How to stop the "spring"

[crazysgt]

Ok fellas, made my first clapton wire. Went about as planned. Now wrapping is another problem. I am trying 5 wraps on 2.5mm bit, looks good, but whenever i let it go, it springs out totally loose, leads facing opposite from each other. What gives, should I just cram this into my rda and try to tighten there?

 

[Neunerball]

Ok fellas, made my first clapton wire. Went about as planned. Now wrapping is another problem. I am trying 5 wraps on 2.5mm bit, looks good, but whenever i let it go, it springs out totally loose, leads facing opposite from each other. What gives, should I just cram this into my rda and try to tighten there?

Not that I ever made a clapton coil. However, you can try torching the wire(s), before doing your wraps.

 

[scarecrowjenkins]

There are a few remedies. With really springy builds i'll slide the bit through, grab one lead with pliers and pull the other lead to get the slack out. Then, with the tension still being applied i'll add an extra wrap. Then just grab one lead and very gently pull on it until the leads line up. Alternatively you could hit the coil with a torch to make it more cooperative. I always go with the first method. I install the coil, carefully dry fire it until it oxidizes, slide the bit through and pull the slack out with the leads installed in the rda. The leads will need to be clipped again because of the slack lost from the coil. Takes a bit of practice to find which way works the best for you. The key is just to be careful, especially with certain coils because you don't wanna yank the outer wire off the core, so make sure you have a tight, firm grip. Good luck!

 

[robot zombie]

Ahh, yeah springback can be annoying with claptons, but it's largely preventable.

You have a wound-up spring wrapped around a solid core. While you're wrapping it, you're keeping it from releasing. As soon as you let go, it's free to expand across the core, and expand it does. This is why many people wrap the outer wire over itself at the beginning and end of each section of wire. If the wire shifts when you're wrapping it, it will pull the wraps in the core wire apart when you let off.

You can always do it like the pro's and just be very deliberate, taking care to hold the outer wire in place as you wrap. Personally, I find that really tedious and frustrating.

My end-all is even easier than overlapping and less prone to failure than being careful and deliberate.

Once you have a coil's worth of length made and cut, bend both ends a full 180 degrees back over themselves and crimp them as tight as possible with pliers. If your wraps are as tight as physically possible (which believe me, can be done easily and consistently with practice,) then that outer wire won't have anywhere to go and thus will not spring back.

You can test it by gripping the wire tight with one hand and pulling it with the other. If the core moves independently of the outer wraps, then you need to either try pushing the outer wire to its fully contracted position and clamping it further up while holding it in place or start over.

Once you have the coil finished, you can clip the bulk off of the leads. The section of the outer wire in the wraps of the coil should lock-in. The outer wraps stay close together as you wrap, so they don't have any room to expand once the coil is formed.

Try it! I promise that it will make wrapping your claptons much, much easier. When the outer wrap is secure, fresh clapton wire behaves more like bare wire, if only a bit stiffer. They become much more pliable and hold their shape much like a standard coil would. You can use the fold-and-push technique (wrapping hand right on the jig) and get consistent, secure wraps.

In addition to this, you can also use nichrome instead of kanthal. It's much more malleable than kanthal. I personally do not like the flavor profile of nichrome too much, but it is considerably easier to work with. That and color are probably the two main reasons why fancy builders use it almost exclusively.

 

[crazysgt]

Thanks guys! Took a bit, but finally got it done. Once again thanks

 

[Neunerball]

Thanks guys! Took a bit, but finally got it done. Once again thanks

So, what did you do, in order to solve your problem? Just asking for the guys that might read this thread to learn something.

 

[crazysgt]

Honestly, I ended up taking my clapton wire and ran it through my coil jig...let it stand a bit, then installed the coil. I think some may of gotten confused on my question as well. I wasnt talking about the clapton wire becoming springy. My question is/was how to ppl address the coil itself from being springy after wrapping it?

 

[BigNasty]

Heat.
I torched mine and wrapped it using vise grips.

 

[robot zombie]

Honestly, I ended up taking my clapton wire and ran it through my coil jig...let it stand a bit, then installed the coil. I think some may of gotten confused on my question as well. I wasnt talking about the clapton wire becoming springy. My question is/was how to ppl address the coil itself from being springy after wrapping it?

Are you using a pen coiler? If so, don't use the top winding part. It pulls more tension into the coil because it's holding the wire in place while you wrap... ...the tension stacks up as you turn it. Just feed it through the base and wrap by hand. You don't want to pull it too much while you wrap. You have to let the tension go, wrap by wrap. The trick is to push it more into the shape you want it to be rather than force it... ...let it sit how it wants to while you wrap and it won't shift as much when you're done. A wire wrapped at rest stays at rest. Every bit of tension you put on it while wrapping has to go somewhere.