Alien 220 works in TC with standard coils?

[SteveS45]

Just noticed I have been firing my Alien with the X4 coils in Temperature Mode? WTF? I guess I was lucky it was at 360°F so I wasn't pushing massive wattage through the coils. Anyone else done this? I did it without realizing I switched modes. Had a few glasses of wine with and after dinner so that explains it...........

 

[Kranky Kanger]

Yes it is possible. I had it happen once with my Kbox 200. A kanthal coil will fire in stainless steel temp mode on my Kbox. Found out quite by accident, sort of the same situation as you. Fortunately the only thing that went south in my case was the coil, pretty much fried the cotton. Also fortunately, I didn't get much of a hit off of it, sounded odd and smelled bad, just got a bit of the smoke up my nose, but that was enough! Since then I always do a quick fire button push and check the display before sitting down to a session. Make sure I'm showing watts on not temp, just to be on the safe side.

 

[SteveS45]

I was vaping it and then realized it said I was in Temperature Mode. I was like WTF and realized I must have done it when I was trying to turn it off and hit the fire bar too many times which brought me into the menu. Most of my MOD's will change to Wattage because the coils can't do temperature control. Definitely a WTF moment!

 

[SteveS45]

Still vaping with the same coil and no crappy taste so I need to check what wattage it is at when set for TC with a regular wattage coil. This coil has almost kissed the ghost so perfect Lab rat!

 

[skt239]

You can get SS coils to do something similar to tc in Ti mode.

 

[SteveS45]

Sure you can set TC coils for the wrong metal but in my experience the results are not pleasant. I was talking about the standard Kanthal coils working in TC mode on the Alien. Most of my MOD's switch to Wattage Mode when there is no TC coil.

 

[Synphul]

I've known others who had kanthal working in tc mode on the alien but pretty sure it was kicking them out and just defaulting to the wattage. As far as 'alien', 'tc' and 'works' all being in the same sentence, I'm skeptical. I have an alien, love the size, the shape, the fire bar, the data layout - but tc sucks ass. No other way to put it, I've tried stainless in simple round coils, parallel coils, contact coils, spaced coils, clapton coils. It just doesn't work, it's either full power or nothing which isn't how tc should work. My $28 istick has better temp control by far. Best of luck with tc on the alien but I wouldn't hold my breath and don't let the funky tc operation discourage you from tc in general.

 

[SteveS45]

@Synphul I wasn't trying to use it in TC it was accidental and surprised me it actually worked.

 

[Synphul]

Some will work, it may just be that the mod is defaulting to something that works. Some will actually kick out of tc and back to wattage, others use the preheat wattage. If the chip is clever enough it can sort of do tc with non standard wire like kanthal, hohmtech's fsk does.