TC beyond Ni200: Nickel Purity, Dicodes; Ti, SS, Resistherm NiFe30; Coefficient of Resistance

[TheBloke]

Which wire is everyone getting and from where. I was Leary on eBay wires and the spider silk was the same price and thinner than I wanted. Also yes their whole speech on titanium didn't interest me either especially how they said every wire and gauge needs calibrations. It should al have the same tcr values. But their curve for the dna200 does work better than the original tcr curve off steam engine. But also the steam engine curves are a baseline and give a good approximate value for temp.

In the States, I can recommend Unkamen wire. Reasonably priced and good quality wire, I received a small sample from a user here to compare to others.

There's also Stealth vape and Crazy Wire in the UK and ZiVipf in Germany, which might work out too expensive including shipping. Apparently the finish on the European wire is a bit different, shiny versus 'matte', but I don't think this makes any difference to the resulting vape.

Then there's China, with cheap wire with free shipping at both 3FVape and fasttech. I received some 3F wire which I discussed in the Titanium thread - it was good in all respects except the size was a bit different to what it should have been, it was 27.5G when I bought 26G. fasttech have a few spools, and I have one on order I'll receive soon.

There's also a US supplier that @ThunderDan recently found who appear to be selling the same spools as 3FVape, slightly more expensive ($10 for 30ft) but US based. Check recent pages of the Titanium thread for the name.

As Titanium grows in popularity, we can expect normal vape shops to start stocking it in droves in the near future I am sure. That vendor that Dan found was a normal vaping vendor for example. Maybe there already are many other vape vendors as well, I'm not sure.

 

[dwcraig1]

Which wire is everyone getting and from where. I was Leary on eBay wires and the spider silk was the same price and thinner than I wanted. Also yes their whole speech on titanium didn't interest me either especially how they said every wire and gauge needs calibrations. It should al have the same tcr values. But their curve for the dna200 does work better than the original tcr curve off steam engine. But also the steam engine curves are a baseline and give a good approximate value for temp.

Here's one place: Pure Titanium Wire 100% Guarantee Specific by UnkamenSupplies

 

[tomr1088]

In the States, I can recommend Unkamen wire. Reasonably priced and good quality wire, I received a small sample from a user here to compare to others.

There's also Stealth Vape and Crazy Wire in the UK and ZiVipf in Germany, which might work out too expensive including shipping. Apparently the finish on the European wire is a bit different, shiny versus 'matte', but I don't think this makes any difference to the resulting vape.

Then there's China, with cheap wire with free shipping at both 3FVape and FastTech. I received some 3F wire which I discussed in the Titanium thread - it was good in all respects except the size was a bit different to what it should have been, it was 27.5G when I bought 26G. FastTech have a few spools, and I have one on order I'll receive soon.

There's also a US supplier that @ThunderDan recently found who appear to be selling the same spools as 3FVape, slightly more expensive ($10 for 30ft) but US based. Check recent pages of the Titanium thread for the name.

As Titanium grows in popularity, we can expect normal vape shops to start stocking it in droves in the near future I am sure. That vendor that Dan found was a normal vaping vendor for example. Maybe there already are many other vape vendors as well, I'm not sure.

Have all the wires you have used mostly behaved the same way. What devices are you using and do all the wires used respond correctly with the same tcr curve.

 

[TheBloke]

Have all the wires you have used mostly behaved the same way. What devices are you using and do all the wires used respond correctly with the same tcr curve.

Yes, for TC they behave the same.

I can feel slight differences in feel between the Chinese wire versus the rest, it's much softer. And the Unkamen wire as mentioned has more of a dull/matte finish rather than shiny.

Then there's differences in springiness - ZiVipf in Germany and Crazy Wire in the UK are both slightly more springy than Stealth Vape in the UK. For example wrapping a 26G coil around a 3.0mm rod results in a 3.25mm Stealth Vape coil, but 3.3mm for the other two. A small difference, but a difference. Unkamen and the Chinese wire were both around 3.3 as well I seem to remember.

And differences in cleanliness - the US Unkamen and Chinese 3FVape wire was completely clean, no residue coming off onto an alcohol-soaked cloth. All the other wire has had residue, requiring cleaning first. ZiVipf in Germany being worst, Crazy Wire and Stealth Vape from the UK being nearly identical in amount of residue.

As for TC accuracy, I have not yet formally tested any of them except ZiVipf. I did formally test ZiVipf, with temperature probes, and confirmed its TCR to be 0.0035 (using the Dicodes mod with TCR adjustment.)

