Yeah I admit I didn't read the original post carefully where it came to your coils. 2 in series and 2 parallel... I can't really imagine what you mean, one side of the atomiser you had a parallel coil (2 strands) and the other you had 2 coils in series? If the sides of the atomiser are unbalanced one will heat up much more than the other (hence why one was gunked) so generally you make coils in parallel identical.
Of the 4 pcs. 0.5 ohm coils, I split them into two pairs. I put 2x 2 coils in series, and put those two legs in parallel.
in parallel {
(in series) [ 0.5 ohm coil + 0.5 ohm coil ] = 0.5 + 0.5 = 1.0 ohm circuit
and
(in series) [ 0.5 ohm coil + 0.5 ohm coil ] = 0.5 + 0.5 = 1.0 ohm circuit
} = (1.0 ohm + 1.0 ohm) / 2 = 0.5 ohm circuit
So it was balanced. A 1.0 ohm series on each side, or in other words two 1.0 ohm series in parallel, resulting in 0.5 ohm atty.
I think there may be something wrong with the atty. Every build I do, two coils heat up faster than the other two. Even if all coils are in parallel, have same number of wraps, I play with the coils to remove hot spots, etc. result is always 2 hotter and 2 colder. Atty manual says it has 1 positive and 4 negative posts by the way, so I assumed all positive -> negative connections should be equal on the device. Guess that's not true...
With your 2nd build, a 5mm diameter is huge. I've never tried it but it might produce some strange results. You'd need a lot of cotton in there or you would be getting dry hits off the bare coil which would be unpleasant. I don't go over 3mm internal diameter really and I never see the point in doing quad coils, dual is fine for me.
Yep, I wanted to try something different there. The juice wells are about 5 mm, and quad coils are built vertically over them, so I figured why not try making the coil same radius as the juice wells. Guess you are right: I didn't have enough cotton in there. Packing same cotton wicks in 3mm coils worked beautifully so I should have concluded the wicks were insufficient for 5mm. The interesting thing is there were no dry hits; the vapor was wet (humid). However it had the taste of raw juice (overly sweet). I concluded the air was hot enough that as some was being drawn through the top of the wick, it was pulling unvaporised juice droplets into my draw. Hence 3 hits getting me very nic-sick (on 12mg juice that I can normally chain vape).
Also how experienced are you with building?
Not very. I have built a few coils, and I do know how to design and test basic circuits, from studying it outside of vaping. I'm happy with the third attempt so I will probably just dry burn and re-wick for a month or two before trying a new build. Note that this device can do dual coils; it's just that I wanted to try quads.
Only major change to this setup will probably be to get a better mod with higher battery capacity / more wattage. This tube-shaped Smok Magneto mod, with its hard to press switch, is not ergonomic in the slightest. Not sure what the designer was thinking...
