The end of microcoils?

[Mactavish]

We started with a discussion centered around the statement that even one short "dry burn" exposure of an e cigarette coil was "disastrous" now we seem to be morphing into whether e liquids are safe to ever be in contact with an e cigarette coil.
I think we are now in the realm of watching to see if the sky is falling and asking for proof that it is not.

I have spent a great deal of time trying to be helpful to all by reviewing my files and contacting others in an attempt to clarify and answer question related to the original issue. If we really want to question all things vaping with the hope that we can find something more harmful with it than with cigarette smoking then I do not wish to invest more personal time with respect to the forum.

Spot on. You write with elegance, and ask questions in a proper, respectful manor. While others are on an immediate witch hunt, some now angrily flexing intellectual muscle. If one re-reads the online posts by both men, the non tectnical parts, they say in not so many words why they don't directly respond and participate in forum threads like this one, and for those that have followed the entire thread, can you blame them? Now that's "intelligent"!

Read #1:
you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar - Wiktionary

I'm not bailing on this thread, it's become quite entertaining, while unfortunately becoming less educational. Blog on .....

 

[Katya]

We started with a discussion centered around the statement that even one short "dry burn" exposure of an e cigarette coil was "disastrous" now we seem to be morphing into whether e liquids are safe to ever be in contact with an e cigarette coil.
I think we are now in the realm of watching to see if the sky is falling and asking for proof that it is not.

I appreciate your efforts (and I said so repeatedly on this thread). I am satisfied now, thanks to you and others who know more on the subject than I do, that gently pulsing a microcoil after forming it will not be disastrous and most likely will not destroy the bonds between the metal molecules and thus facilitate the emission of metals from the coil into the vapor.

I've also learned than the aluminum oxide layer on a microcoil may additionally protect the vaper from such unwanted emissions. How am I doing so far?

The follow-up questions are just that--follow-up questions. What happens when that wire is repeatedly heated and cooled while wet? I don't think it's an unreasonable inquiry. We do inhale this stuff, after all, so this is not a purely academic discussion. I don't think anyone here has suggested that the sky is falling or that vaping is more harmful than smoking, because it isn't--study after study have proven that.

Discussion is always good, even if it strays a bit off topic--if it's civil and honest and informative.

Thank you for contributions.

 

[orion7319]

Spot on. You write with elegance, and ask questions in a proper, respectful manor. While others are on an immediate witch hunt, some now angrily flexing intellectual muscle. If one re-reads the online posts by both men, the non tectnical parts, they say in not so many words why they don't directly respond and participate in forum threads like this one, and for those that have followed the entire thread, can you blame them? Now that's "intelligent"!

Read #1:
you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar - Wiktionary

I'm not bailing on this thread, it's become quite entertaining, while unfortunately becoming less educational. Blog on .....

"God does not play dice" Albert Einstein

I am not a scientist and I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn last night. I was however raised by a PHD in chemistry and have worked in a University environment most of my working life. You have to understand that when a bunch of PHDs get together to debate/collaborate that sometimes somebody's ... might get shivved by slide ruler in the process. It ain't pretty to the outside observer, but it is what it is. Let them do their thing, at the end of the day we will all be better off for it. These guys all obviously share a passion for vaping and metallurgy and they all have good intentions. Personally I have learned quite a bit from reading this entire thread from start to finish, and I now have more actual reliable information that I can use for my benefit as does everyone else who is following this thread. Carry on Spartans...

 

[super_X_drifter]

^ completely agree. Threads are like radio stations - ya can turn the channel at any time (do people even listen to radio anymore?) if ya don't like the content - do people actually call the DJ and go "I'm changing channels cause I don't like what you are playing"? I like metal (music). And I like this thread

 

[dems86]

^ completely agree. Threads are like radio stations - ya can turn the channel at any time (do people even listen to radio anymore?) if ya don't like the content and not call the DJ and go "I'm changing channels cause I don't like what you are playing". I like metal (music). And I like this thread

So the rest of us understand...

