Why do custom coils perform better?

[Moonbogg]

I've tried to find an answer and failed, so as a last resort I will ask. I get the impression that rebuilt or custom coils are much better performing than mass produced coils in something like an Aerotank Mega. I just want to know why. I see people running single coil setups, something like 1.3ohm at like 4.5volts and it vapes good. That's way in the red on any chart and I can't see how the juice doesn't fry. If it was dual coil i'd understand but people run single coil setups at insane voltage that seems way too high.
Is it the surface area of a custom coil that makes it better? Whats the deal? I'm comparing an Aerotank Mega (which I have) to a Kayfun 3.1 or Lite (something I am considering) but I want to get my head around why they should perform better in the vapor production and flavor departments.

 

[DetraMental]

Perhaps it's the TLC we put into each individual coil . Quality control may be a factor. Better materials perhaps?

 

[jstjoehere]

I use a aerotank its just the standard tank. When I tried the dual coils that came with it even after letting them prime they would go dry after a few hits. Not only that but the seemed to make the juice really warm and taste burnt.. So I took them apart and the coils looked like they were actually soldered onto the wire leads. I built a single coil around 1.6 ohms and wicked it with cotton. I run 10 watts most of the time and i get a nice cool tasty vape. Even with 80/20 pg/vg juice I get good vape. I always thought the dual coils took more voltage to run I know they drained my battery in a hurry. With the single coil I can run all day long. Yeah its probly surface area and amount of juice that allows kangertech tanks to work better single coil and the rest is more than likely the wick people use.



In my aerotank I use 30awg kanthol wire in my fogger v4 I use 24 awg.

 

[DoubleEwe]

It is all about the wire gauge (AWG) used, if you use a higher wire gauge (which most of the pre-made coils are) it takes less power to get hot (due to the wire being thinner at higher gauges).

That is why sub-ohm vaping doesn't fry the juice, the high power (15W++) is balanced with low gauge wire (22 - 28 AWG), the wire is thicker, so it takes more power to heat up.

As long as the wick is kept saturated with juice then there will be no burning of juice, even at high wattage.

 

[r77r7r]

I want some darn Kanthal and Rayon in my Boge carto now!!

 

[gin828]

DoubleEwe beat me to it.....lol

A lot depends on your wicking and coil size. You can build whatever size diameter coil that will fit on your build deck. It also depends on wire gauge size. Lower the gauge the more wraps you need to get to 1.3ohms. The juice doesnt fry because of wicking.The faster you can wick the higher in power you can go before it tastes brunt.

 

[Moonbogg]

So an Aerotank Mega's instructions say not to go above 5v with the 1.5 ohm dual coil head. That's really two 3ohm coils, and it seems you could get more from a 3omh setup than 5v. Maybe they say 5v max because the coils break down too fast because they are soldered and crappy? Maybe they know that the tank can't wick fast enough to feed the coils?
But with an RBA, you can have a clean, soild coil, powerful wicking and optimize the wraps vs gauge for optimal performance and the perfect size coil for maximum surface area.
Does that sound about right? LOL, trying to convince myself that a Kayfun will be worth it. These latest aerotanks do pretty good IMO so I want to be convinced that a kayfun will outperform them, and to be convinced I need to understand why.

 

[DoubleEwe]

Yeah Moonbogg, you will not be disappointed in getting a kayfun. (I love mine).

I don't know how you feel about buying clones, but I would suggest getting a Kayfun clone to try it out (see if you like it before spending a fortune on an authentic)...

The flavour from a Kayfun is genuinely fantastic (being a Brit I don't say that kind of thing often), it has a good size deck for building on and it looks great (in my opinion).

The only bad thing about it (well, two bad things) is that it is a bugger to rewick/recoil if the tank has juice in (need to empty it first), the other thing is more of a personal problem, I have one flavour that I now enjoy so much that I had to drop down from 12mg to 6mg nicotine, I also cant bear to be without this flavour in my kayfun. It does mean that I have had to order another kayfun...

