SS mesh/wire rope/ekowool protank rebuild

[metamorpheus]

step on up folks, welcome to the shorts show and don't mind the grave yard of oxidized mesh to your left. There truly isn't any rest for the wicker...

I've been meaning to get an rda, but I only have a protank for now because I blew my vape budget for the month. I decided to step up from ekowool to SS and practice with my protank. I got many feet of the 7x7 ss wire rope from liquidvaper and I have to say this stuff is a pain in the ... to cut! Dremel or the cutters I have I cant get this stuff to cut without fraying into 7 strands, at least not with the 1/4" length I need out of it. I tried taping the ends, I tried slowly cutting it with the dremel in a circular fashion...not happening. After fiddling with it for a while I now realize the 2mm stuff is too big to wrap in mesh without the kanthal touching the top cap and going to short city and becoming another dead soldier in my grave of mesh. Sooo...

First I cut the 7x7 wire rope into the 7 1/4 inch long strands. Next I cut about a 1/4 inch length piece of 500 SS mesh and make the height short enough to wrap over it between 2-3 times. I take 4 of the 7 strands and dump them into one end the mesh and roll a tight little wire rope joint. The next thing I do is try to push this into the atomizer body to see if it will fit snugly through the wick holes at the very bottom and whether it's too long or not. If it's too long after you've already put it together, good luck trying to cut through wire rope. Next thing I do is to oxidize my wire rope joint. Now it's time to wrap that baby in kanthal. I have tried lower ohm coils with 4 wraps of 32ga and I am not a fan. I originally tried it with ekowool and it gave me a bad taste, so I stuck with the higher ohm wraps. After a couple ....ty tasting SS wicks that I blamed on hot spots, I decided to try a higher resistance. 7 very close wraps gave me 2.5 ohms and low and behold the problem is solved, no bad taste. Not done yet...with this setup I was getting a lot of flooding and noticed the e liquid kept dripping onto my 510 connector. Gr this would be perfect if....wait I have ekowool. The final step was to wrap a piece of 1mm ekowool around the platform that the wick came out of. No more leaks and crazy vapor production for the protank +the ability to go higher on watts for a warmer and more flavorful draw. I can get through this month without a new atomizer no problem

 

[oldbikeguy]

If your putting wire inside mesh then inside Ecowool then wrapping all of that with a coil and getting it all to fit into a protank head and work wow,If your not a brain surgeon you should have been

 

[metamorpheus]

Haha no that would be a headache and a half on top of the one that is now starting to go away. I opted for no ekowool inside of the atomizer head because I just want just SS taste and don't want the high wattage heat touching ekowool and making it black. What I'm doing is just wire inside of mesh, but the outside of the atomizer where the wicks poke out has a circle of ekowool around it to prevent leaks. The ekowool touches the rope+mesh, so it helps to wick a little I would assume. The draw is also tighter with the ekowool soaking up the moat without being too tight which I like. Another thing I want to point out is my resistance was 2.5 before adding the ekowool and now its 1.7, but it's not tasting bad like my previous 1.7 ohm builds. interesting...

 

[oldbikeguy]

Did you boil your ekowool before you used it? I always boil mine in distilled water 15 min dry, it then torch it just to make sure no taste here.When I first got it I got in a hurry to try some and didn't clean it found out right quick what the azz end of a yack tastes like

 

[metamorpheus]

I didn't boil it, but I've also never boiled it. I always just torch it till the core glows orange and haven't noticed any imparted taste from it.

 

[metamorpheus]

I think I may have a small short actually on this build. The ohms are bouncing between 1.7 and 2.2, but got as high as 2.5 one night.

Also get some flooding when the tank starts to get low and my mod has been sitting a while. If I take the silica out and dry it in a paper towel, wipe the 510 connector, and fill it more it generally improves. I took the top rubber cap off for airflow, so maybe replacing that will help. My other 2 ideas were to use a 2mm piece of ekowool instead of 1mm or make some micro coils. I have 32g on it wrapped fairly close with 7 wraps already.

I want lower ohms, but I get a bad taste every time I do that. I vaguely remember reading that snipping the rubber gromet down might help. Anyone have experience with that when building a low ohm protank atomizer head?

Edit:may be early to say as the tank isn't too low yet, but the 2mm piece of ekowool instead of the 1mm seems to be preventing the flooding. I'm guessing the ekowool is tighter fitting and is soaking up the juice and feeding it to my mesh at a more suitable rate.

 

[ScottP]

So the 2mm rope was too big for the PT head, did you drop down to 1/16th diameter rope or are you saying you unwound the 7x7 into 4 strands (4x7) instead of 7x7?

Any pics?

 

[metamorpheus]

I now realize the cheapo rotary cutter from harbor freight that someone suggested isn't adequate for the job. If it was still tightly wrapped it may have worked for 2mm, but with the strands slightly looser + the added mesh, the wick was large and the coils were making contact with the top cap. I just took a few out and it fits much better inside the PT now. I'll get a better dremel down the road.I'll take some pictures later. You want a picture from the top built, the side built, and everything put together?

 

[ScottP]

Top, built, with the center shaft removed so the coil is visible.

Basically like this:

View attachment 252660

 

[metamorpheus]

I'll take pics tonight when I get off work. Good news, no more flooding after swapping the 1mm ekowool for 2mm ekowool. I re coiled it and the ohms aren't dancing around anymore either. The level the juice is at would have caused flooding before, but it's perfect now.

This one is really enjoyable at 8W. With plain ekowool I'm weary to go beyond 6W for fear of that burnt flavor and a ruined wick. This build so far has tightened the stock airy draw and replaced it with a little cloud machine with warm vapor. Not a low ohm RDA cloud status, but really this will serve as a nice on the go tank. I have an IGO- W on the way for home use.