I have planned to test the others but haven't yet. But in subjective, normal vaping tests, I find them to be the same - I don't do temperature offsets depending on the kind of wire.

I have something like 12 Titanium TC builds all around me on my desk, and I can no longer remember which is which wire. Maybe 6 are Stealth Vape, 3 or 4 Crazy Wire, 1 Chinese and 1 Unkamen. I can't tell by vape any difference. And I tend to build with whatever spool is closest to my hand/hasn't fallen on the floor

I've been accumulating Titanium wires planning to do a big Group Test, but a) I haven't got around to it, b) I keep finding more wires to add to the collection I think when my FastTech spools arrived - described as being "Authentic Vaper Tech", whomever Vaper Tech might be, I will stop collecting Titanium and then I will try and do a group test.

In summary: from my testing so far, any differences have only been in the cleanliness of the wire, and minor handling differences. No obvious differences for TC. Which is great- Grade 1 Titanium should be fairly consistent, the spec is narrower than for other wires such as Ni200 (where small differences in the amount of nickel can give huge differences in the TCR, something I have experienced.)

 

[TheBloke]

Oh there was one other area of potential difference - size of the wire

Copying what I posted to the Titanium thread earlier today:

A quick tally of the sizes of 26G wire I can remember:

1. ZiVipf: listed as 0.39, actually 0.39
2. Crazy Wire: listed as 0.40, actually 0.39
3. Stealth Vape: listed as 0.40, actually 0.40
4. Unkamen: listed as 26G, actually 26G (measured to 0.40mm, I can't confirm it's precisely 0.405 so we'll assume it is)
5. 3FVape "Titanium A1": listed as 26G, actually 0.34mm (roughly 27.5G)

So in this, 3FVape's Chinese wire did fall down. It just wasn't the right size. Maybe if I'd bought 24G, it would have been actually 26G. So I don't use that wire any more, I just did one test build with it. I prefer 26G coils.

 

[tomr1088]

Oh there was one other area of potential difference - size of the wire

Copying what I posted to the Titanium thread earlier today:




So in this, 3FVape's Chinese wire did fall down. It just wasn't the right size. Maybe if I'd bought 24G, it would have been actually 26G. So I don't use that wire any more, I just did one test build with it. I prefer 26G coils.

Looks like instead of me trying other wire I just need you to try ssv ti wire and report back to me lol

 

[TheBloke]

Looks like instead of me trying other wire I just need you to try ssv ti wire and report back to me lol

I may do sometime For the moment, out of principle I refuse to pay those prices. If I keep hearing good reports I might bite the bullet. I'll be more likely to if/when a UK supplier lists them so at least I don't have to pay high shipping as well.

 

[druckle]

I may do sometime For the moment, out of principle I refuse to pay those prices. If I keep hearing good reports I might bite the bullet. I'll be more likely to if/when a UK supplier lists them so at least I don't have to pay high shipping as well.

I hope you hang in there with your current approach on SSV. Encouraging vendors to overcharge by acquiescing to their pricing even to the smallest degree should not be an option in my opinion.

The material appears to be titanium albeit supplied to a lower standard than grade 1. It will vape more or less like titanium and is available to those who don't mind being ripped off. I hope we don't have to bless the supplier with further consideration.

Duane

 

[TheBloke]

I hope you hang in there with your current approach on SSV. Encouraging vendors to overcharge by acquiescing to their pricing even to the smallest degree should not be an option in my opinion.

The material appears to be titanium albeit supplied to a lower standard than grade 1. It will vape more or less like titanium and is available to those who don't mind being ripped off. I hope we don't have to bless the supplier with further consideration.

Duane

I of course agree in principle. But my getting the wire would for the purposes of reviewing it not using it (I expect to be using NiFe for myself.)

Therefore, my review would either be "this is a total rip off" or, most unlikely, "there's something to this." Either way, I think that's valuable. If it's the expected former, then my payment hopefully stops a greater number of future payments. And if it's the latter, then it's not quite the rip off it seems anyway.

The reason I'm holding off is it's not popular enough at the moment and based on what we know I don't want to encourage it. But if we start getting more posts like the OPs, saying "Hey this SSV is pretty good vs Ni200", then I'll feel it valuable to do a proper comparison.

 

[JimScotty0]

I posted these numbers a couple of days back, see below. I compared 29G Resistherm, Kanthal NiFe70 and Kanthal NiFe52 at the end of the post, and higher up I compared NiFe70 and NiFe52 in more usual/higher gauges.

