sub-ohm vs regular coils

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Ed Kindred

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Jul 2, 2014
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Ginny Tx & I have 12 Kanger V2's & 2 Megas using 0.8 ohm coils. They are on Vision 2 1650's, 1300 mah ego-t's, Aspire 1300 mah, MVP 2.0's and a Kamry Bacchus. The performance of these tanks with 0.8 ohm coils is excellant on every battery we have and every tank except the new Kanger Turbo. Better vapor production & better flavor. We use, mostly, 50/50 pg/vg juice from 6 mg nic to 24 mg nic.
 

DesmondTheMoonbear

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Dec 27, 2012
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I was just wondering what it was all about as the ones that I have I am happy with.
also that I find that with a Kangor tank and a 1.8 ohm coil that if I turn the I-Taste
over 7-8 whats (going by what is marked on it) I start getting burned taste

thats most likely due to the very enclosed space in which that coil is firing, not to mention that it is using silica to wick[which isnt extremely efficient wicking material.
most RDA's have a good amount of room to displace excess heat, along with specific materials such as delrin and heat sinks and the like.
if you were to build a 1.8 ohm coil in an rda and run it at 8 watts, youd det a very different experience than the same resistance coil in a clearomizer such as a protank.
 

rusirius

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thats most likely due to the very enclosed space in which that coil is firing, not to mention that it is using silica to wick[which isnt extremely efficient wicking material.
most RDA's have a good amount of room to displace excess heat, along with specific materials such as delrin and heat sinks and the like.
if you were to build a 1.8 ohm coil in an rda and run it at 8 watts, youd det a very different experience than the same resistance coil in a clearomizer such as a protank.

Exactly... "Burnt Taste" is all about one thing and one thing only... Is my coil staying wet... i.e. for the given heat flux of my build, can I wick juice fast enough to keep the wire wet... As soon as you fire that coil you start vaporizing juice. That juice needs to be replaced just as fast as it's being vaporized. If it's not, then you're going to start tasting the metal (i.e. think turning your toaster on) or the wick material burning, burning "crud" on the coil, etc.

If you too that same Kanger tank, yanked the silica out of it and replaced it with cotton or rayon you'd suddenly be able to pump 11, 12, 15? watts into it without getting that taste... The vape would get warmer, the vapor would get more dense, and you'd get a lot more of it...

But as Desmond pointed out, there's more to it than just wicking... Take a kayfun for example... It has a certain amount of airflow (if unmodified) and a certain amount of room inside it's "chimney" where the build deck is... With an excellent build that wicks perfectly you can push one to 25-30 watts... That's about it though... Why? Because it's basically the limits of the tank... The juice ducts can only wick juice so fast... Plus it's all sealed up in the chimney with the only incoming air coming from the air hole. More power means more heat... Take a 1500 watt heater and put it in the middle of your 150'x150' pole building.... Will it warm you up? Will it even make a noticeable difference? Not at all.... On the other hand, crawl into a 4'x4' box and turn that same 1500 watt heater on... You're going to be cooked in a few seconds...

On an RDA like a Tobh for example, you've got a lot more "area" inside than a kayfun or clearo... Plus you've got tremendous air flow... The more air you have flowing over the coils, the cooler they can stay. Think of you sweating when it's really hot outside... If you go stand in front of a big fan, you'll instantly feel chilled off... Why? Because that fan is blowing over your body covered in sweat, which causes it to evaporate and remove the heat along with it... In an RDA with a lot of airflow it works much the same way... As the juice is vaporized, the airflow carries it away, along with heat... which means a lot more heat can be displaced and therefore they can handle a much higher heat flux. On the other hand, inside a kayfun or clearo with a very small chamber and not much airflow, that heat doesn't get displaced as quickly. It stays in there and therefore builds up and can more easily start burning wick material, etc...
 

tj99959

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  • Aug 13, 2011
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    Exactly... "Burnt Taste" is all about one thing and one thing only... Is my coil staying wet... i.e. for the given heat flux of my build, can I wick juice fast enough to keep the wire wet... As soon as you fire that coil you start vaporizing juice. That juice needs to be replaced just as fast as it's being vaporized. If it's not, then you're going to start tasting the metal (i.e. think turning your toaster on) or the wick material burning, burning "crud" on the coil, etc.

    If you too that same Kanger tank, yanked the silica out of it and replaced it with cotton or rayon you'd suddenly be able to pump 11, 12, 15? watts into it without getting that taste... The vape would get warmer, the vapor would get more dense, and you'd get a lot more of it...

