I was thinking the same thing. Battery life would be real short.
I'm wondering if someone has other sizes of ss, nichrome, or kanthral mesh to test.
SS is the wick AND resistance wire
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I was thinking the same thing. Battery life would be real short.
I'm wondering if someone has other sizes of ss, nichrome, or kanthral mesh to test.
Standard 16340 880ma 3.6vdc lit battery, and yes batter life is severly decreased LOL
Dan
Sounds like an inside-out GenesisLet us know.
Great thread! This avenue has been waiting to be explored for a few months now.
I was playing around with an inside out Genisis last year. I basically cut the SS mesh with the top end at an angle and sewed the nichorme wire along its edge before rolling the whole thing up with the shortest side at the centre of the spiral. It worked but was too complicated to make 'nice' so I left it.
- at about the same time on the 'attys and genesis' thread, I also wondered if a nichorme-less E2 carto might be modded with the steel mesh to work like this...
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Dan is using #400 SS mesh and I'm using #325. He's getting lower resistance than me, which is what I would expect since the wires in #400 mesh are smaller than the wires in #325 mesh. I think we have to get the resistance to 1.5 Ohms or higher for a "not-too-hot" atty that doesn't quickly drain batteries. My "smoke-bomb" ran at 1.0 Ohms - too low in my opinion. The question is - Can I get a smoke-bomb at 1.5+ Ohms? That remains to be seen, but you can bet that I'll give it my best shot.
Great thread! This avenue has been waiting to be explored for a few months now.
I was playing around with an inside out Genisis last year. I basically cut the SS mesh with the top end at an angle and sewed the nichorme wire along its edge before rolling the whole thing up with the shortest side at the centre of the spiral. It worked but was too complicated to make 'nice' so I left it.
- at about the same time on the 'attys and genesis' thread, I also wondered if a nichorme-less E2 carto might be modded with the steel mesh to work like this...
I would highly encourage you to build your picture and test it. One of the problems I'm battling is that the SS mesh gets awfully hot. Since your design puts part of the mesh within the e-liquid, it might run cooler. It would be very interesting to here your results if you build this. Keep us posted!
From oxidizing I've noticed that the mesh doesn't dissipate heat very well which can be used as an advantage, you can hold the wick quite close to where it is glowing and feel no heat.
Another thing, taking slopes' diagram, if you have a roll of mesh that has a thicker part below and a thinner tip at the top, the heating element will be in the thinner part only, as the electricity won't meet resistance until that bottleneck occurs. Something like a thicker wick below the cup and a thinner element above. It could be an extra tube of mesh added on, but a single cut piece would be more reliable. Something '=======--' shaped.
Another thing, taking slopes' diagram, if you have a roll of mesh that has a thicker part below and a thinner tip at the top, the heating element will be in the thinner part only, as the electricity won't meet resistance until that bottleneck occurs. Something like a thicker wick below the cup and a thinner element above. It could be an extra tube of mesh added on, but a single cut piece would be more reliable. Something '=======--' shaped.
It strikes me that you would only want the mesh to heat up in the air chamber above the liquid tank, not in the liquid tank. the area above the liquid will get just as hot as it would in the air chamber, unless you keep the liquid tank completely full at all times it will not run cooler in there.
Would this increase or reduce its wicking capacity though?
Gummy Bear - If the part of the wick in the liquid chamber was oxidised would this prevent it from heating, regardless of the amount of liquid in the chamber?
asdaq - Excellent point! I just made a test wick with a thick part and a thin part. The thin part definitely gets much hotter. I think this will be key to the final wick design. I'm rolling my wicks using a long, thin (< 1/4") strip. You can easily vary thickness in the wick if you roll it this way.
I'm having trouble arguing with this... I think you're right. Both leads should probably be above the liquid. However, I do think you can create thicker and thinner parts in the wick to isolate the hot part.
It's not just the drain of the cells, it's what it does to them at such an extreme current draw, rapid aging.
The problem I had in my mesh only experiments was how hard it was to get higher ohms, at least 2Ω, and to then to make it repeatable.
As far as drawing/modeling software, the free version is pretty cool.
Google SketchUp
Re: fusing the SS mesh to wire leads, was just thinking a spot-welder might work?
If the thinner part is what is heating to a glow, then about 1/2" away it is cool to fingers even, so the liquid supply shouldn't really get heated much at all. For wicking I really don't know what the influence might be, but the straight tube with some open space in the middle should still do fine. I do agree with Willy that getting it to be stable and repeatable is bound to be a royal pain.
SS mesh is strange stuff when it comes to resistance. I got out my multi-meter, some SS mesh, and a pair of scissors, with plans to chart some resistance values. The values were all over the boards, making it difficult to chart anything. However, I did come up with a pattern. What I discovered surprised me. First of all, I had to abandon the method of wrapping I used in the pictures at the beginning of this post. That method produces very unstable and unpredictable resistance values. So I cut strips of SS mesh about a half inch long at various widths (1/16 ", 1/8 ", and 1/4"). I rolled the mesh as tightly as possible (along the long side) and twisted it a bit to get it tighter. The narrower strips showed higher resistance (more Ohms) than the wider strips. This is the opposite of what I expected, and it's the opposite of the way resistance works with nichrome wire. Strange, but good to know.
Makes sense if you think of SS as a conductor and nichrome as a resistor. More of a conductive material = less resistance (e.g. fat wire vs. thin), but more of a resistive material is even more resistive. The staggered rollup would give varying R values depending on how much contact there was across layers and between strands within the mesh weave.
Not that strange if I'm reading your post right.
A great way to ruin high amp draw power tools is to run long skinny extension cords. You can actually feel, let's say a 100' 16ga cord (narrow) get hot, and the resultant voltage drop (due to the increased resistance) plays hell on the motor. Switching to a 12ga cord (wider and with less resistance) and all is good. You'll no longer feel the cord getting hot.
No it's not.
Lets use Ohm's Law with a constant current.
2A-> 3Ω = 12W, the narrow, higher resistance
2A-> 1Ω = 4W, the wider, less resistance.
There's something about the twisting, bending and reshaping of the mesh playing a roll in this too. A flat piece of mesh has it's given open area and a nice square mesh pattern, with realatively higher resistance. If this is compacted and more of the individual wires are touching each other or the square pattern becomes tight diamonds, then the mesh is much denser and closer to a SS stranded wire with much less resistance.
I noticed Pailoe went from an early 2mm roll (possibly only in plans) to a bigger 4mm one, but keeps it all a straight run and counts on all the mesh between the electrodes to heat. It seems that wicking is fine with 4mm, and perhaps he gets a more desirable resistance from this, even though he is not focusing on any given resistance for his setup.
I noticed Pailoe went from an early 2mm roll (possibly only in plans) to a bigger 4mm one, but keeps it all a straight run and counts on all the mesh between the electrodes to heat. It seems that wicking is fine with 4mm, and perhaps he gets a more desirable resistance from this, even though he is not focusing on any given resistance for his setup.
I'm thinking too hard - you're exactly right
At any rate, I think we have to make at least part of the SS element pretty narrow to get the Ohms up and the draw down.- Status
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