh and your dry hits as you stated. I'd try taking the top 1/3 - 1/2 of the cotton at each end and give it a hair cut.
Edit: Forgot to add that this is with 50-50 to 70vg-30pg

 

[PeterKay]

same with my good old innokin endura t22e. 70/30 would kill the 1.5ohm coils really fast

For me 50/50 would be harsh on the throat with those attys but that's me

Not just you, loads of people don't handle PG very well. My girlfriend would get sore throat and dry mouth all the time with 50/50 for her mtl until I started making some 60/40 and 65/35 for her with around 5% distilled water added to combat dryness and improve wicking in her mtl coils

 

[Ionori]

So I repeated the experiment with turning the RDTA upside down without the ropes and it still didn't wick or leak. That told me the tank is effectively sealed by the cotton tails in the wicking ports. After about 3 more attempts to get the wicking right (with the ropes reinstalled), I ended up installing the wick I had made using the included Wotofo shoelace-style cotton (gross, I know, but given the wicking issues, I thought I might hold on to the manufactured recommended wick regardless). I've finally managed to vape through a full tank without getting a dry hit by holding it parallel to the ground (haven't tried with a more regular tilt yet, may not be necessary). The wick is kinda collapsed, so maybe that reduced thickness is why the wick is no longer sealing the tank and allowing wicking to happen. I'll enjoy the wick for now and try to make air channels in the next wick to help the tank get some air.

I'm running the Profile RDTA using SS mesh in TC mode w/40W @ 400F. I placed three (3) - 3mm cotton shoe string strips of Wotofo Xfiber cotton (1st usage). I trimmed the top 3mm about 1mm from the mesh to give me a shoulder. The bottom half (6mm) I did thin out about 30%. My problem was my tails were too short and not touching the SS wire ropes good enough. I just lifted my tails and added a small amount of cotton over the ropes and then placed my tails back down. When I look at my wick it is always soaked and goes though the juice. In looking at your last pic, it does not seem to be getting enough to the mesh and your dry hits as you stated. I'd try taking the top 1/3 - 1/2 of the cotton at each end and give it a hair cut.
Edit: Forgot to add that this is with 50-50 to 70vg-30pg

Could you upload an image of your wicking? I'm kinda jealous of how easy it was for you. Maybe my cotton just sucks, the new bag has been giving me some issues with me Zeus X Mesh too.

 

[Seiggy]

Oh.... I also forgot....Do not cover up your Fill port and/or Air port. In you last PIC I could not see either. It's possible that's what is causing slow wicking.

 

[Ionori]

Oh.... I also forgot....Do not cover up your Fill port and/or Air port. In you last PIC I could not see either. It's possible that's what is causing slow wicking.

That's impossible, the barrel has notches that cover both ports. The last picture was with the barrel on, that's why the ports weren't visible, but you can see the 2 gold triangles of the barrel's notches in the top left and bottom right corners.

 

[Seiggy]

Could you upload an image of your wicking?

This mesh has 1740 per my puff counter

 

[Ionori]

View attachment 918147

This mesh has 1740 per my puff counter

Look great, I can't even tell it uses 3 separate threads. I think using 3 threads naturally created a few air channels between them that enable the tank to breathe a bit.

 

[Seiggy]

That's impossible, the barrel has notches that cover both ports. The last picture was with the barrel on, that's why the ports weren't visible, but you can see the 2 gold triangles of the barrel's notches in the top left and bottom right corners.

Sorry about that, I missed that the barrel was on.

 

[Ionori]

Sorry about that, I missed that the barrel was on.

No worries, thanks for your help.

 

[PeterKay]

Looks like you're getting closer to the bottom of it. That's what you needed man, someone like Seiggy who actually owns the tank with good results to give his input. I could only speculate.
One more thing I wanted to add, might be useful for you or no in the future as I don't know how your wick would react to similar scenario since there's much more cotton in your setup. Something that also resulted in a dry hit in my vandy vape mato. Two or three times it happened: I overfilled the tank, and the juice came up the juice ports with enough force to pop the wick up, just a little bit. I couldn't really see it but the connection between the steel rods and wick was interrupted. I noticed when I got a slight dry hit- had to push the wick down again to get it back on track.

 

[Seiggy]

The one other thing I forgot to mention @Ionori . When I wick, I install the first two (2) - 3mm cotton strips by pulling them through the mesh coil. The last 3mm cotton strip I add by releasing one side of the mesh and I roll it under the mesh spreading it out over the whole cotton already installed (post to post). It helps getting that last bit of cotton in. With shoe string, I've even pulled it through from the bottom by pushing the spring down on one side and pulling it through.

 

[Ionori]

The one other thing I forgot to mention @Ionori . When I wick, I install the first two (2) - 3mm cotton strips by pulling them through the mesh coil. The last 3mm cotton strip I add by releasing one side of the mesh and I roll it under the mesh spreading it out over the whole cotton already installed (post to post). It helps getting that last bit of cotton in. With shoe string, I've even pulled it through from the bottom by pushing the spring down on one side and pulling it through.

I'm not sure I understand, are strips and strings different? I assumed you were using them interchangeably, but now it sounds like strips are, well, strips of cotton pads, while strings are the ones you get with aglets from various brands. Is that right? That would explain why I didn't see distinct strings of cotton in your image as I had been expecting.