 

[edyle]

I've tried to find an answer and failed, so as a last resort I will ask. I get the impression that rebuilt or custom coils are much better performing than mass produced coils in something like an Aerotank Mega. I just want to know why. I see people running single coil setups, something like 1.3ohm at like 4.5volts and it vapes good. That's way in the red on any chart and I can't see how the juice doesn't fry. If it was dual coil i'd understand but people run single coil setups at insane voltage that seems way too high.
Is it the surface area of a custom coil that makes it better? Whats the deal? I'm comparing an Aerotank Mega (which I have) to a Kayfun 3.1 or Lite (something I am considering) but I want to get my head around why they should perform better in the vapor production and flavor departments.

1:
People often rebuild using thicker wire than what you get from the factory.

2:
DIY rebuilds are usually done with better wicking material, example: cotton.
The factory coils come with silica wick.

 

[jstjoehere]

So an Aerotank Mega's instructions say not to go above 5v with the 1.5 ohm dual coil head. That's really two 3ohm coils, and it seems you could get more from a 3omh setup than 5v. Maybe they say 5v max because the coils break down too fast because they are soldered and crappy? Maybe they know that the tank can't wick fast enough to feed the coils?
But with an RBA, you can have a clean, soild coil, powerful wicking and optimize the wraps vs gauge for optimal performance and the perfect size coil for maximum surface area.
Does that sound about right? LOL, trying to convince myself that a Kayfun will be worth it. These latest aerotanks do pretty good IMO so I want to be convinced that a kayfun will outperform them, and to be convinced I need to understand why.

If you already have the mega aerotank why dont you just get some wire and build one of the coils and wick it with cotton and try it. Trust me it makes a huge difference as to compared to Kangertech coils.

 

[Moonbogg]

If you already have the mega aerotank why dont you just get some wire and build one of the coils and wick it with cotton and try it. Trust me it makes a huge difference as to compared to Kangertech coils.

A single coil will out perform the dual coils in the stock unit? I'm starting to think that this whole dual coil thing is sort of a marketing tactic aimed at noobs like me. I'm not saying they don't have their benefits, but I find it odd that a rebuilt single would out perform a dual setup. That seems to be the case though.

 

[Lurch]

A use a single coil in my Aero tank, 7 wraps of 32ga and it is better than the dual coil set up that came with it! If I can make coils, anybody can!

 

[edyle]

A single coil will out perform the dual coils in the stock unit? I'm starting to think that this whole dual coil thing is sort of a marketing tactic aimed at noobs like me. I'm not saying they don't have their benefits, but I find it odd that a rebuilt single would out perform a dual setup. That seems to be the case though.

First of all, don't underestimate the power of cotton rewick; cotton is like sponge; the weight of liquid that cotton can hold compared to the weight of the cotton itself is very high.
Silica wick however, is more of a solid kind of material. There is alot more 'empty space' in a wispy piece of loose uncompressed cotton than there is in a piece of cloth or a piece of silica wick.

People recoil heads as single coils because it's a whole lot easier than trying to put two coils back inside one of those little dual coil heads;
you'd need the help of santa's little elves

 

[classwife]

Moved to Coil Builds from the Modding Forum - Atomizer Mods

 

[CastleRat]

You all know of course it's just Kanthal karma!

 

[Dissonance]

Tons of reasons...

1) Quality of the coil. If you actually pull apart some of the factory coils out there, you're going to see a lot of things we know to avoid in the DIY world. For example, you're likely to see a bunch of coils touching eachother then a bunch of coils NOT touching eachother. This is going to cause hotspots, since all the coils need to be touching (microcoil) or none at all (standard coil).

2) Quality and amount of wick. Almost all factory coils use silica... And while some people prefer silica to cotton, cotton is generally better. Also, sometimes the coil is wrapped too tightly around the wick. This will cause choking of the wick so the juice can't get to all the parts of the coil that are heating up, causing dry hits.

