Newbie coil building questions

[Moooface]

Hi everyone, just joined the forum and some questions about building coils. I've watched a ton of YouTube vids and looked at the steam engine thing and I'll be honest I've never been good with numbers and I'm not joking when I say when I look at them the numbers start jumping around and giving me the finger anyway I'm just looking for info on a simple coil build for what I'm using, like a basic blueprint to start with.
I have a Smok Alien 220 with the tfv8 big baby tank and rba deck. I usually like to vape about 50- 55 watts (using the stock coils) so would this be the same building my own? Also I'm not after building anything fancy just yet maybe duel single strand kanthal coils?! Would duel kanthal coils with 6-7 wraps be about right for my tank and mod? I've also seen some people prefer vertical coils but they look hard to wick in a small deck?! Any help much appreciated

 

[Mr Ripple]

Hi everyone, just joined the forum and some questions about building coils. I've watched a ton of YouTube vids and looked at the steam engine thing and I'll be honest I've never been good with numbers and I'm not joking when I say when I look at them the numbers start jumping around and giving me the finger anyway I'm just looking for info on a simple coil build for what I'm using, like a basic blueprint to start with.
I have a Smok Alien 220 with the tfv8 big baby tank and rba deck. I usually like to vape about 50- 55 watts (using the stock coils) so would this be the same building my own? Also I'm not after building anything fancy just yet maybe duel single strand kanthal coils?! Would duel kanthal coils with 6-7 wraps be about right for my tank and mod? I've also seen some people prefer vertical coils but they look hard to wick in a small deck?! Any help much appreciated

By all means have a play with the RBA but my advise would be to by a purpose RTA.
The rba decks for smok tanks can be fine albeit fiddly but tbh they're like the jack of all trades and a master of none.

 

[iqon]

if youve already got the rba deck then try it, dont ask me coils i dont know as i buy pre made. But @StrawberryRipple unfortunately is right, smok make a good tank but crap rba`s, I have 2 that are unusable as rba`s.But just great as a stock coil tank.

 

[Lung Redemption]

When you're building kanthal, i beieve the ohms you build the coils to is going to determine the appropriate wattage range for them(some vapers preferring it on the warmer/higher end, others the inverse), and a dual coil deck is going to half the resistance for your coil builds. A single coil build at 1.0ohm would be 0.5ohm with two of the same coil in a dual built deck, if i'm not mistaken(if i have that wrong please feel free to correct me).

Grab a highly rated cheap RTA and a cheap spool of simple Kanthal, you should experiment a little(test each build with a small amount of juice) to find your footing, imho.

 

[silk186]

If you want a similar wattage you can go for a build with the same ohms as the stock coils.

 

[Moooface]

Thanks for the advice guys I'll maybe have a look at RTA once I have spare cash and try with the smok rba because that's all I have at the moment

 

[iqon]

I broke the glass on my tfv8 rba( and no spare available ( carbon edition )) but when it was working, it was working fine.

 

[Deleted member 58360]

Would duel kanthal coils with 6-7 wraps be about right for my tank and mod? I've also seen some people prefer vertical coils but they look hard to wick in a small deck?!

The number of wraps depends on the wire gauge you use.

Different thickness wires have different resistances per unit length...

Don't bother with vertical builds at first - save it for later (if you feel the need).

 

[Deleted member 58360]

A single coil build at 1.0ohm would be 0.5ohm with two of the same coil in a dual built deck, if i'm not mistaken(if i have that wrong please feel free to correct me).

That's correct - just so long as it's a normal parallel build

 

[Deleted member 58360]

If you want a similar wattage you can go for a build with the same ohms as the stock coils.

There's more to it than wattage though, it's not a reliable baseline to maintain familiarity.

I can build a coil with 28g Ka, or with 22g Ka, or with 2 or 4 strands twisted together and get them all to the same resistance by altering the size of core and number of turns - and if I run them at the same wattage they'll perform entirely differently...

And that's before you get into how it's wicked and the placement in the airflow.


While this might appear like I'm trying to make it sound complicated, I'm actually just trying to temper expectations.

Throwing in a build of the same resistance (ohms) as a stock coil and expecting it to perform the same if the wattage is set the same is (imo) what causes a lot of people to condemn rebuildables.


(If I wanted to make it complicated I'd explain how there's no such thing as variable wattage anyway )