"Threads are like podcasts..."



Your losin' people with VHS tapes and radios

Edit: on a side note, thanks for your Odin v2 review, never owned an original, but was compelled to order one and a router yesterday



The WGU Club Co-Founder

 

[Caterpiller]

...

Oh well.
Guess I'll stop torching.
....

Having read the entire thread I'll be doing a U-turn, and going back to torching my Kanthal coils to anneal them before use, pulsing the coils to aid correction on the deck and dry burning to remove gunk.

The expert views from the metallurgists seem to far out way the speculation that there could be a small potential risk.

 

[orion7319]

Having read the entire thread I'll be doing a U-turn, and going back to torching my Kanthal coils to anneal them before use, pulsing the coils to aid correction on the deck and dry burning to remove gunk.

The expert views from the metallurgists seem to far out way the speculation that there could be a small potential risk.

What I get out if it, is there is a potential that heating up your coils way too hot could cause some issues to the oxidation layer on them, which may or may not pose some risk. Additionally your coil may or may not be more efficient with only a slight pulse to dry burn and kanthal and titanium have the least potential to be bad for you, while nichrome and possibly nickel wire has more potential to release toxic metals. I guess that about sums it up, and I will simply start pulse burning my coils for a shorter period of time when building and will not let them get quite so hot in the process. Personally I don't ever dry burn my coils to clean them, I throw them out when I change wicks because I find that cleaning my used coils by dry burning them makes them taste bad to me. I replace coils so much that I like to preroll a bunch of coils at once to make the process more convenient to me. Last weekend I sat down and made 50 tensioned micro coils to have ready to go and I must say that when I first saw this thread, i was kind of a bit upset... I feel better now though!

 

[Magaro]

Good morning everyone.

I found a link to a pretty fascinating research paper on thermal oxidation of Grade 2 titanium. The goal of the study was to identify a process to form an oxide film which might enhance the corrosion resistance of titanium in biomedical applications. Lots of good SEM metallography and electrochemical data. It provides some insights into how one might treat their Ti coils to help insure the integrity of the oxide film. The paper is very technical, but it contains much text that can be understood by the layman. And there are several individuals here who can help answer questions about it.

http://www.researchgate.net/profile...oling_rate/links/02e7e51627072dca2b000000.pdf

 

[druckle]

Good morning everyone.

I found a link to a pretty fascinating research paper on thermal oxidation of Grade 2 titanium. The goal of the study was to identify a process to form an oxide film which might enhance the corrosion resistance of titanium in biomedical applications. Lots of good SEM metallography and electrochemical data. It provides some insights into how one might treat their Ti coils to help insure the integrity of the oxide film. The paper is very technical, but it contains much text that can be understood by the layman. And there are several individuals here who can help answer questions about it.

http://www.researchgate.net/profile...oling_rate/links/02e7e51627072dca2b000000.pdf

Hey thank you for that link. I'm extremely interested in the potential for titanium coils. I doubt that the very long thermal treatments discussed will prove widely popular but the data in the paper are certainly relevant for those who are considering the use of titanium coils. It's nice to see helpful contributions!

 

[Rossum]

PM me if someone does a study analyzing the aerosol from a pulsed/dry-burned coil versus a non pulsed coil.

Right, that's the real question we'd all like answered: What's in the vapor we're inhaling?

Metallurgists can speculate that there's no way that metals can get into the vapor. Medical doctors can say that we don't know and shouldn't take "unnecessary risks".

So how about we actually find out? How difficult/costly can it really be to collect some samples and get them analyzed?

I'd be willing to put up every dollar I've saved by not smoking cigarettes in the past 530 days (currently over $6k) to get some actual empirical data. Unfortunately, I have no idea where/how to start.

 

[englishmick]

I appreciate your efforts (and I said so repeatedly on this thread). I am satisfied now, thanks to you and others who know more on the subject than I do, that gently pulsing a microcoil after forming it will not be disastrous and most likely will not destroy the bonds between the metal molecules and thus facilitate the emission of metals from the coil into the vapor.