    But as Desmond pointed out, there's more to it than just wicking... Take a kayfun for example... It has a certain amount of airflow (if unmodified) and a certain amount of room inside it's "chimney" where the build deck is... With an excellent build that wicks perfectly you can push one to 25-30 watts... That's about it though... Why? Because it's basically the limits of the tank... The juice ducts can only wick juice so fast... Plus it's all sealed up in the chimney with the only incoming air coming from the air hole. More power means more heat... Take a 1500 watt heater and put it in the middle of your 150'x150' pole building.... Will it warm you up? Will it even make a noticeable difference? Not at all.... On the other hand, crawl into a 4'x4' box and turn that same 1500 watt heater on... You're going to be cooked in a few seconds...

    On an RDA like a Tobh for example, you've got a lot more "area" inside than a kayfun or clearo... Plus you've got tremendous air flow... The more air you have flowing over the coils, the cooler they can stay. Think of you sweating when it's really hot outside... If you go stand in front of a big fan, you'll instantly feel chilled off... Why? Because that fan is blowing over your body covered in sweat, which causes it to evaporate and remove the heat along with it... In an RDA with a lot of airflow it works much the same way... As the juice is vaporized, the airflow carries it away, along with heat... which means a lot more heat can be displaced and therefore they can handle a much higher heat flux. On the other hand, inside a kayfun or clearo with a very small chamber and not much airflow, that heat doesn't get displaced as quickly. It stays in there and therefore builds up and can more easily start burning wick material, etc...

    Wow!! Someone is actually thinking about thermodynamics instead of just wattage. :thumb:

    In a nutshell, you determine the VOLUME of the vape by the atomizer design you choose to use. You then use builds that maximize the efficiency of that particular atomizer design. (measured in wattage) 20 watts can be perfect for one atomizer, and all wrong for another.
     

    ProjektMayhem

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    Aug 8, 2014
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    I can't say much more than what has already been said.... but I will anyway... :D

    I'll say it... and I'm sure I'll take plenty of heat over it...

    Sub-ohm will never "go away"... Any more than revolvers will go away.... but... In my opinion they are becoming more and more obsolete as new more powerful regulated mods come along...

    Here's the thing.... Look around.... Now imagine everything going all wavey and squiggly... you're being transported back in time... You're now in a time when there are no variable voltage mods... You look around the room and see a couple of guys sucking on blu type cigalikes... then there's that one weird kid in the corner running some strange carto contraption that's duct taped on the end of a flashlight... Ahhh... the first mechanical mod...

    So you decide to do the same.... But now you've got at best 4.2 volts, and a nominal 3.7 volts coming out of your battery... Slap a 2.5ohm carto on it and you're pushing a grand 5 1/2 watts.... Not exactly blowing clouds are you?

    But maybe you're the show off type... You want all the eyes on the room to be on you.... Or maybe you just love that flavor, but really want to strengthen it and make it more rich and dense... Maybe you're just a visual guy and really want to feel like you're blowing out a lot of smoke.... Whatever the reason, you decide you need more... MORE POWER!!! MORE POWER!!!

    Now you could go get that 6 cell mag-lite and try your duct tape skills on it instead.... but decide it's going to be more difficult stealth vaping in the middle of Pathmark using that thing.... But you remember something brilliant that nerdy guy down the hall told you once.... E-MC^2.... After realizing that doesn't help you at all... you remember the other thing he told you... P = E^2 / R Yes... that's the ticket.... you know the more heat you produce the more liquid you'll vaporize... more watts means more heat... and the nerdy kid down the hall just made you realize that if your coil was 1.5 ohms instead of 2.5 you'd be pushing 9 1/4 watts... almost double what you are now!

    So you run to the kitchen and rip apart the toaster... Grab some of the wire, bend over and make a few wraps around your aglet... You run down the hall to the nerdy kid and ask him to tell you the resistance of this thing... AH HA!!!! 1.5 ohms!!! PERFECT... you were born for this....

    You duct tape it to your flashlight and fire it up! HAHA!!!! That's awesome!!!! More vapor... More cloud... More flavor!!!! This is what I've always been waiting for!!!

    Oh... But wait... what if it was 1 ohm??? WHOA!!!! That will give you 13 1/2 watts!!!! Now we're talking.... So you take your newly made coil, duct tape it to your flashing and fire it up!

    It's brilliant....

    But wait... why stop there!!!

    Sub-ohm is born.... let's try .5 ohms!!!! WHOA!!! you sit down your calculator with a wild look in your eyes... as you suddenly realize you'll be kicking out 27 watts!!!

    But you've noticed something... you're getting nice big clouds now... because of course you've made all sorts of modifications to make sure your coil stays wet... it's not just burning up it's actually producing clouds!!! But you want more... and now that you're down in this "sub-ohm" range, it doesn't take much of a change to make big increases in power!

