The micro coil and nicotine delivery

[mrdeltoid]

So I want to report my findings and ask if anyone has experienced the same thing as me and can confirm this to be true. I know this really should be posted in the rba sub forum but i'm missing a few posts.

I have built my own coils for a while now and when the micro coil craze hit i, like many other RBA enthusiasts, decided to try it out. My first attempts yielded a lackluster vape with a muted throat hit and poor vapor production and so i decided to go back to my usual 0.5-0.7ohm builds using 28g kanthal with folded over 3mm silica. This setup has never disappointed me and i forgot about the micro coil. Just recently, after skimming through the long and informative "micro coil"-thread, i decided to give it another go and i really wanted to understand what all the fuss was about.
I wanted to do a fair side by side comparison so i ripped out my coils in a couple of IGO-L's and i built a 0.6ohm coil using three wraps of 28g kanthal over folded 3mm silica in one and i built a 1.1ohm micro using 10 wraps of 28g kanthal and threaded a single strand of 3mm silica through the second one.
The IGO-L with the 0.6ohm coil gave me the usual thick vapor with a nice heavy throat hit. The IGO-L with the 1.1ohm micro coil gave me less vapor and a decent throat hit. Both had great taste with the micro coil having a slight edge. These results didn't really surprise me as i would expect more vapor and throat hit from a 0.6ohm coil over a 1.1ohm coil, even though the higher resistance coil is a micro.
The big surprise to me was that the micro coil seemed to be much, much more effective in delivering nicotine. Could someone confirm this to be true?

Thank's in advance.

 

[the_vape_nerd]

hopefully someone with a bit more coil building experience will be along shortly to help you out

ive built a number of coils...some old school types like your .6 and also a few microcoils....but i have not done it extensively and do not in any way consider myself an expert

all that being said, my opinion is that yes very much...the microcoil does provide more nicotine...i dont know if its just more heat touching the wick or what but its true in my experience and i think if you read here, you'll see that a lot of folks are dropping nic levels both in sub ohm circles and in micro coil circles

i should add that when i built my microcoils i was using cotton as a wick so I was thinking this was the cause of more nic being delivered

 

[NicoHolic]

I don't know, since I've run nothing but micro coils in my REO Grands with RM2s, but I do know that having enough wire to wick to juice contact surface area makes a big difference. I've adopted forum member pdib's concept of using a micro coil of 8 wraps around a 1/16" or 16 gauge filler needle of whatever gauge and material gives me the resistance I want. That way as wire thickness and power go up, so does wire to wick contact area. 8 wraps is a nice compromise between contact and not so much mass the coil heats slowly. Here's what I've come up with, based on my 0.5Ω coil of 8 wraps of 26 AWG Nichrome 60 (like 25 AWG Kanthal A1), using Temco's wire specs:

An 8/7 wrap micro coil on a Reomizer 2:
26 AWG Nichrome 60 = 0.5Ω @ 0.1272" wide
based on the above:
26 AWG Kanthal A1  = 0.6Ω @ 0.1272" wide
27 AWG Kanthal A1  = 0.8Ω @ 0.1136" wide
28 AWG Nichrome 60 = 0.8Ω @ 0.1008" wide
28 AWG Kanthal A1  = 1.0Ω @ 0.1008" wide
29 AWG Kanthal A1  = 1.2Ω @ 0.0904" wide
30 AWG Nichrome 60 = 1.3Ω @ 0.0800" wide
30 AWG Kanthal A1  = 1.6Ω @ 0.0800" wide
31 AWG Kanthal A1  = 2.0Ω @ 0.0712" wide
32 AWG Nichrome 60 = 2.0Ω @ 0.0640" wide
32 AWG Kanthal A1  = 2.5Ω @ 0.0640" wide

Different leg length could vary these ± 0.1Ω due to rounding.

I think these give optimum performance (and nicotine delivery) at each resistance level. I've tried silica and ekowool, but keep coming back to cotton. I hope this helps.

 

[retired1]

Unless you're hooking the atty to a gas chromatograph, how do we know that more vapor equates to more nicotine delivery?

It's all speculation until you can actually get a chance to scientifically analyze it. Just sayin'..