Tensioned Micro Coils. The next step.

[Katya]

Wow! This is brilliant, Turbo! Quite ingenious.

Two questions.

1) What is that implement (clamp) called? What do I ask for when I go to my Home Depot? And do they come in different sizes?

2) Would your clamp work with my existing coiling gizmos, like cigamajig or even a coiler? You see, my problem with tension building is that I know that my winds are not exactly uniform--I hesitate, go back and forth, stop to make sure that the coils are not overlapping and so on. I think that your clamp could really solve that problem for me. Coiler in one hand, the clamp in the other, forming a coil. Any thoughts?

Here's Cig's cigamajig--my favorite tool, in case you're not familiar with it.

 

[turbocad6]

katya, that tool is called an end nipper, some call it a flush cutter. this particular one is a cheap chinese made tool that is sold in many places, I think either home depot or lowes would have it under HUSKY branding with black handles, I picked up this one from harbor freight by itself for like $2, HD or lowes may sell it in a package that includes like 6 different small pliers for under $10 or they may have it individually in the $2-$3 range. sears may have similar in the craftsman line but if they do it will be a bit more expensive and consequently of better quality which may actually be a hinderance in our case because a good hardened steel one would be harder to file down the sharp cutting face

the reason I chose this particular tool over many others is it's so well suited to this and requires almost no modification besides dulling the cutting edges. I decided that the best way I could actually share my method with you guys was to devise a simple fool proof way anyone could duplicate this and that little nipper just winded up being my first choice because it's pretty much ideal. in the past I've always done the exact same thing by just squeezing it in my finger tips but I've got some pretty tough fingers, here I just figured out what my finger tips were actually doing and came up with this to simulate what I do with my fingertips, the rubber is like the soft fleshy part of my fingertip, conforms to the shape of the coil and keep the coil laying correctly and the end cutting jaw does the job of the tip of my fingers, the boney part, that's what creates the drag or resistance or tension and that's the main pinching point of most resistance

as far as using that cigamajigthingy, it's def not ideal but it may kinda work, drawback will be that you're going to have to wind stop regrab wind stop regrab to use that, might be ok if you keep a tight grip on the clamp throughout but this method winds up working better when it's done in one fluid motion, IE: once the tension and friction is there and you start the wind it's better if it just stays under that tension and friction while the whole coil is spun/wrapped for the most uniform wrap possible. trust me I'm designing the crank handle specifically with someone like you in mind, it will be as easy as making the clamp and once you see how well it does just cranking the handle I don't think you'll want to do it with the cigamajigthingy

 

[Katya]

trust me I'm designing the crank handle specifically with someone like you in mind,

Thank you, Turbo!

I think...

 

[turbocad6]

yeah right, like I actually know you or something

what I meant by that was I'm designing it in such a way that even the most untechnical person with no tools or skills in using tools can still put this together and use it, I sure don't know that you are an untechnical person without tools though, only assuming you're not the kind of person with a vice bolted down to a workbench in your well equipped workshop. ok your going to make me say it, I tried to design this thing so easy that even a girl can do it


ha, I kid I kid

 

[Katya]

J/k, j/k!

I know what you meant.

And you're right!

 

[Aal_]

You still have to pull the wire through and overcome the compression drag

I don't get what you mean here

 

[WilsonPhillips]

I don't get what you mean here

What Mac is telling us is that we need to have tension on the wire as it comes to the coil.

When you are wrapping a coil around a screw driver, you are pulling on that loose end, so that it will wrap tightly. This is a good thing and it is what we are aiming for, but we are not able to do it by hand.

1-We are not able to grip that wire well enough to pull it tight enough to get the result we are looking for.
2-The tension we do get is not consistent enough from one end of the coil to the other, due to stopping and starting.

What Turbo is trying to achieve is using the rubber eraser as a clamp around the coil itself, so that he can make it form tightly to the rod, preventing overlaps. He is attempting to use the dulled cutting jaws to hold resistance on the wire to make it stretch as it is formed onto the rod. When the dulled cutting edge puts drag on the wire, it stretches it. When the wire is wrapping on the coil, it is coming in at an angle that makes it want to overlap, but the eraser stops that. He is aiming for consistency in tension throughout the complete wrap of the coil.

Will it work? Possibly. It may end up being that you would need a setup for each wire size on the jaws, and a setup for each coil diameter on the eraser.

My concern is that the attack angle of the feed wire is what makes the coil want to pull itself together, but the eraser compressing it down might negate this effect. I feel that the tension on the feed wire is what needs to prevent the overlap and that this might be the only way to get the effect.