    So it happens... you decide to try a .25 ohm coil... Holy hanna!!! 56 watts!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is going to be amazing!!!!

    You fire that bad boy up and it's AMAZING!!! except... what's that smell? An hour later you wake up... At first you wonder if the S.W.A.T. team raided your apartment... You remember white smoke filling the room (tear gas?) then a loud explosion... Was that them kicking in the door? Or maybe they threw in a flash bang?

    Nope... it was just your battery exploding... Your nerdy friend forgot to tell you that I = E / R... and that your new .25 ohm coil drew 14.8 amps at 3.7 volts... Exceeding the limits of your 5amp flashlight battery by a mile...

    You decide maybe sub-ohm isn't your thing... you buy a new toaster and find out the nerdy kid down the hall just packed up for MIT...

    Flashy lights, wavey lines, squiggly dizziness and BAM... you're back here in the here and now....

    The first mods were mechanical mods... They had a fixed voltage... The ONLY way to "change" the vape, or get more vapor was to lower the resistance of the coil...

    Then variable voltage came along.... Now we have mods that are capable of outputting way more voltage than 3.7 volts... 6v, 9v, etc...

    Now let's think for a moment... if we slap a mech mod on a 1.5 ohm coil.... We're going to get just over 9 watts out of it.... If we want more, we HAVE to lower the resistance....

    On the other hand, what if we take that 1.5 ohm coil and throw 9.3 volts on it? All of a sudden we're kicking out 58 watts!!!!! We'd have to go down to a .24 ohm coil to try to get that kind of power on a mech at 3.7 volts....

    Now what's the difference? Well, let's assume we want to build with 26awg wire....

    Let's say we build a dual coil for our mech mod we're going to have to do 4 wraps per coil... That should give us our approx. 58 watts... and as a side note a heat flux of 1070mW/mm2

    Now if we build for our regulated mod, we'd have to do 30 wraps for each coil!!!!!!! bringing our heat flux down to 171mW/mm2 for that same 58 watts...

    Now that's a bit overkill... but let's say we used 30awg instead... Now down to 13 wraps.. and our heat flux is 688mW/mm2... which is still going to be pretty high... but we'll live with it...

    In either case, what advantage do we have over the mech setup? First, we have MUCH more surface area.... The more surface area we have, the more vapor we can produce... Yes, heat is part of the equation too, but you can only wick so fast no matter how good your wicking material... In the end, surface area plays the biggest part in how much vapor you can actually produce... The more surface area you have vaporizing the liquid, the more vapor you get. We also have much less total loss in the legs of the coil, but that's a whole different conversation...

    Think about it like this... If you took 5 mods, duct taped them all together and each were running a coil 2mm in diameter and 6 turns, you've just multiplied your vapor production by 5... Because you've multiplied your surface area by 5...

    Mech mods will always have their place... Hell I own some myself... But as technology improves and these higher voltage mods get better and better, it won't be long till you'll start seeing "cloud chasing" competitions being won on these devices and not the mechs of old...

    In my opinion... and hey, it's my opinion only... nothing more... so take it for what it's worth... sub-ohm is mostly just a hold over from days gone by, and as each day goes by and more and more improvements are made in the regulated mods, I see it becoming the revolver of the firearm world...

    What do I mean by that? I concealed carry.... There are many out there who refuse to carry anything but a revolver... Why? Because it's simplistic... It's so basic in it's design that almost nothing can go wrong... They carry it because they know it'll be there if they need it and it won't fail them.... An automatic on the other hand, there's many more pieces in the design... More points of possible failure... More things that can go wrong... But in the end... I'll do my excellent maintenance on an ultra reliable platform and take my 17 rounds (or 23 with an extra mag) over 5,6 or 7 any day...

    Dude that story was epic lol. You took me on a journey with your words. Yeah definitely got to be careful with sub ohm. Know your gear and safety about it.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     

    nwppwn

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    Sep 23, 2014
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    Northeast USA
    Sub ohm coils let you raise the heat of the coil (watts) without a regulated device or by adjusting the voltage on a regulated device. If you have a device with variable wattage you can run a coil with whatever resistance you want and it will adjust the voltage to get to the wattage you specify.

    See Ohms law:
    Ohm's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


    I am still fairly new at this but I have seen talk about sub ohm coils
    and was wondering what deference there is between running say a 2.5 ohm coil
    or a .8 ohm coil if there is any deference in amount of vapor produced,taste or whatever.
    Right now I am running 1.8 ohm and 2 ohm coils in my Kangor tanks
     
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