Conclusion: NiFe52's resistance is very slightly higher than Resistherm's, making it the highest resistance wire of all of the known NiFes, and this, combined with its range of thicker gauges, is what makes it preferable over all (at least on paper).

That said, I would take NiFe70 @ 26G with its lower resistance over Resistherm @ 29G with its better resistance. NiFe70's resistance is not so low as to make it bad (unlike Ni200). And of course NiFe70 will be much cheaper than Resistherm.

So Nife70 is certainly going to be a great wire. But so far NiFe52 looks a clear winner, expected to be available both in thicker gauges and at a usefully higher resistance.

In the next couple of weeks I'll do a summary of all these different NiFes. I'll wait for the new wires to be available so we can see exactly what they offer.

@TheBloke have you looked into NiFe 36 or NiFe 42 which both have less Nickel? I found this interesting chart where it is listed: Integrated Nonferrous Metals Company

 

[TheBloke]

@TheBloke have you looked into NiFe 36 or NiFe 42 which both have less Nickel? I found this interesting chart where it is listed: Integrated Nonferrous Metals Company

No. @vapealone mentioned NiFe36 I think, but then that he couldn't find any data on it. Then @balazsk mentioned it again today, but found the TCR is tiny, as bad as Stainless Steel.

I've not heard of NiFe42.

I'll try any NiFe I can get my hands on, affordably. The usual problem is it's not available in vaping-sized spools. We can get most/all of these materials from ResistanceWire.com, but there's a $50 minimum order which means around 1000 feet/300m of wire. Even then I might try it if I was in the US, but to the UK it's another $50 or so for shipping.

I was still considering doing that to get some Alloy 120 (basically NiFe70/30), until recently when finally suppliers started coming out with vaping-sized spools. Now that we can get NiFe70 from one, soon two EU places, and NiFe52 from soon one EU and soon one US place, I'm feeling less urge to spend lots of money on exotic metals.

Then again if someone pointed out an alloy which had even higher resistance than NiFe52 - let's say into Stainless Steel's range - and still a good TCR, I might take the plunge

Another reason to try another alloy would be if it had more alumininium, or some other component that made us think it would form an oxide layer really well - like Kanthal does. That, I'm told, has theoretical safety benefits.

I suppose if we could put together a short list of potential wires - NiFe42 perhaps, whatever other ones - I could place a single $100 order at ResistanceWire and get samples of all of them to try. The $50 minimum is in total, for which you get multiple wire types/gauges.

But for now, I'm banking on NiFe52 and NiFe70/30 being the main wires of choice for cost, availability, and vaping properties. And it seems there's a good chance they'll start to spread to many vendors.

 

[druckle]

I of course agree in principle. But my getting the wire would for the purposes of reviewing it not using it (I expect to be using NiFe for myself.)

Therefore, my review would either be "this is a total rip off" or, most unlikely, "there's something to this." Either way, I think that's valuable. If it's the expected former, then my payment hopefully stops a greater number of future payments. And if it's the latter, then it's not quite the rip off it seems anyway.

The reason I'm holding off is it's not popular enough at the moment and based on what we know I don't want to encourage it. But if we start getting more posts like the OPs, saying "Hey this SSV is pretty good vs Ni200", then I'll feel it valuable to do a proper comparison.

I'm afraid I don't understand your reasoning Tom. The material is titanium and of course it will be pretty good compared to Ni200. Waiting for comments to that effect to decide on a review? I just do not understand that reasoning. The result of such a review is undoubtedly going to conclude that the material is pretty good compared to Ni200 and that the price is very high compared to Grade 1 available at many vendors at much lower prices and without disingenuous hype. What more is there to say or that should be said?

Duane

 

[TheBloke]

I'm afraid I don't understand your reasoning Tom. The material is titanium and of course it will be pretty good compared to Ni200. Waiting for comments to that effect to decide on a review? I just do not understand that reasoning. The result of such a review is undoubtedly going to conclude that the material is pretty good compared to Ni200 and that the price is very high compared to Grade 1 available at many vendors at much lower prices and without disingenuous hype. What more is there to say or that should be said?

Duane

If we never hear of it again, it doesn't matter.

If we start getting a lot of people posting that it's good compared to Ni200 but they haven't compared it to Titanium, then I think it's very much worth having a formal comparison to Titanium.

