Hey guys! Guess what! My Waidea doesn't work properly! Who'da thunk it? As it's been so wonderful up until now, certainly not me!
I'll start with a little good news - I got the Lemo fixed up with the o-ring, and that gave me my first decent RTA TC vape from last night until today. A basic build, 12 or so wraps of 30 gauge, 0.25Ω.
I have emptied one tank on that build, and as it got dry the wattages fell as expected and I did not get any dry hits.
But what I have continued to notice throughout all my TC vapes thus far, including setting up and using the Lemo, is that, no matter what I did, it never ever showed Temperature Protection. I still had never seen that message once, ever, even when I fired dry wire at 40W / 200°.
So I started doing some proper testing. And the results did not amuse me.
The Summary
- I tested this with set temperatures of 200° - 450°, set wattage of 40W, and with three RDA (clones) and builds:
- Derringer RDA @ 0.24Ω - 13 wraps of 29G
- Marquis RDA @ 0.19Ω - 8 wraps of 30G
- K.Loud RDA @ 0.19Ω - 8 wraps of 30G (different coil to one above)
- I never get Temperature Protection shown, ever. Instead, it will show firing down to 0.0 watts.
- But usually it will fire 0.4 - 0.9 watts
- The result is that it is persistently heating to a higher max temperature than configured, which is especially noticeable at low temps and with dry wire.
- For example, testing with bare wire: at 200° it will give me 240 - 360; at 300°, 370-450; at 400°, 460-500; at 450°, up to 500.
- When I did a cotton burn test at 450°, the cotton got slightly singed/browned.
- I also noted that my VF has an auto-cutoff of 23 seconds, a rather strange number! I believe this is not in the genuine chip? But I assume is in the other clones - I can't imagine that's specific to mine as well!
The Video
I maded you a video, so you can tell me how fcked I am!
It's 10 minutes, so I understand if no-one watches it. But if anyone has a moment to skim through it, I would be grateful.
Shown in the video are the first two tests described in The Summary - Derringer @ 0.24 and Marquis @ 0.19. The K.Loud behaved exactly the same so I didn't bother videoing it.
In all tests I was very careful to ensure the build was screwed down as tight as humanly possible. That's also why I did the third test with the K.Loud, as it has a convenient deck for that - it has a screw post for the positive, so I could use pliers to tighten the positive wire between two nuts. On the K.Loud build, I also wrapped both wires twice round their posts/screws before tightening, so the connection could not have been tighter.
- Derringer test (0.24Ω - 13 wraps of 29G) is first;
- Marquis test (0.19Ω - 8 wraps of 30G) starts at 4:15.
- Dry cotton test (with Marquis @ 450°) starts at 7:52.
The Results Table
I summarised the results of the first test in that video, the Derringer RDA with the 0.24Ω build, in the following table:
All fires are @ 40W. In Watts Range, where there is a higher number at the start before a comma, that is a figure other than 40W that showed briefly at the start of the vape.
| Temp ° | Fire # | Max temp | Watts Range | Duration (s) |
| 200 | 1 | 360 | 5.6, 0.7 - 0.9 | 17 |
| 200 | 2 | 240 | 0.0 - 0.4 | 23 |
| 300 | 1 | 450 | 39, 0.8 - 0.9 | 10 |
| 300 | 2 | 370 | 0.3 - 0.7 | 23 |
| 400 | 1 | 500 | 0.9 | 18 |
| 400 | 2 | 460 | 0.0 - 0.8 | 23 |
| 450 | 1 | 550 | 39.7, 0.9 | 12 |
| 450 | 2 | 490 | 0.7 - 0.9 | 15 |
| 450 | 3 | 490 | 2.0, 0.8 - 0.9 | 10 |
One thing I did notice is that when I did multiple fires, the second or third fire was not as far out in temp as the first. Still too high, always. But not as bad.
The Thoughts
It has been working so far in "normal" conditions - with a damp/drying wick. And the problems are mostly noticeable at the lower end of the scale, 200-400F, which is below where I'd ever normally vape.
Nonetheless it did partially fail the key test everyone gives TC mods - it singed cotton when set to 450° F.
And regardless of whether it is in fact usable, which it probably is, it's clearly not doing what it should be doing and, more importantly, not doing what everyone else's Waidea and Kangxin's are doing.
What seems to me the strangest thing is that it never, ever says Temperature Protected. It will say it's firing at 0.0 watts sometimes, which is surely when it should be flashing TP?
What I don't know is do I have two differences/problems, or one? Is it getting the temp wrong because the Temperature Protection mode is not kicking in? Or do I have a revision of the chip that never says TP, just "0.0 watts" (which could be argued to be better, and certainly not much worse), and I have a second problem that is causing it not to hit the right temperature?
I'm rather leaning towards the latter, because otherwise I can't explain how it would never flash TP when it is sometimes reading 0.0 watts. So if so, what would that mean - problems with my 510? Should I expedite my replacement of the existing 510 with a Fat Daddy v3 Shorty?
Any advice, suggestions, commiserations, criticisms of my video taking abilities, or anything at all, much appreciated!