I've also learned than the aluminum oxide layer on a microcoil may additionally protect the vaper from such unwanted emissions. How am I doing so far?

The follow-up questions are just that--follow-up questions. What happens when that wire is repeatedly heated and cooled while wet? I don't think it's an unreasonable inquiry. We do inhale this stuff, after all, so this is not a purely academic discussion. I don't think anyone here has suggested that the sky is falling or that vaping is more harmful than smoking, because it isn't--study after study have proven that.

Discussion is always good, even if it strays a bit off topic--if it's civil and honest and informative.

Thank you for contributions.

Great summary, thank you.

And like you say, we can make an educated guess that vaping isn't seriously damaging us. Apart from the studies that have been done there's the fact that lots of people have been vaping for quite a long time, and we haven't seen reports of vapers suffering from metal poisoning or anything else. The window for serious negative consequences from vaping to start appearing is getting steadily narrower. At this point they would need to be either rare, or slow to develop. And vaping at high watt levels is fairly recent. Maybe in 10 more years we will start keeling over and I'll have to eat my words.

In the meantime, sure, it would be nice to see some more research into subjects like coils and flavorings.

 

[tj99959]

Well this can of worms will undoubtedly cause a little research.

Seems to me like this would be pretty easy to test. Just heat wire to specific temperatures & then measure the vapor from a simple PG solution for metals.

We don't need to be looking for every possible variable (like the effects of flavorings) to begin with. We just need to test for the effects of heating the wire.
We don't even need to know what changes temperatures make to the wire. All we need to know is what changes that previously heated wire will make to the vapor.

 

[Magaro]

Here's another paper on thermal oxidation and corrosion of Grade 2 Ti. A key takeaway from these papers is that a continuous, adherent oxide film on Ti provides enhanced corrosion resistance. Although not directly applicable to vaping (Ringer's solution is NOT similar to Looper e-liquid), it does show the beneficial effect of a protective oxide layer. All of the thermal treatments showed less corrosion than the untreated Ti. How important this is with respect to vaping is difficult to say. I'm still not ready to start using Ti wire. I want to understand a few issues a bit better. But if I did decide to use it today, I would lightly torch or dry burn my coil prior to use. It simply seems like the most prudent course of action to me. For now, I'll study it more.

http://www.ewp.rpi.edu/hartford/use...cal%20and%20structural%20characterization.pdf

 

[Magaro]

Well this can of worms will undoubtedly cause a little research.

Seems to me like this would be pretty easy to test. Just heat wire to specific temperatures & then measure the vapor from a simple PG solution for metals.

We don't need to be looking for every possible variable (like the effects of flavorings) to begin with. We just need to test for the effects of heating the wire.
We don't even need to know what changes temperatures make to the wire. All we need to know is what changes that previously heated wire will make to the vapor.

I think its important to include the effect of repeated, relatively high current pulsing of the coils for the appropriate number of cycles to simulate several weeks of use. This type of cycling could have significant effects on the development and reliability of the oxide film on the coil. Oxide films almost always have significant thermal expansion differences with the underlying base metal. This results in the generation of stresses in the film and can lead to cracking. And this could affect how it interacts with the eliquid.

In any case, it does seem that designing a proper study shouldn't be too difficult. I'm simply afraid that high end vaping may still be too small a community to attract qualified researchers to take on this task. Ecigs present a much bigger and more visible opportunity. And unfortunately the complex, low cost array of materials present in these devices probably make them more likely to exhibit some worrisome behavior.

