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How To Recoil an Aspire BDC atomizer head

blademansw

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(This is copied and pasted from my blog, and the formatting was odd on one photo)

This is a guide on how to recoil the Aspire BDC atomizers. The Aspire’s are a bottom, dual coil atomizer system which is shared across several clearomizers in the Aspire range.
They are known to “pop” quite frequently, and they are also very easy to get gunked up with thicker juices.
I decided to try my hand at replacing the coil in this head.

Materials

0.25mm A-1 Kanthal
2.5mm Voodoowool
Dirty burnt Aspire BDC head.

Tools
Needle nose pliers
3mm shaft screwdriver
Tweezers
Nail Clippers
Carpet needle
Fine scissors
Multimeter or Resistance Meter
Blowtorch, or other suitable device to heat things.
Lots of patience.
Bad language.
Beer, or whatever your preferred lubricant is.
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Tools

Dismantling the old head
The first job is to dismantle the Aspire BDC. To do this, screw the atomizer head into the clearomizer base.
Hold the atomizer head with pliers and grip tightly. Using judicious amounts of bad language, pull the outer cover off of the head.
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Removing outer cover

Once you have expended sufficient bad language, the outer cover will come off of the atomizer head, and will probably ping out of the pliers and land somewhere on the floor. Or under the washing machine if you are building in the kitchen like me.
Once you have recovered the outer cover from wherever it has disappeared to, you will need to carefully remove the flat wick from inside the outer cover. Be very careful with this, as without it your head will not wick properly.
As can be seen in this photo, the outer wick (on the right) is rather dirty and covered with sooty gunk, and the coils can also be seen to be really bad. This head was producing a very burnt taste, and you can see why!
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Dismantled head

Now carefully remove the bottom pin from the head, and the rubber.
The old coils can now be teased out of the head. There is an insulator inside the head, again be careful not to loose this as it stops the head shorting out.
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Old coils

You can now very carefully wash the components, including the outer wick, insulator and rubber bung. Pat the wick material dry using kitchen towel or tissue.
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All clean!

Building the coil
Cut a length of Kanthal suitable for the resistance you are aiming for. My target resistance was 2 ohms, and Vapers Toolbox said I would require 7 cm of wire using 0.25mm Kanthal A-1 on a 3mm coil.
I cut off around 12 cm to give me a bit extra to work with.
Now using the blowtorch, heat the Kanthal to cherry red to take the spring out of it and make it easier to work with.
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Toasty

Whilst the Kanthal is cooling, cut of about 3 cm of Voodoowool off using sharp scissors or nail clippers (usual health warnings about silica apply). Using the blowtorch again, convert the Voodoo into something resembling a Space Shuttle thermal tile on re-entry.
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Bit warm I am

Once you have torched the Voodoo, leave it somewhere non flammable to cool. It holds its heat for a little while so be careful.
Now take your Kanthal, and make 4 nice tight coils around the shaft of the 3mm screwdriver (or drill bit if you prefer). This is a 5/4 wrap, which shows 4 coils from above, and looks like 5 from below.
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Coil me up

Now squeeze the coils together so they are neat, and slip them off the screwdriver shaft. Have a close look and make sure everything looks neat and tidy.
Now you need to compress the coil. To do this, carefully grip it in your pliers, and gently torch it to cherry red again. I couldn’t get a photograph of this step as I don’t have 3 hands. Once you have finished, you should end up with a nicely compressed coil.
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Now slip it back onto the screwdriver shaft, and tweak it around until you are happy with it.
Carefully tease the Voodoo through the coil. Once you have done this, insert the carpet needle into the hollow center of the Voodoo and wiggle it a bit to expand the Voodoo until it touches the coil evenly all around. You will feel the Voodoo soften and expand. Do not remove the needle at this stage.
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Thats a sharp prick at the end

Now comes the start of the real fiddly job. Insert the insulator back into the coil head if you had removed it, and make sure the holes in it line up with the head. Carefully feed the legs of your coil through the head until the coil and wick assembly is resting at the top of the large slot in the insulator/head. Hold this down with one finger whilst you insert the rubber plug into the base of the head as per normal with this type of recoil. Next insert the positive pin into the rubber bung.
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Nearly there

Cut the excess wire off of the legs, and use your multimeter or resistance meter to check resistance and for shorts. Mine came out at 1.9 ohms so I was quite happy with that.
Now carefully withdraw the needle from the Voodoo, and again make sure the coil is being touched all round by the Voodoo. Perform any final careful alignment tweaks to the coil.
Juice the Voodoo up well, and trim the ends of the wick just slightly proud of the outer edge of the head. Now juice the rectangular outer wick material and wrap it around the outside of the head. Make sure it is quite tight and touching the Voodoo otherwise it will not wick correctly. This step requires further copious amounts of bad language, and about 14 hands.
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Juice me up baby

Now carefully line the holes in the outer cover with your Voodoo wick and the large slots in the head. Drop the outer cover on the floor again and swear loudly as it goes under the washing machine.
Recover the outer cover from its resting place, clean all the dog hair off of it before resuming and gently sliding it down over the outer wick material.
If you have done this correctly, you will not be able to see any of the wick material in the very small gap left between the base of the outer cover and the head.
Reinstall the head into the clearomizer base, and use this to press the outer cover completely home. This does take quite a lot of force, I used the edge of my pliers and the worksurface, it almost makes a kind of click as it goes into place.
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Bosched

Check your resistance again, and install into your selected clearo. Make sure you leave at least 5 minutes for the juice to wick correctly, and do a couple of dry toots without firing to help it draw correctly.
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Boom chicka pow wow

You will find that the Voodoowool takes about 20-30 puffs to “break in” and for the full flavour to start coming through. If you get any burnt taste at all with Voodoowool its either not wicking correctly or you didn’t make sure it is touching the coil all around.
This is a lot more fiddly than a Kanger head for example, but well worth the effort in my opinion. You may also find that the very tight draw of the Aspire’s is slightly reduced with this build.
Enjoy!
 
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Thanks for posting..I salute your patience!

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Planet of the Vapes mobile app
 
Superb write up!
I did wonder how you went about recoiling those types of things. The aerotank one is rebuildable (I think) but I can only just see the whole unit when it's removed, let alone recoiling it.
Love the bit about removing the dog hair, if I went on a space walk I'd end up sucking some in. Bloody stuff gets everywhere...
 
Dog hair has some amazing properties, I think its time they did some proper research into it lol.

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Planet of the Vapes mobile app
 
And yeah you can rebuild the aerotank one I believe, it's just an updated Kanger dual coil head AFAIK

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Planet of the Vapes mobile app
 
Great write up with some stellar pics!
I wasted a good amount of time trying to rebuild these with dual coils but was defeated in the end.
The bit that always got me was wrapping the filler material stuff around the inner section then replacing the cap, it's beyond awkward.
 
Great write up with some stellar pics!
I wasted a good amount of time trying to rebuild these with dual coils but was defeated in the end.
The bit that always got me was wrapping the filler material stuff around the inner section then replacing the cap, it's beyond awkward.

Yeah that filler is designed to drive you round the twist lol.:-)

Sent from my SGP511 using Planet of the Vapes mobile app
 
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