If I understand you correctly, do you use 3 separate strips on purpose, or do you get your cotton pads pre-cut somewhere and don't have access to whole cotton pads to get a single 9mm wide strip?

 

[vaper1960]

Kinda late to the thread ( and I apologize ahead of time if this doesn't apply) I quickly read the thread (but this is not the style of vaping I do) Just a thought... don't chain vape (not what you wanted hear) but coils (mesh) need to cool down between vapes. Most vapes don't like "chain vaping"... to quote Uncle "just saying"

 

[Seiggy]

I'm not sure I understand, are strips and strings different? I assumed you were using them interchangeably, but now it sounds like strips are, well, strips of cotton pads, while strings are the ones you get with aglets from various brands. Is that right? That would explain why I didn't see distinct strings of cotton in your image as I had been expecting.

If I understand you correctly, do you use 3 separate strips on purpose, or do you get your cotton pads pre-cut somewhere and don't have access to whole cotton pads to get a single 9mm wide strip?

Sorry...But I'll blame it on getting old.....I was referring to 3mm cotton strings with aglet from Wotofo. Xfiber cotton 60mm x 3mm. I don't use cotton pads....

 

[Spydro]

@Ionori I didn't weed thru everything that has been said here, and don't have any Wotofo Profile RDTA's, but I switched to mesh ONLY atty's back in August 2017 and very soon after I got them had each of them working perfectly. In order I bought 3 Vandy Vape Mesh RDA's, 9 Digiflavor Mesh Pro RDA's, 9 Wotofo Profile Mesh RDA's and 6 Wotofo Unity Mesh RTA's. The negative with the Vandy Vape's is they have almost no well to hold extra juice. The Digiflavor Mesh Pro's do have an acceptable well and were a huge improvement. But the biggest improvement was the spring loaded deck of the Profile RDA's (and that I ran them on squonk mods so no juice shortages) and the Profile RTA's that made building them right the first time for most folks almost child's play. A big improvement for me building them as easy as it gets was switching to Vapefly 3.0-3.5 Firebolt Cotton (so easy that I bought a life time supply).

From my experiences dating up to that far back and those of many other folks who have these I can suggest that the main reason most folks who have had dry hit problems with any of these mesh atty's has been a wicking problem. Ideally the mesh has to be in 100% solid contact with the wick, and the wick installed and groomed to draw up juice without restriction (and a lot of folks was not doing one or both). Get it right and you can chain puff away until you use up all the juice they can hold, get it wrong and they will earn the dragon name. IMO even with these fire breathing dragons the pre signs that they are running short of juice can be learned and noticed before a dry hit.

There are endless threads about the above atty's here on ECF with all the discussions on how to solve any problems with them that can be found with the search (including how to build with the Vapefly Firebolt Cotton). HTH

Old pictures of some of mine in use...
Vandy Vaper

Digigflavor Mesh Pro

Profile

Profile Unity

Firebolt

 

[Ionori]

Sorry...But I'll blame it on getting old.....I was referring to 3mm cotton strings with aglet from Wotofo. Xfiber cotton 60mm x 3mm. I don't use cotton pads....

Ah, I see. It seemed like you were describing 2 different techniques:
1. 2 cotton strings on the botton, 1 string unrolled on top of them.
2. 1 cutton string on the bottom, 2 cotton strings on top of it.
Is that right?

Kinda late to the thread ( and I apologize ahead of time if this doesn't apply) I quickly read the thread (but this is not the style of vaping I do) Just a thought... don't chain vape (not what you wanted hear) but coils (mesh) need to cool down between vapes. Most vapes don't like "chain vaping"... to quote Uncle "just saying"

Why do coils/mesh need to cool down? If anything, I should think the decreased temperature delta would make it easier on the coils/mesh due to less thermal expansion. I've chain vaped many RTAs from full to empty with no issues.

@Spydro I don't have any issue vaping the liquid that's in the juice well, it's getting the liquid up from the tank to get it wicked by the cotton that's the issue.

 

[Mordacai]

I'm not a Profile RDTA user, but do you have to pack around the wicking rods a little with Cotton or Rayon? As it's something that is done with a few other similar type RDTA's.

Rayon may be worth considering, there's Grahame's Cellucotton Rayon and Tidi Non Sterile Rayon balls to choose from. But from what I've heard, Tidi is the better option.

And it definitely looks as though you need to work on the wick tails @Ionori. It's just the length doesn't seem bad, but it seems to thick or dense. So that may be acting like a plug and preventing air pressure to equalize.

And if you do pick up one of the newer Pulse 2 Squonk mods, make sure that a Cthulhu Mods Mjölnir RDA accidentally drops in. It's not a mesh RDA, but it's a serious flavour chaser RDA that does produce a decent amount of cloud.

 

[Seiggy]

Ah, I see. It seemed like you were describing 2 different techniques:
1. 2 cotton strings on the botton, 1 string unrolled on top of them.
2. 1 cutton string on the bottom, 2 cotton strings on top of it.
Is that right?

Yes, you are correct.
With #1, I released one side of the mesh to unroll 1 string of cotton.
With #2, I just pulled in from the bottom while compressing the spring.