 

[WilsonPhillips]

I am sitting here, trying to come up with a way to describe in layman's terms what the goal is. Here is the simplest way I can put it. We want a coil spring that is so tight that it wants to be shorter than it can be.

 

[Aal_]

Wilson thanks for the explanation. I was just wondering what Mac means by "compression drag" and why what Turbo did is not equivalent to using a reel or a spool.

 

[MacTechVpr]

Wilson thanks for the explanation. I was just wondering what Mac means by "compression drag" and why what Turbo did is not equivalent to using a reel or a spool.

I meant that stretch must be more than the (side) compression turn-to-turn. Angle of attack can impart both (flattening of wire and elongation). If rotation only induces forming (pushing together) then no tangible benefit from strain will be evident. That is…heat will still tend to propagate from and at center with a temperature differential greater than a t.m.c.

As I've been emphasizing recently, it's about function. Really putting our assumptions to the test because it's the vape we're chasing after all. We know the zone is there…between to loose (close contact) and too tight. Oxidize there and we achieve the best temp distribution possible. In that the t.m.c. is a great barometer for the consistency of the forces we've used in the wind and the build.

Good luck.

 

[MacTechVpr]

I am sitting here, trying to come up with a way to describe in layman's terms what the goal is. Here is the simplest way I can put it. We want a coil spring that is so tight that it wants to be shorter than it can be.

Thermal output uniformity — good even heating. Best juice tank ever.



Good luck.

 

[turbocad6]

What Turbo is trying to achieve is using the rubber eraser as a clamp around the coil itself, so that he can make it form tightly to the rod, preventing overlaps. He is attempting to use the dulled cutting jaws to hold resistance on the wire to make it stretch as it is formed onto the rod. When the dulled cutting edge puts drag on the wire, it stretches it. When the wire is wrapping on the coil, it is coming in at an angle that makes it want to overlap, but the eraser stops that. He is aiming for consistency in tension throughout the complete wrap of the coil.

Will it work? Possibly. It may end up being that you would need a setup for each wire size on the jaws, and a setup for each coil diameter on the eraser.

wilson, I can certainly understand why you might think that but you're wrong. I designed this thing to be universal and not specific to any wire or wrapping diameter and there is no maybe or perhaps about it, it in fact works awesome. what I did may look very simple and amateurish but believe it or not, THAT was the biggest challenge here, designing and building in such a way that requires no tools and no skills, dead simple to make and very little money yet works perfect and is still pretty fool proof. I didn't build this for me, I built it for you guys... I have a mill and a lathe and plasma cutters and tig welders and trust me, I can build a very elaborate thing here if I wanted to, but my goal wasn't that, it was to design and share something so simple that anyone can do it.

I only showed one pair of $2 pliers one one pink eraser but I haven't showed all the R&D behind the scenes, I didn't just go buy one pair of $2 pliers I bought a bunch and I bought a bunch of different erasers and other rubber items to compare which would work best. I played with many ways to do this, but in the end I chose these nippers because they were the best way to share this here... I also built one with a pair of vice grips and one with a linemans pliers and both work great too, but require notching of the jaws... I didn't want this to be something limited to only those who are tinkerers and I didn't want that the end user would need to have a dremel or a drill or anything really, my goal was to try and design something that any average non technical person with no tools could still go out and get everything needed for this and put it together in one afternoon for like maybe $30 or so even if they have no technical ability, I designed it so even a child could do it and I did that so it would be useful to as many as possible. the only tools needed to build my whole setup is a razor blade and a small flat file. you will also need any ole pair of pliers to make the winding jig, that's it...

it looks very simple but the simplicity of this thing was really the biggest challenge here. as far as being universal, this one simple clamp design will do anything from 1.4mm up to 3.1mm and will do anything from 32ga. up to 22ga. which is the heaviest wire I have to test with, and it will do dual parallels no problem, I've only tested dual par's down to 2mm and down to 27ga but it works perfect at 2mm and 2.4mm, haven't tried dp's at 3.1mm but I'm confident it would work too. I'm not going to say that this will work with anything you could possibly throw at it but it will work for almost anything you can throw at it and it will def work very well for most common builds, anything from 1.4 to 3.1mm ID and anything from 22ga to 32ga. at least. it may work beyond these parameters too but so far this is all the testing I have done. perhaps if you are always wrapping heavy wire at 3mm you will stretch the rubber eraser enough that it would be loose once you go back to say 1.4mm, I haven't seen this in my testing but it's not impossible with enough use that might be the case, but even so, for like $3 each you could build a few of these and use one for larger heavy builds and another for light thin builds.. honestly I've gone back and forth from one extreme to the other with no problems but then again I haven't been using it for 6 months or a year yet at this point so I can't say for sure how durable long term it may be, but it's so cheap and easy that even if I had to make a new one every 6 months or just build like 10 at the same time, still well worth it to me. the only real expense here is the piece of leather, but for like $15 you can get enough leather to build over 50 of these

