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Temp Control For Newbies Post/Thread?

vuJim

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I would have sworn there was a "temp control for newbies" post or thread in one of the building sub-forums, but I'll be darned if I can find it.

I think I'm ready to try my hand at it. I have a Coil Master, and both 26 ga. and 28 ga. SS316L wire. Trying to figure out where/how to start.

Not interested in anything advanced (twisted, Claptons, etc.) at this point. Just straight-forward, plain old, boring :), coils.
 

SteveS45

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When I first got into using TC I wasted a lot of time checking with others and people were telling me to adjust the TCR and Blah Blah Blah but all you need to know is how to set the wattage and temperature for your coil. Good Luck
 

vuJim

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Thanks, @SteveS45, but the immediate problem I have is I've no idea what resistance I'm aiming for or how many wraps to use to hit a target resistance for a given wire gauge and coil diameter.

For example: I'm finding that, on my Zeus Dual, it seems a target resistance of 0.5 ohms or so produces a decent vape with less propensity to dry hit or burn than, say, half that resistance. Now I know TC, done right, should eliminate the dry hit/burning problems, but ya gotta start somewhere, right? So I figure starting out with SS coils that would be around the same resistance as my Kanthal coils and go from there.

But maybe that thinking is all wrong, too. Thus my question :)
 

nadalama

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You'd do that the same as you'd do when planning any coil. Do your wire calculations on something like steam-engine.org.

For simple wire, just click the "Coil Wrapping" tab at the top. Choose your wire type, metal, gauge, ID, and target resistance, and the software will tell you how many wraps you need.

For SS316L, 3mm ID with 5mm legs, 26 ga round, looks like 6.75 wraps gives you 0.5 ohms. I find the resistance runs a little low for me, if I wrap to those calculations, so I might do 7 wraps, or I might do 8. You can always remove a wrap if you want.
 

SteveS45

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it seems a target resistance of 0.5 ohms or so produces a decent vape with less propensity to dry hit or burn than, say, half that resistance.

I run pre-made coils for my Uwell Rafale at 25-30 Watts and Temp of 360-460 depending on the MOD. These are rated for 80 or more. This is where I am happy and get 5K to 8K Puffs. Gotta go with what you find as what is right IMHO. Good Luck
 

vuJim

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Success!
banana.gif


Nine turns of SS316L at 2.5mm resulted in 0.29 ohms for the two coils. They were glowing evenly. Wicked it. Assembled it. Juiced it up. Set the temp to 200°C for starters. 60W max. TCR of 92 (based on recommendations I found in searches.)

Ended-up at 225°C. Tremendous, flavourful clouds. No dry hits, even chain-vaping.

I LOVE this! :D

Buh bye, Kanthal. It's SS and TC for me from here on out, baby.
 

gopher_byrd

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Here's the TC thread over in the Regulated mods sub-forum. It's been a while since I've read through the whole thing. It may have some build hints as well. One thing that I do with SS is space the coil wraps so they cool down quicker and this tends to give a better experience for me.
 

vuJim

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Don't get that SS too hot when dry burning~~!!
What is "too hot?" I fired 'em at (looks...) 45W 3-4 times, just long enough, each time, to tweak and strum them so they glowed evenly in concert with one another.

Here's the TC thread over in the Regulated mods sub-forum. It's been a while since I've read through the whole thing. It may have some build hints as well.
Thanks! That's probably the one for which I was looking. (ETA: I was looking in the wrong places. I expected to find it in one of the "building" sub-forums.)

One thing that I do with SS is space the coil wraps so they cool down quicker and this tends to give a better experience for me.
I've tried spacing the coils a bit and leaving them mostly as-wound. TBH: I've never noticed any difference in vaping performance, either way.

I do give new coils a mild stretch before installing, just so the individual coils aren't tightly-pressed against one another.
 
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nadalama

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What is "too hot?" I fired 'em at (looks...) 45W 3-4 times, just long enough, each time, to tweak and strum them so they glowed evenly in concert with one another.


Thanks! That's probably the one for which I was looking. (ETA: I was looking in the wrong places. I expected to find it in one of the "building" sub-forums.)


I've tried spacing the coils a bit and leaving them mostly as-wound. TBH: I've never noticed any difference in vaping performance, either way.

I do give new coils a mild stretch before installing, just so the individual coils aren't tightly-pressed against one another.