3) Some factory coils use NR-R-NR wire. This involves zapping some NR (non-resistance) wire onto the R (resistance) wire coil. If the connection point between the wires isn't strong enough, then it'll easily disconnect. Again, factory coils are quantity over quality so this scenario is not uncommon.

 

[Sirius]

 

[Seanchai]

on single vs dual coils - that depends a lot on the battery you're using to power them. On anything that won't fire below 1 ohm, it is *difficult* (not impossible, just difficult) to power dual coils effectively. Two coils means twice the power trying to pull from the battery each time you hit the fire button, and unless the battery is designed to handle that, it will be slow to react, and may not get hot enough to reach its intended setting, if your battery has circuity to prevent it from pulling too much power at once. I can *get* my MVP2 to power dual coils, but it's such a delicate art that I'd rather run one hotter, single coil that I can throw in in 60 seconds than mess around with dual coils for twenty minutes. Dual coil tanks run fine, but they're slow to heat and the MVP will only let me increase the voltage/wattage so far... at a certain point it just keeps the wattage at a certain level (the display still shows whatever I've set it to, but it's not actually firing at that wattage because the circuitry doesn't want me pulling that many amps from the battery. It's a safety measure thing, so I don't mind - but I usually don't bother with dual coil anything, either. The MVP2 just isn't designed to power them well). So *because of my battery*, I get a much better vape from a single 1 ohm coil than dual coils of any resistance. If I had a mech mod, the dual coil vape would be better... but it would also use twice the juice, so it's a tradeoff.

Re: why do it yourself coils vape better - partly the wick, partly the gauge, but also, when you wrap your own you have total control, which means not only can you put the resistance and gauge where you want it, you can also make sure your wick isn't choked (which happens a *lot* with stock coils... they wrap those things way too tight!), that the wraps are even, all that fiddly stuff which is actually not all that fiddly once you've done it a few times. For me, wrapping a good coil is as automatic as making sure I had a lighter used to be... and I've only been doing it for six months or so. It was pretty automatic by the two month mark, and that was with only wrapping a coil about every two weeks.

 

[Sirius]

on single vs dual coils - that depends a lot on the battery you're using to power them. On anything that won't fire below 1 ohm, it is *difficult* (not impossible, just difficult) to power dual coils effectively. Two coils means twice the power trying to pull from the battery each time you hit the fire button, and unless the battery is designed to handle that, it will be slow to react, and may not get hot enough to reach its intended setting, if your battery has circuity to prevent it from pulling too much power at once. I can *get* my MVP2 to power dual coils, but it's such a delicate art that I'd rather run one hotter, single coil that I can throw in in 60 seconds than mess around with dual coils for twenty minutes. Dual coil tanks run fine, but they're slow to heat and the MVP will only let me increase the voltage/wattage so far... at a certain point it just keeps the wattage at a certain level (the display still shows whatever I've set it to, but it's not actually firing at that wattage because the circuitry doesn't want me pulling that many amps from the battery. It's a safety measure thing, so I don't mind - but I usually don't bother with dual coil anything, either. The MVP2 just isn't designed to power them well). So *because of my battery*, I get a much better vape from a single 1 ohm coil than dual coils of any resistance. If I had a mech mod, the dual coil vape would be better... but it would also use twice the juice, so it's a tradeoff.

Re: why do it yourself coils vape better - partly the wick, partly the gauge, but also, when you wrap your own you have total control, which means not only can you put the resistance and gauge where you want it, you can also make sure your wick isn't choked (which happens a *lot* with stock coils... they wrap those things way too tight!), that the wraps are even, all that fiddly stuff which is actually not all that fiddly once you've done it a few times. For me, wrapping a good coil is as automatic as making sure I had a lighter used to be... and I've only been doing it for six months or so. It was pretty automatic by the two month mark, and that was with only wrapping a coil about every two weeks.

Very well stated and I agree.