here is 22ga at 2mm and 3.1mm

I really don't want to come here and say this is the most awesome thing to come along for microcoils since the dark zero jig, I'd rather have others who try this come here and say that for me I have built many coils and I have spent a whole lot of time and effort to try and build the perfect coil. don't know if you've seen my motorized tension winder but man it worked great. I'm telling you though that this little $3 gizmo is even better, better in that it is just as effective and even more universal in that it can do dual par's with ease AND it doesn't take a whole machine shop to build it. it's just about as foolproof as I can possibly get to and I promise that after you use this you're going to laugh at all the other more complicated and bulky methods before it. I will most likely never touch my motorized wrapper again because it can't do anything that this simple setup can't do and this simple setup can do things that the others just can't.

I hate to say this because I really don't like tooting my own horn but honestly I believe that what I am giving you guys here is nothing short of amazing and it will out and out kill everything else before it. I can certainly understand how this isn't obvious to anyone until you actually try it though...I want to keep this as an open source project and share this thing freely with you guys. I think once I start a tutorial thread and others start doing this, then it will become much more obvious as to just how amazing and awesome this thing is. I'm sending a setup to russ today and I'll send a setup to mac in a few days too. wilson I know you would have no problem building what I've shown from just the pics I've posted so far. I really wish you would try this and see for yourself just how much tension or compression you can create here. the only learning curve is determining how tightly to squeeze the handles and learning how to set the initial wrap with a backwards tilted bias. another thing I haven't shown here yet is how awesome this same exact setup can create perfectly spaced wraps too, if you change the tilt bias angle you can change the pitch of the wrap and create perfect spaced coils to, all on the same smooth rod that you make tight micro's with. if I had the time and energy I might have thought to build these and sell rather than giving away he formula for free as an open source project but I don't have the time or energy for that so the best I can do to bring this to the masses is to design it dead simple and keep it open source, my way of giving back to the community that has helped me so much in the past... I'm anxious to see these in others hands and hear what others think but I'm pretty confident that this is a killer recipe that most will love

 

[Aal_]

Turbo man you are a genius and one of the most helpful guys on ecf for real. I tip my hat to you.

 

[MattyTny]

I've been using a coil jig for sometime now and it's leaps and bounds better than hand wrapping. I still understand that it is not the best method to produce the most perfect and tense coil. I've been looking at other jigs and don't feel the kuro will be any better, just easier. I have one of those generic tobeco jigs and place my drill bits in it and use gloves for more grip as I wrap. The coils often come out clean, but after some reading on the thread it looks like there are better alternatives like tubro's method.

Is there anything to say about once the coil is mounted? Should the coil be left alone or legs bent before mounting? I often mount the coils close to my posts and use my drill bit to pull the coil outward to where I want it. I feel as if it's getting rid of the slack or stretching the wire by pulling it out. I sometimes take flat pliers to carefully center the coil by gripping it on each end trying not to screw up the wraps, works well with thicker gauge. The coils look and perform well, but as I read, it's not a "true wrap". More so forming the wire around a rod.

 

[MacTechVpr]

I've been using a coil jig for sometime now and it's leaps and bounds better than hand wrapping. I still understand that it is not the best method to produce the most perfect and tense coil. I've been looking at other jigs and don't feel the kuro will be any better, just easier. I have one of those generic tobeco jigs and place my drill bits in it and use gloves for more grip as I wrap. The coils often come out clean, but after some reading on the thread it looks like there are better alternatives like tubro's method.

Is there anything to say about once the coil is mounted? Should the coil be left alone or legs bent before mounting? I often mount the coils close to my posts and use my drill bit to pull the coil outward to where I want it. I feel as if it's getting rid of the slack or stretching the wire by pulling it out. I sometimes take flat pliers to carefully center the coil by gripping it on each end trying not to screw up the wraps, works well with thicker gauge. The coils look and perform well, but as I read, it's not a "true wrap". More so forming the wire around a rod.

Not that it's not a "true" wrap. All coils fire. Different temperature results though. Also stability. Close contact coils will not uniformly oxidize. That means more heat to air than to the vape as the coil will go hot. Now this may spread a lot of vapor and heat in the vape too. But you can have both if the wind is consistent. The heat will get evenly spread out and more of it exposed to the juice. And the alumina formed is easily close to twice as hard as the metal underneath it. Short resistant and radiates the heat better. That's what the wire's designed for.