I believe what I've read for stainless steel wire is 25W or thereabouts. Try not to let them get glowing red-hot. Pulse the power to them after they start to glow a bit, just enough to be able to see if they are heating evenly.
 

gopher_byrd

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AVS sell premade SS coils and wire and here is their recommendation on dry burning SS coils with videos.
 

vuJim

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Thanks for the additional info, guys!

They got pretty red near the centers and a little away from the centers. I don't think I hit quite bright orange, though. I basically hit them just hard enough to tell they were going to heat evenly and in tandem with one another. I'll run the wattage down and do it a bit more gently, next time.

And it occurred to me, earlier today, that I don't have to wait for my Zeus X to arrive to do that. I can do an SS TC build on my trusty old VLS Vector RDA :)
 

vuJim

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I'm running it between 437°F and 455°F (225°C and 235°C). That seems to be working quite well. I bumped the (initial) watts up to 70W, and dropped the TCR to 90.

From 235°C to 250°C there's not a great deal of change in flavour, density, or volume. At 255°C it starts dry-hitting at the end of long pulls.
 

vuJim

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So here I am 2-1/2 weeks later and much wiser :D

I can understand why so many vapers try TC, find the results less-than-satisfactory, give up and go back to power mode. The finer points of TC are a bit tricky and not immediately obvious. It doesn't help that mod makers' various implementations of TC are sometimes wildly different from one another, and not always correct.

First, one the tricky parts: With each of my three TC mods (SMOK Mag P3, Vandy Vape & Tony B Swell, and Wismec Sinuous Ravage230), it seems making any adjustment other than target temperature will cause the mod to re-read the coils' current base resistance. If you've been using the coil it'll be quite a bit hotter than room temperature. This will result in the mod inaccurately controlling temperature. If you're not expecting it you can burn cotton, destroy the coil, and burn your throat. Yes: I learned this the hard way.

As to the various inconsistencies in mod behaviour: The only one of the three I have that behaved as I would have expected has been the SMOK Mag P3. It's damn lucky I started with that one!

Of the other two:

The Vandy Vape Swell uses an uncommon TCR range and has a default max power setting that does not allow enough power to the coils to actually hit the target temperatures with many builds. (See: Vandy Vape Swell: A Nice Mod That's A Temp. Control Fail) Once I got those two figured out it worked fine. (I'll update my capsule review later.)

The Wismec Sinuous Ravage230 was even wonkier. The pre-set TCR for SS316, whatever it is, certainly is nowhere close to right in my experience. Near as I can tell it never goes into limiting. To make matters worse: They have the default power in TC set to 230 watts! Luckily the mod has a TCR mode. But that would go into limit way too soon, even turning the temperature way up to 315°C (600°F). Finally I decided to simply disregard the recommended TCR range for SS316L (88-92) and bump it up until it worked right. Looks like somewhere around 114 works. (This mod has other issues. I will be doing another of my capsule reviews for this mod.)

In the end, all this grief has been worth it to me. I do long pulls, and TC lets me do those long pulls without getting dry hits--or even sometimes burning cotton.
 

SteveS45

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Sorry to hear you had such a hard time but it reminds me of when I first got into TC Vaping. I was using these exotic metal coils and I forget what exactly it was NiChrome it NiTi but I did not have it set for the correct metal of the two. People were sending me off into TCR and this or that. Was simply needed to be set for the correct metal of the two the coils were made out of. Since only using SS for TC it is all I use now.
 

vuJim

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Sorry to hear you had such a hard time ...
No worries. Despite sometimes coming close >< to giving up and just settling with power mode, I kept at it. I had my own experience with my Mag P3, and the experiences others had related, to convince me it should be what I wanted it to be.

I'm still not 100% at it, though. Just had to re-wick my latest build after getting a mouthful of juice. Wicked it too lightly and the deck flooded when I topped it off this morning. Or too heavily and some of the wick pulled out of one of the wells when I put it back together last night.

The good news is I'm getting a lot faster at coil-building and wicking. Now I think nothing of tearing it down and re-doing it when necessary :)
 

SteveS45

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My MOD was acting up yesterday and switching to Wattage so I just upped watts to where I vape normally in TC and finished what I was doing until I cleaned the 510 pin and all was working correctly.
 

vuJim

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Yeah, the other night I had a brane phart and unthinkingly changed TCR or something just after I'd vaped. Doh! Simply reverted to power mode until the next time I vaped.
 

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