Experiments with TC

[E3Nomad]

Yeah, I've used offset temps and SS, NiFe30 and NiFe48, it works to a degree, and I can get a decent enough vape from it, but would really like to get it working with the wire it was designed for ideally. It's pretty damn good with kanthal though, and works well with the Griffin, Steam Crave, and Aspire tanks. It's a good solid mod.

By comparison with your hybrid claptons, the Ni200 coil has far less mass and surface area, so I'm not surprised you find the vape less than satisfactory. My humble opinion is that while Ni200 was useful during the early development of TC vaping, as a single wire it's far from ideal for flavour or clouds. I applaud your determination - how about a Ni200 core with a Kanthal wrap? It'd increase your surface area by a factor of over 7 for a similar resistance.

 

[paul2566]

By comparison with your hybrid claptons, the Ni200 coil has far less mass and surface area, so I'm not surprised you find the vape less than satisfactory. My humble opinion is that while Ni200 was useful during the early development of TC vaping, as a single wire it's far from ideal for flavour or clouds. I applaud your determination - how about a Ni200 core with a Kanthal wrap? It'd increase your surface area by a factor of almost 14 for a similar resistance.

Thanks, I'll give that a try, it makes sense, and I like the mod so it could make it more flexible. I'll post how I get on. The trick will be wrapping the Ni200, boy is that stuff fragile.

 

[danb]

By comparison with your hybrid claptons, the Ni200 coil has far less mass and surface area, so I'm not surprised you find the vape less than satisfactory.

I agree with this. If you want to up the surface area, you can make NiFe claptons or twisted wire. I use dual twisted NiFe48 quite a lot (28-29g for singles, 29-30g for duals) - it does give better cloud production than single wires, but I often can't be arsed to twist more wire and end up using single wires until I can be bothered to twist more. I haven't attempted Claptons yet, maybe next week... maybe...

 

[paul2566]

#5

Tobecco Velocity clone.
Air flow wide open.

SIGELEI 150W TC MOD

Clapton coil 2 core
I.D. of coil 2.5mm
Core 1 = Ni200 0.32mm
Core 2 = SS316L 0.32mm
Wrap + Kanthal 0.3mm
Coil wraps = 6

TCR pre-set by mod manufacturer

Mod set to 120 degrees C
Mod set to 50J
Coil reads 0.11 Ohms which is a little off with Steam Engine from their wire wizard page

Below is the info I got from the Steam Engine wire wizard..

Resistance 0.092 Ω
Resistivity 1.06 Ω/m
TCR in vaping range 5918 ×10-6
TC precision 544
Heat flux per Watt 0.84 mW/mm²
Heat capacity 305.12 mJ/K
Current per Volt 10.87 A
Power dissipated 100 %
Width 1.24 mm
Thickness 0.92 mm
Length 87.01 mm
Surface area 1190.49 mm²
Cross section area 0.23 mm²
Volume 90.16 mm³
Mass 658.97 mg
Density 7.31 g/ccm



My results;
Temp control seems to work. Vaped it dry, no dry hits but huge drop in flavour and clouds as I would expect towards the end.
Ramp up time at lower joules was for me not acceptable, hence the 50 joules, and even the its a little slow, so may try upping this..
Massive clouds.
Very good flavour.
Pleasant warm vape.

Thank you E3Nomad for the idea

I did try wrapping kanthal around single strand Ni200 0.32mm, but it was fragile and broke during a couple of attempts, I would have used kanthal as the second core but I'm out in that size wire.
I did try it at 150 degrees C, but didn't trust it so dropped the temp to vape it dry.

I am quite pleased with the way this vapes.

 

[paul2566]

Ok regarding build #5 above.

I got brave and upped it to 70 Joules and 150 degrees C, vaped it dry with no dry hits. Big clouds (well by my standards anyway) which resulted in mild tutting from the war department (her indoors)
Upped it to 200 degrees C and vaped it to a dry hit, but examining the cotton, its barely singed.

 

[E3Nomad]

Ok regarding build #5 above.

I got brave and upped it to 70 Joules and 150 degrees C /....

Yey!!! Result!

 

[E3Nomad]

Your efforts have piqued my curiosity ..... I have an idea for 'claptoning' Ni200 ,,,,, I'll post results after I try it, successful or not.

 

[paul2566]

Your efforts have piqued my curiosity ..... I have an idea for 'claptoning' Ni200 ,,,,, I'll post results after I try it, successful or not.

Excellent, I look forward to see what you do, sharing good and bad on these forms helps us all.

I'm vaping build #3 at the moment with a nice home brew vanilla custard.

 

[E3Nomad]

OK … it worked. Not my tidiest wrap by a long way, but it vapes well.

Core - single 0.345mm Ni200 from the Scientific Wire Company.
Wrap - single 0.202mm Kanthal
6.5 wraps on 2.5mm mandrel
Resistance - 0.13 ohms (I suspect the divergence from Steam Engine calcs is due to characteristics of my Magma clone, which should have been thrown out long ago!)

TC on RX200 set to 215°C @ 45 watts

Steam Engine results:
Resistance 0.089 Ω
Resistivity 1.02 Ω/m
TCR in vaping range 6000 ×10-6
TC precision 534
Heat flux per Watt 1.64 mW/mm²
Heat capacity 118.22 mJ/K
Current per Volt 11.24 A
Power dissipated 100 %
Width 0.75 mm
Thickness 0.75 mm
Length 86.81 mm
Surface area 611.4 mm²
Cross section area 0.13 mm²
Volume 34.24 mm³
Mass 257.62 mg
Density 7.52 g/ccm
Resistivity 1.02 Ω/m

The vape is very flavoursome and the potential for huge clouds is definitely there, although airflow on my Magma is too restricted to take things to the limits. Temp protection appears to work well, with no dry hits, even at 55 watts, but things were getting a bit warm at that. 45watts seemed to be the happy medium with my home-grown 80%VG vanilla custard. I reckon it'd happily go a lot higher with decent airflow.

Prepping the wire was a delicate operation. I used barely 100mm of the Ni200, unsupported at the outer end - no swivels or tension on the core. Winding needed quite a lot of thumb pressure to avoid riding turns, but proceding slowly got the job done. Also a relative PITA to coil as well, being quite springy, but patience and bad language prevailed. Over to you paul2566

 

[E3Nomad]

Vaped it dry @ 45 watts - no burn, no discolouration. Result! (although I prefer higher resistance for my dual coil builds, so I'll not be switching back to Ni200. Good to know it works though, and the tinkering was fun)