When you wind with a mechanical jig or a pin vise it flattens the wires together. Think of the contact patch on a car tire. The better that grip, the better the insulation when pulsed. Close is good and maybe even tight but it doesn't put the rubber on the road. Still can be made into a micro just a lot more pulsing to get all the gaps out as many will tell ya here and on the Protank Micro thread. This can be done in seconds then, no worries. First or second fire you're good. And that is particularly helpful when making duals or parallels like the below.

Good luck Matty. Hopefully others will step in on what I've missed.

 

[MacTechVpr]

...here is 22ga at 2mm and 3.1mm

...I'm pretty confident that this is a killer recipe that most will love

Does look like this approach helps constrain the wind in rotation. Wrist rotation seems to be difficult for some without letting off on the wire. If it's mechanically easier to squeeze than to pull that may help. But at some point you have to reapply strain at the same spot where you left off. So tension should be applied consistently anyway. It does seem to be producing good end turns Turbo and that right there is a mighty step forward.

Now I'd be tempted to use a pin vise anyway instead of the gizmo part. Just not getting how you're feedin' off the spool. Or are you precutting and affixing the wire end/s. See that'll work perfect for parallels. I insert a small Ø screw in a pin vise and trap it in a corner of the desk drawer. I'd roll a pin vise inside your tool towards that fixed point. When I found that fix btw is when I started publishing parallels here. So YMMV depending on the origin point you use. Miss the mark on tension and folks'll think the tool don't work. So a firm hold's needed on both ends. But using your tool could definitely help in applying more forearm strength to the wind for fat wire and parallels. Hope so.

Thanks T. G'luck.

 

[Aal_]

Mac, are you worried that the clamp will not inflict enough tension to the wire instead of holding a spool and pulling on it? I still don't get why you think that Turbo's gizmo does not provide the necessary strain .... or am i getting it wrong?

 

[etherealink]

wilson, I can certainly understand why you might think that but you're wrong. I designed this thing to be universal and not specific to any wire or wrapping diameter and there is no maybe or perhaps about it, it in fact works awesome. what I did may look very simple and amateurish but believe it or not, THAT was the biggest challenge here, designing and building in such a way that requires no tools and no skills, dead simple to make and very little money yet works perfect and is still pretty fool proof. I didn't build this for me, I built it for you guys... I have a mill and a lathe and plasma cutters and tig welders and trust me, I can build a very elaborate thing here if I wanted to, but my goal wasn't that, it was to design and share something so simple that anyone can do it.

I only showed one pair of $2 pliers one one pink eraser but I haven't showed all the R&D behind the scenes, I didn't just go buy one pair of $2 pliers I bought a bunch and I bought a bunch of different erasers and other rubber items to compare which would work best. I played with many ways to do this, but in the end I chose these nippers because they were the best way to share this here... I also built one with a pair of vice grips and one with a linemans pliers and both work great too, but require notching of the jaws... I didn't want this to be something limited to only those who are tinkerers and I didn't want that the end user would need to have a dremel or a drill or anything really, my goal was to try and design something that any average non technical person with no tools could still go out and get everything needed for this and put it together in one afternoon for like maybe $30 or so even if they have no technical ability, I designed it so even a child could do it and I did that so it would be useful to as many as possible. the only tools needed to build my whole setup is a razor blade and a small flat file. you will also need any ole pair of pliers to make the winding jig, that's it...

it looks very simple but the simplicity of this thing was really the biggest challenge here. as far as being universal, this one simple clamp design will do anything from 1.4mm up to 3.1mm and will do anything from 32ga. up to 22ga. which is the heaviest wire I have to test with, and it will do dual parallels no problem, I've only tested dual par's down to 2mm and down to 27ga but it works perfect at 2mm and 2.4mm, haven't tried dp's at 3.1mm but I'm confident it would work too. I'm not going to say that this will work with anything you could possibly throw at it but it will work for almost anything you can throw at it and it will def work very well for most common builds, anything from 1.4 to 3.1mm ID and anything from 22ga to 32ga. at least. it may work beyond these parameters too but so far this is all the testing I have done. perhaps if you are always wrapping heavy wire at 3mm you will stretch the rubber eraser enough that it would be loose once you go back to say 1.4mm, I haven't seen this in my testing but it's not impossible with enough use that might be the case, but even so, for like $3 each you could build a few of these and use one for larger heavy builds and another for light thin builds.. honestly I've gone back and forth from one extreme to the other with no problems but then again I haven't been using it for 6 months or a year yet at this point so I can't say for sure how durable long term it may be, but it's so cheap and easy that even if I had to make a new one every 6 months or just build like 10 at the same time, still well worth it to me. the only real expense here is the piece of leather, but for like $15 you can get enough leather to build over 50 of these