We suspect the result will be simple - it's no better than Titanium and the cost is vast and a rip-off. But until someone has done such a comparison, what will stop people trying it instead of Titanium? They'll understand that Ni200 isn't as good, they'll do some googling and read the SSV blurb, and they'll try it instead. You and I might know the blurb is nonsense - well, you much more than me - but to the average vaper, it looks plausible. Then they hear good results from others who have compared it to Ni200, and try it.

Surely a review that tests it carefully against Titanium and then debunks it is a good thing to stop people getting ripping off, not a bad thing?

Of course I'd rather get the wire for free and not have to spend any money - both for my wallet and so as not to put money in their wallet - but I can't see SSV sending me some for free if they've read any of my posts about it (Unless they do really believe in it, and want to prove me wrong.)

 

[tchavei]

I don't think the ssv wire vapes any different than grade 1 titanium wire with the proper tcr curve (for grade 2 titanium). The difference is that I subjectively think that the ssv will form TiO2 much easier than grade 1 titanium.

I'm not a Ti engineer so I hope Duane will correct me if I'm saying something wrong.

Subjective knowledge I've acquired through empirical observation:

1. Ti wire seems to oxidize faster and easier through dry burning than torching

2. The stealthvape Ti seems harder to oxidize than the zivipf wire under #1 conditions.

3. By stealthvape's datasheet, the Ti they supply is very very pure for commercial standards. It has extremely low oxygen traces.

Now, knowing what I've experienced (1-3) and adding some comments about "Ti nails" on a recreational forum out there where people started to use grade 1 nails instead of grade 2 nails to avoid TiO2, my empirical conclusion is that:

A) you need oxygen to produce TiO2

B) that oxygen can be drawn from the ambient surrounding the wire or from within the material itself to produce TiO2. That's why I think it's easier to form TiO2 by dry burning (oxygen available in surrounding environment) than by torching (very low oxygen available inside the flame).

C) Grade 2 Ti has much more oxygen inside it than grade 1, hence why the "nail guys" experienced less TiO2 with grade 1 than grade 2.

D) since ssv Ti is grade 2, I expect the oxygen content to be higher and thus TiO2 formation should be easier which is something we do not want.

Now I'm probably making a huge number of wrong assumptions here but that's how I feel about it.

I choose to only vape on grade 1 titanium, period.

YMMV

Regards
Tony

Sent from my keyboard through my phone or something like that.

 

[tomr1088]

I don't think the ssv wire vapes any different than grade 1 titanium wire with the proper tcr curve (for grade 2 titanium). The difference is that I subjectively think that the ssv will form TiO2 much easier than grade 1 titanium.

I'm not a Ti engineer so I hope Duane will correct me if I'm saying something wrong.

Subjective knowledge I've acquired through empirical observation:

1. Ti wire seems to oxidize faster and easier through dry burning than torching

2. The stealthvape Ti seems harder to oxidize than the zivipf wire under #1 conditions.

3. By stealthvape's datasheet, the Ti they supply is very very pure for commercial standards. It has extremely low oxygen traces.

Now, knowing what I've experienced (1-3) and adding some comments about "Ti nails" on a recreational forum out there where people started to use grade 1 nails instead of grade 2 nails to avoid TiO2, my empirical conclusion is that:

A) you need oxygen to produce TiO2

B) that oxygen can be drawn from the ambient surrounding the wire or from within the material itself to produce TiO2. That's why I think it's easier to form TiO2 by dry burning (oxygen available in surrounding environment) than by torching (very low oxygen available inside the flame).

C) Grade 2 Ti has much more oxygen inside it than grade 1, hence why the "nail guys" experienced less TiO2 with grade 1 than grade 2.

D) since ssv Ti is grade 2, I expect the oxygen content to be higher and thus TiO2 formation should be easier which is something we do not want.

Now I'm probably making a huge number of wrong assumptions here but that's how I feel about it.

I choose to only vape on grade 1 titanium, period.

YMMV

Regards
Tony

Sent from my keyboard through my phone or something like that.

Of course I am not an expert or anything but I thought that ssv advertises that there are no oxygen impurities in their wire and also where is the information regarding it being ti grade 2? At least they advertise as it being their own developed titanium from medical grade stuff lol.

 

[tchavei]

Of course I am not an expert or anything but I thought that ssv advertises that there are no oxygen impurities in their wire and also where is the information regarding it being ti grade 2? At least they advertise as it being their own developed titanium from medical grade stuff lol.

They sent one of their customers an email which was transcribed here where you can read "(...) our titanium wire starts out as grade 2 (...)"

It was already debunked by Duane that no matter how much you vacuum anneal titanium, you can't remove oxygen from it which is exactly the opposite they state.

