I usually use kanthal for my builds, but decided to try ss. I noticed after building and testing it out on my mod every click of the power button shows a different resistance. What am I doing wrong? Is it the wire itself, or not making good contact?
SS 316L resistance jumping?
- Thread starter Bonskibon
- Start date
- th_trl_thread_readers 0
- Status
Heat will affect the resistance in small increments if that is the difference you are referring to.
Is that common with ss wire? I never had that using kanthal. Thanks for responding.
It has to do with the properties of the wire and Kanthal will not vary as much if at all. How much of a difference are you seeing? I am not a metallurgist so hopefully someone else will contribute and provide you with a more detailed explanation of the how and why.
I only use SS wire so I can't comment on kanthal. When pressing the fire button, my resistance changes but then reverts back to the original value...
I have no issue with it jumping a bit if that's normal. Never worked with ss before so it's a new animal to me. Thank you both for your response.
Is that common with ss wire? I never had that using kanthal. Thanks for responding.
That change is resistance is the basis for temp control. Those increases in resistance with heating the wire allows a TC mod to adjust the power to maintain the temperature set point. Some metals change a lot with increasing temperature such as Nickel, which is why the earliest TC mods worked with Ni, and SS only a bit, but enough to be measurable. SS is safe to use in both power and TC modes so it can substitute for Kanthal to simplify building. The small changes you see are normal.
I use 28 gauge ss wire, 1.3 ohm single coil builds and temp control exclusively. As temp rises resistance rises to about 1.6 ohm which aproximates the experience of the good old Nautilus mini but warmer because I use 30 max watts. I've had a couple of experiences where the build seemed to go rogue on me after a couple of days. I'm not sure what happened but may be the wire developed hot spots. The situation was resolved by replacing the build and more careful testinng before wicking and dripping. Too bad we don't know more about the metalurgy involved. One advantage of stainless is if the build does get wonky in temp control ii can switch to power mode, reduce watts to 20 and carry on. I use rda's exclusively. Temp control makes that much more practical.
That's about the build I'm going for too so thank you for the information as to what to expect.
In theory a build should perform the same indefinitely as long as the wire is clean but that's not my experience. I rewick twice a week and rebuild twice a month because it improves the experience. With a brand new build 400 degrees and 20 max watts gets it done but after a day or two I'm back to 30 max watts. I wish I understood this behavior.
I think it depends a lot on your juice and your vape pattern. I vape DIY with little to no added sweeteners, although up to 10% flavorings. I also rotate 2 to 3 tanks through the day to vary things up. I rewick clean up my coils once a week. Last weekend I replaced the coils after a 3 month run as they just weren't looking all that good even with burning and cleaning, although the flavor was still OK. That's been about average for some time, which means making coils has become an occasional activity for me.
My diy is 1% flavoring because it's enough for my taste. One of the benefits of that is little or no gunk. The coil blackens over time. I gently dry burn every few days when rewicking. I also started burnishing the insideof the coil with a diamond burr. The one on the far left is the perfect size for the 3 mm coils i make. (I bought the set for work but never used them so they came home.) I turn with fingers. I haven't decided if it makes any difference. I only keep one atomizer in service at a time though several more may be built with dry wicks. My experience with that scenario is replacing the wire every few weeks livens up the vape. i don't know why.
Nice idea for cleaning out the interior of the coil. Maybe because my tanks do end up being frequently rotated I'm getting away with longer life. That or my standards are too low.
I will say that even if I did have to pop on a new coil every few weeks it's still way better than the expense of weekly factory coils. I never really had a factory coil go more than 7 to 10 days if in daily use.
My experience is the best vapor texture and throat hit come from a fresh wick and coil. For me that means a fresh wick about twice a week, with a gentle cleaning of the wire, and fresh wire about every two weeks. The problem with factory coil heads is you can't rewick every few days. Then consider our dear government and rebuilding is pretty much a no brainer if you plan to be a life long vaper.Nice idea for cleaning out the interior of the coil. Maybe because my tanks do end up being frequently rotated I'm getting away with longer life. That or my standards are too low.
I will say that even if I did have to pop on a new coil every few weeks it's still way better than the expense of weekly factory coils. I never really had a factory coil go more than 7 to 10 days if in daily use.
- Status