 

[MacTechVpr]

What I get out if it, is there is a potential that heating up your coils way too hot could cause some issues to the oxidation layer on them, which may or may not pose some risk. Additionally your coil may or may not be more efficient with only a slight pulse to dry burn and kanthal and titanium have the least potential to be bad for you, while nichrome and possibly nickel wire has more potential to release toxic metals. I guess that about sums it up, and I will simply start pulse burning my coils for a shorter period of time when building and will not let them get quite so hot in the process. Personally I don't ever dry burn my coils to clean them, I throw them out when I change wicks because I find that cleaning my used coils by dry burning them makes them taste bad to me. I replace coils so much that I like to preroll a bunch of coils at once to make the process more convenient to me. Last weekend I sat down and made 50 tensioned micro coils to have ready to go and I must say that when I first saw this thread, i was kind of a bit upset... I feel better now though!

You have taken away a lot. And if you follow your own advice you'll do well. Yes tension winding does make it a lot easier to just replace and oxidize, whether open or contact coils. Something to consider for those still uncertain using Kathal and having the flexibility of time to do it. I'm still far less concerned about metallic risk than the lack of information dissuading folks from attempting to quit or considering taking charge of their vape by rebuilding. We all should do our own due diligence. Grateful for those who have shared here with helpful technical data.

Good luck.

 

[orion7319]

Great summary, thank you.

And like you say, we can make an educated guess that vaping isn't seriously damaging us. Apart from the studies that have been done there's the fact that lots of people have been vaping for quite a long time, and we haven't seen reports of vapers suffering from metal poisoning or anything else. The window for serious negative consequences from vaping to start appearing is getting steadily narrower. At this point they would need to be either rare, or slow to develop. And vaping at high watt levels is fairly recent. Maybe in 10 more years we will start keeling over and I'll have to eat my words.

In the meantime, sure, it would be nice to see some more research into subjects like coils and flavorings.

I'm not ready to say that vaping isn't seriously damaging us, but I do know that if it is indeed, it's not doing the same damage to us than cigs were. I've been at this since 2009 and I can tell you how my health has improved (lower blood pressure, no more smokers cough, no bouts of bronchitis that I used to get all the time) what I don't know is if I'm at significantly more risk for a heart attack, stroke, aneurysms, blood clots or anything else for that matter. We can't say that vaping hasn't contributed to a number of health issues and that people have suffered as a result, just that its not a known contributing factor. At this point all I know for sure is that my lungs are a hell of a lot less angry than they used to be and I feel better over all, and I am fairly confident that it's a lot better for me than smoking. At any rate, none of this is relevant to the discussion other than to say we need better than educated guesses and I'm always glad to see experts apply their expertise to issues like this.

 

[awsum140]

OK, here's a question for the metallurgists out there...what is the typical thickness of the oxide layer on Ni200 and Grade 1 titanium under the normal conditions of vaping? When I say normal conditions, I mean not being heated dull red or red hot but in the vicinity of 400 F.

 

[MacTechVpr]

Good morning everyone.

I found a link to a pretty fascinating research paper on thermal oxidation of Grade 2 titanium. The goal of the study was to identify a process to form an oxide film which might enhance the corrosion resistance of titanium in biomedical applications. Lots of good SEM metallography and electrochemical data. It provides some insights into how one might treat their Ti coils to help insure the integrity of the oxide film. The paper is very technical, but it contains much text that can be understood by the layman. And there are several individuals here who can help answer questions about it.

http://www.researchgate.net/profile...oling_rate/links/02e7e51627072dca2b000000.pdf

Link is swamped. Fortunately I saved the .pdf's (recommended).

Good luck all.

 

[druckle]

OK, here's a question for the metallurgists out there...what is the typical thickness of the oxide layer on Ni200 and Grade 1 titanium under the normal conditions of vaping? When I say normal conditions, I mean not being heated dull red or red hot but in the vicinity of 400 F.

I don't think there are any published studies on E-Cigarette applications but if you are willing to do some work here are a couple of potentially relevant Google Search Links. The effort would obviously be substantial although I'm sure that there is data in there somewhere for the proper thermal range in ambient air.

Oxide thickness on Titanium
Google
About 6,170,000 results

Oxide thickness on Nickel
Google
about 9,970,000 results

 

[awsum140]

I'm not a metallurgist and was hoping for a little more specific answer, LOL.