here is 22ga at 2mm and 3.1mm

I really don't want to come here and say this is the most awesome thing to come along for microcoils since the dark zero jig, I'd rather have others who try this come here and say that for me I have built many coils and I have spent a whole lot of time and effort to try and build the perfect coil. don't know if you've seen my motorized tension winder but man it worked great. I'm telling you though that this little $3 gizmo is even better, better in that it is just as effective and even more universal in that it can do dual par's with ease AND it doesn't take a whole machine shop to build it. it's just about as foolproof as I can possibly get to and I promise that after you use this you're going to laugh at all the other more complicated and bulky methods before it. I will most likely never touch my motorized wrapper again because it can't do anything that this simple setup can't do and this simple setup can do things that the others just can't.

I hate to say this because I really don't like tooting my own horn but honestly I believe that what I am giving you guys here is nothing short of amazing and it will out and out kill everything else before it. I can certainly understand how this isn't obvious to anyone until you actually try it though...I want to keep this as an open source project and share this thing freely with you guys. I think once I start a tutorial thread and others start doing this, then it will become much more obvious as to just how amazing and awesome this thing is. I'm sending a setup to russ today and I'll send a setup to mac in a few days too. wilson I know you would have no problem building what I've shown from just the pics I've posted so far. I really wish you would try this and see for yourself just how much tension or compression you can create here. the only learning curve is determining how tightly to squeeze the handles and learning how to set the initial wrap with a backwards tilted bias. another thing I haven't shown here yet is how awesome this same exact setup can create perfectly spaced wraps too, if you change the tilt bias angle you can change the pitch of the wrap and create perfect spaced coils to, all on the same smooth rod that you make tight micro's with. if I had the time and energy I might have thought to build these and sell rather than giving away he formula for free as an open source project but I don't have the time or energy for that so the best I can do to bring this to the masses is to design it dead simple and keep it open source, my way of giving back to the community that has helped me so much in the past... I'm anxious to see these in others hands and hear what others think but I'm pretty confident that this is a killer recipe that most will love

Turbo,

First off Bravo and well done my brother. I will be putting this together asap and giving it a spin, it may be just the ticket on some of the massive multi-wire builds I've been playing with where stretching and deformation along the length of the wire ruin the look, wicking potential and flavor performance of the coil (imagine stretching Mundy's miracle wire...).

Secondly, it looks like your coils are as stable as my 22 ga on the gizmo but I have a question with reference to the second pic: the enlarged outer wrap on both coils shown. Is this something on every coil and is it something that can be corrected by staying inside the width of the jaws of the pliars used?

I'm guessing that its simply a result of playing because things worked so well, my first coil on the gizmo was a 25 wrap monster for that same reason!

Any way, any insight would be great, also, a word on working larger wire (my standard before the gizmo was 20 & 22, I'd be happy to send some 20ga ni80 if you need it). The larger gauge wire will naturally deform anything smaller or softer than itself so you may need to re-glue over time (my 3 mm mandrel is slightly bent lol) however, if the mandrel is *straight* and tensioned, the result will be nearly identical in performance and appearance. Just some info from a fat wire junkie.

:2c

 

[WilsonPhillips]

wilson, I can certainly understand why you might think that but you're wrong.

wilson I know you would have no problem building what I've shown from just the pics I've posted so far. I really wish you would try this and see for yourself just how much tension or compression you can create here.

Turbocad6, I am sorry that you felt I was shooting you down. That was not my intention. I said what I said, because I don't have one to test your theory with. I do plan on making one of these to test it. You have something there that is making some beautiful coils. I just can't say that it is producing adhesion until I can get one going. Maybe I can get the stuff and build one this weekend. I still have not had a chance to sit down and test mine yet. I have it built, but have not wrapped a coil with it. There aren't enough hours in my day and not enough of me to go around.

 

[MacTechVpr]

Mac, are you worried that the clamp will not inflict enough tension to the wire instead of holding a spool and pulling on it? I still don't get why you think that Turbo's gizmo does not provide the necessary strain .... or am i getting it wrong?

If the wire is not affixed to a stationary point at one end...and the device, whatever it is…pin vise, gizmo or clamp…to another — where does the strain come from?

Strain is elongation.

Good luck.