 

[toughguitar]

I would think the ekowool would prevent the SS from getting any juice and produce dry hits. But congrats on the "frankenstein" wick. I would be curious to know if a micro coil would work in this setup and if it retains a lot of heat. I don't use rope wicks as much as I used to, don't like the way it retains heat. Micro coil + cotton in a PT2 @ 1.6ohm, great flavor and intense vapor.

 

[ScottP]

I would think the ekowool would prevent the SS from getting any juice and produce dry hits. But congrats on the "frankenstein" wick. I would be curious to know if a micro coil would work in this setup and if it retains a lot of heat. I don't use rope wicks as much as I used to, don't like the way it retains heat. Micro coil + cotton in a PT2 @ 1.6ohm, great flavor and intense vapor.

I have NOT tried it yet, but I have been thinking if heat is an issue with 7x7 SS Rope, that it might be possible to remove the center strand and replace it with a strand of silica. If so the silica would lower the mass of the wick, provide a cooling channel, and prevent leaking through the middle.

 

[metamorpheus]

Well I've slain the 7 headed beast. I decided to give it a try again. It was really fiddly, but I managed to wrap all 7 strands and get it to fit with no shorts after some pulsing action. I wrapped it 5x with 32g kanthal and the resistance came out to 2.7 ohms so I took off a wrap and now it's 2.2 ohms. I decided to try it without the ekowool again and see how that goes. From reading the other thread some people thought the rope wire over wicked if the power wasn't on real high. The ekowool is just acting to slow the flow down, it's touching the end of the wire rope/mesh. The heat hasn't really been an issue for me since the protank is a top fed atomizer and the glass acts as a heat sink. Here's a couple pictures. The wire is now more centered than it was in that picture as well.

I also cut off the extra ekowool hanging off in the last picture. After trying to vape with no ekowool it's looking like it needs that or maybe cotton instead. On a side note this is the first time I really noticed the tartness of the TFA wild blueberry.

 

[ScottP]

Well I've slain the 7 headed beast. I decided to give it a try again. It was really fiddly, but I managed to wrap all 7 strands and get it to fit with no shorts after some pulsing action. I wrapped it 5x with 32g kanthal and the resistance came out to 2.7 ohms so I took off a wrap and now it's 2.2 ohms. I decided to try it without the ekowool again and see how that goes. From reading the other thread some people thought the rope wire over wicked if the power wasn't on real high. The ekowool is just acting to slow the flow down, it's touching the end of the wire rope/mesh. The heat hasn't really been an issue for me since the protank is a top fed atomizer and the glass acts as a heat sink. Here's a couple pictures. The wire is now more centered than it was in that picture as well.

I also cut off the extra ekowool hanging off in the last picture. After trying to vape with no ekowool it's looking like it needs that or maybe cotton instead. On a side note this is the first time I really noticed the tartness of the TFA wild blueberry.

Nice. Glad you got it working. Thanks for the pics.

By the way do you happen to have some calipers to measure diameters? If so could you validate that the 2mm rope you have is reading 0.08 inches?

 

[metamorpheus]

I unfortunately don't have calipers. If you get the 5' for 5 dollars I believe it was from liquid vaper it should fit at 2mm. 5' goes a long way when you are cutting 1/4" pieces off at a time. You could build 240 pro tank heads with wire rope for 5 dollars. The cost of mesh was 5 dollars from steammonkey for a 6x12 inch sheet of 500 and you require very little of that. The same vendor sells 3' of ekowool for 4.50 and you only need an inch or so of that, of which you can reuse since it's not being directly heated by the coils.

The problem I was facing before with 7 strands was more related to my excess of mesh and the width of my coils causing contact with the top cap I think. I saw your idea for a center channel of the ekowool or silica on the cutting rope wire thread and I'm not sure that would work out. The ekowool wouldn't work out for sure because it tends to go flat and would disrupt the structure of the rope, making more gaps inside the mesh. Silica might work, but it would have to be a very small diameter.

I have noticed that the ekowool on the moat seems to be insulating the bottom of the atomizer from getting overly hot. I tend to be a tinkerer and can't leave things the way they are so I recoiled it. I re oxidized my wick and did a 4 wrap free handed as close as I could and proceeded to pulse the coil with my vamo until there was no more hot spot. It stabilized out around 1.7-1.8 ohms. This one is giving off the same vapor production at 7 watts that I was getting on the other coil with 8, maybe it's just because its new, we'll see. I now refill when the tank is a little less than half, that seems to give the most vapor production.

 

[ScottP]

I unfortunately don't have calipers. If you get the 5' for 5 dollars I believe it was from liquid vaper it should fit at 2mm. 5' goes a long way when you are cutting 1/4" pieces off at a time.

That is why I am trying to get firm measurements from someone. 2mm is 0.07874 inches. I happen to have a 5/64 drill bit which is 0.07812 inches, so just a tiny hair SMALLER than 2MM. However, I cannot press that 5/64 all the way down into that wick slot. So I really don't see how a true 2mm SS rope would fit without drilling out the hole. The $5 price isn't a concern, unless I end up with true 2mm and can't use it. If it turns out that what they are calling "2mm" is really 1/16th diameter (0.0625 inches) rounded up to the nearest mm, then I can just order 1/16th from a different supplier for $0.49 per foot and know exactly what I am getting.

 

[metamorpheus]

The rope bends and is slightly malleable compared to a solid drill bit. It can be pushed down to sit on the bottom. It's a tight fit, but that's probably for the better anyways.