What's up with silica wicks?

[Gabiano87]

vaping never blew me away until I got into cotton. My silica builds were always awful and still find them hard to get right. Now with rayon wicking is a dream.

 

[XJ-linux]

I use GP Spheroids (have 3 of them) for my daily vaping. Silica works, in my opinion, great with them if you do a "lasso" wick. I have never had an issue with them and have not been happy with cotton on the Spheroids. Cotton works, and I'm sure I could play with it enough to get something I love as much a silica, but at this point I am happy to use silica. I do use cotton to drip on my Quasar. It holds a ton, but it never struct me as better or worse in the taste department. I figure whatever works for you, go for it. Just like tools, there are some that work better for some people doing the same task as other people.

 

[DaveP]

I began to shy away from silica once I saw this video of a used silica wick through a microscope I began to think about what could happen when snaps, pops, and crackles occurred while I was inhaling. Silicosis and asbestos in the lungs are similar afflictions.

Notice the tiny glass rod like fibers. They are so small it's a form of coarse dust. In the mines they get stuck in the lungs and cause all kinds of problems without proper air filtration masks.

 

[juggalofisher88]

My brother in law got me into vaping and all he ever uses is stock kanger/aspire heads he can go over a month on a single coil without dryburning, just ringing with water daily. I don't know how he does it but he hasn't smoked in almost a year so it works well for him

 

[jjkanto]

I use cotton and micro coils in all of my atomizers except for iAtty. And that is only because I am still working on adapting a cotton build for it. Silica just doesn't wick fast enough for the dual coil .5 ohm build I put in it.

 

[bombastinator]

silica wick is what comes in almost all pre-built atties. It's much easier to deal with in a manufacturing situation. It also works much better in small spaces. The move to cotton goes along with the move to rbas with much larger internal spaces