Not that new to vaping but, always willing to learn more!:D

[evengelicmane]

Hey everyone! So i am not that new to vaping, been vaping for about a year. I recently got my foot in the door of mods in August and i LOVE them. But, i don't know much about them. I know how to replace my cotton using organic cotton, i know how to saturate the cotton with my liq and all that, i know how to clean it. I have a stingray mod with a Zenith atomizer. It works alright, but i find it's lost performance over the time that i've had it, contrary to what i was told by the salesman as you could imagine. I thought ecig stores were more close-knit than to lie to the consumers, but, i'm sure its just that one store. My local one is pretty good to me offering me discounts on liquid and mods. So, i guess to divulge the point of my thread is to ask, what do i need to know? What are ohms, for example? What are coils in a mechanical mod? I know what they are in, say, an Evod VV ecig. What are those forms of ecigs called? With the evod batteries and the aspire nautilus tanks? What are those called, not mechanicals? If anyone could offer up their extensive knowledge of the vaping world to me, i'd appreciate it I am a newbie cloud-chaser. Just won my first competition last month...was pretty surprised cause i know next to nothing about vapes. So, have at it fellow vapers! Give unto me your beautiful knowledge! and connect with me through the links in my siggy too!;D Peace it!

 

[OBDave]

Hi! And yikes!

I guess to start, who builds your coils? I'm guessing since you don't know what an ohm is you probably don't know what ohm you're currently running, but if you do please share. And what kind of batteries/charger have you got going with that Stingray?

What is a coil? Most simply, it's a wound-up piece of wire that gets hot. You stuff wicking (in your case, cotton) through it to deliver juice to the coils, which then vaporize the juice. For simple fill-and-vape tanks like the Evod with factory-built, throwaway coils, one will generally refer to the coil itself, the wick, and the assembly that screws into the tank all as just a "coil," but when talking mechanical mods we're specifically talking about the coil of wire.

Evod batteries are a newer version of what's called an "Ego style" stick battery, which is a self-contained unit, with or without variable voltage control, that has both Ego-style (outer) and 510-style (inner) threads. The tanks that go on top are called clearomizers.

Now, major safety issues - a mechanical mod, like your Stingray, is simply a metal tube with buttons that fire an atomizer (we'll call your Zenith a rebuildable dripping atomizer, or RDA - most use 510-style threads). Unlike an Ego or a regulated (variable voltage/variable wattage) setup, there is no safety mechanism built in - if you run your battery too low, or you run a coil that demands more power than your battery can deliver it could "vent" (this frequently involves fire and/or explosions).

Do you want to carry a pipe bomb around? If not, I highly suggest you either a) switch to a VV/VW mod with safety features built in, or b) learn a little more about how to safely use your mech. I hesitate to refer people to ECF (even though I won't get banned here for doing it, there are a lot of stuck-up pricks over there), but they've been around longer and there are some good tutorials on battery safety and intro-to-mech-use type stuff. VU is already developing a pretty awesome database of info on coil building, so once you get your safety tips (I recommend looking up the blogs from a guy named Baditude), come back here or hit up the YouTube and watch some videos on coil building. Coils don't last forever, and if the performance of your Zenith is falling off it could be time to build some new coils - I change mine every 2-3 weeks.

This is just scratching the surface (I really need to work on a comprehensive "things to tell mech users who don't understand mechs" copy-paste post), but hopefully it sets you off in the right direction. Cheers!

 

[evengelicmane]

I actually don't know my ohms, i know my charger for my battery (its one of the skinner green batteries that come with the stingray mods) has a 3.4 and 4.2 voltage switch to charge at and i always charge it at the 4.2 voltage i think that's what those numbers are indicating. Thank you for your very informative response, i appreciate the effort you took to explain those things to me! I think i do need to replace my coils because the left side coils don't heat up red anymore. Only one side of my coils heats up red now, i still get good vapor but i know i could be getting more.

 

[OBDave]

Well, you've gotten the gist of part of my post, anyway...

One thing to check with the coils is the screws that hold them in - if one coil isn't firing there's a chance the screw has backed off a bit and is no longer making contact. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume no one has taught you about doing a dry burn on your coils to remove carbon buildup and other gunk - now's the time to do that, and check the screw tension to see if it solves your problem of one coil not firing.

Google some videos on dry-burning technique, as well as the use of an ohm meter - AND DAMNIT GO BUY AN OHM METER NOW!

Also, figure out what kind of battery you have and what ohm your coil is firing at - "the skinner green" ones isn't enough for me to tell whether you're firing safely at whatever ohm you may have or whether you're just lucky your mod hasn't exploded in your face yet. I run 18650 batteries, which are a scoche bigger than AA size, and I've got them in all colors. Some of my green ones are good to run in my mech mods, others are only safe when I use them in regulated devices below 20 watts or so. The make and model is extremely important here, as my coils (and possibly yours) are extremely unsafe to run at the 40+ watts of power they demand.

Maybe you can post some pics of your setup, including your RDA with the cap off and your batteries with the manufacturer markings on them? A pic of your charger would help too...sorry to be such a downer, but when playing with electricity bad things can and do happen if you're not prepared - I'm almost thinking it would be best to revert to some sort of protected device and put the Stingray down until you've done a little homework on the hazards involved...