Regards
Tony

Sent from my keyboard through my phone or something like that.

 

[tomr1088]

They sent one of their customers an email which was transcribed here where you can read "(...) our titanium wire starts out as grade 2 (...)"

It was already debunked by Duane that no matter how much you vacuum anneal titanium, you can't remove oxygen from it which is exactly the opposite they state.

Regards
Tony

Sent from my keyboard through my phone or something like that.

Thank you I will be sure to not purchase again.

 

[tchavei]

Thank you I will be sure to not purchase again.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the wire is bad but it concerns me it being grade 2 (strictly regarding TiO2 formation) and the fictional statements by the seller irritate me.

Flavor wise and function wise, I'm 99% sure it tastes and works just as good as normal grade 1 titanium.

Regards
Tony

Sent from my keyboard through my phone or something like that.

 

[AlaskaVaper]

Depends what you want to compare it against.

Versus Ni200, Titanium, Stainless Steel and NiFe wire has the following advantages:

1. Higher resistance
   1. Enables (much easier) use of thicker wires, twisted wires, dual coils; and in general, just makes building easier
   2. Is more accurate for TC than coils of lower resistance
   3. Uses less power and therefore less battery
2. Micro/contact coils are possible
   1. Ni200 can't be used for micro/contact coils, and this limits certain builds
   2. Even though I can now use contact coils again, I find I don't do them the majority of the time because they gunk more. But it's nice to have the option, and sometimes they are the best or easiest build in a given deck.
   3. Besides which it's nice not having to be very careful to make sure the coil is 100% spaced all the way around - easier, quicker building.
3. Low, or zero nickel content
   1. Some people are allergic to nickel. It is not regarded as hugely safe.
4. Stronger, easier to work with
   1. Varies by wire, but generally all the wires are easy to work with where Ni200 is not.
5. Better taste
   1. Not something I've noticed, but some people have reported better taste from Titanium and Stainless Steel than Ni200

Versus Titanium and Ni200, Stainless Steel and NiFe have the following advantages:

1. Dry burnable
   1. Just like Kanthal, these wires can be dry burnt in VW mode
   2. This means they can be easily cleaned when changing juice, just by dry burning them to clear off all residue
   3. It also means the coil can be fired before going into TC mode, to check it is glowing nicely inside-out : just like we do/did with Kanthal. This is especially important for micro/contact coils, but I like to do it with all builds and sometimes I find an uneven glow, and fix the problem before I go to TC.
2. Strength and lack of springiness
   1. Titanium is very springy, and is annealed to make it less so
   2. But it's still quite springy even after annealing
   3. And the annealing makes it very soft. It can therefore break quite easily, especially in through-post atomizers.

Stainless Steel has the following major disadvantage compared to all other wires mentioned:

1. It has the lowest TCR, right at the low end of current TC technology.
   1. Therefore it requires a TC mod with TCR adjustment
   2. And even with such a mod, it can only be accurate to around the nearest 20-30°C, compared to 5°C on other wires.
   3. This doesn't mean it gives a poor TC vape, it just means you might end up setting a different temperature than you expect; maybe 215°C instead of 225°C.

Finally, Kanthal NiFe52 has the following advantage versus Kanthal NiFe30/70:

1. Higher resistance
   1. Kanthal NiF30/70 has quite low resistance, not as low as Ni200 but lower than all others mentioned
   2. NiFe52 has resistance nearly as high as Titanium
   3. This makes NiFe52 preferable to NiFe30/70, for the reasons mentioned under the Ni200 section (though not to the same extent.)

Putting this all together, NiFe52 has the most advantages overall, including two useful advantages over Titanium. Stainless Steel shares those advantages, but loses out on TC accuracy and the fact that it requires a TCR adjusting mod, which are still very much in the minority.

Until just now, the NiFes had a major disadvantage of their own - only available up to 0.28mm / 29G. But now that disadvantage appears to be going away, they are coming to the fore.

To be clear, Titanium is still a great wire. I use it every day and have for weeks. I would use it over Ni200 in a heart beat. It's just I believe NiFe52 comes out top in these two useful regards.

Sorry for the length, but as you can see there are various advantages/disadvantages to each, so it's a process of layering advantages by which we get to, in my view, the 'ultimate' TC wire

Very nicely simplyfied..The wonderful education continues. Much appreciated Bloke.

 

[TheBloke]

Thanks! Could be a bit simpler though I fear - I will try and do some sort of table soon