I had my first go at a Micro Coil today using Cotton Wick Cotton Wickthis isnt a new practice and has been used quite a bit with good results however cotton isnt tolerant to heat like silica and will burn very easily. therefore you must ensure it is wet at all times... burnt cotton tastes foul !! MicrocoilsMicrocoils work on a slightly different principle to regular coils...so i will attempt to explain an atomiser coil is simply a wire that resists electrical energy flow. this resistance causes some of the electrical energy to be transformed into heat and light energy. the heat is what vapourises your e-juice. the actual shape you wrap or coil your wire into has no effect on its resistance, therefore an identical piece of wire wound into 10 wraps will heat up the same as if you wound it into 4 wraps. in fact its only actually wrapped into a coil shape to aid in its contact with the e-juice resistance of a wire comes down to three things. the material properties of the wire, its cross sectional area and its length ie the thinner the gauge (cross sectional area) of the wire, the higher the resistancethe longer the wire, the higher the resistance regular coil with microcoil illustrated below - the red arrows indicate the flow of electricity so on thoses principles you would assume that the microcoil with the much longer length of wire would be of a higher resistance....but in fact they read the same resistance !!! this is because the wraps in the microcoil are touching so what you are doing is creating a wire tube and as such increasing the cross sectional area for the electricity to flow through. in this setup the size of the wraps do have an effect on the resistance, the larger the diameter the greater the cross sectional area. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i started off with some 0.3mm Kanthal. imo thicker wire is better for microcoils as its easier to get the wraps to touch. I then tightly wrapped it around a 2mm allen key or syringe. make sure to keep the wraps up tight against one another so they touch as much as possible ...i did about 9-10 which came out at 1.4ohms ....12-13 would take you up to about 2ohms but i wouldn't go much higher as you want to avoid making too much of a tunnel for the juice to have to flow through i fixed it to the dripper and then removed the allen key i heated the coil till red and then used long nose pliers to compress the wraps together from each end.you shouldn't apply too much pressure, it's just enough to hold the wraps together until they cooldo this a few times to make sure that there are no gaps between the coils left a good coil will light up evenly starting from the middle and working its way outward you can now see that all the gaps between the wraps have been eliminated at this point you want you can check the resistance to see if its what you were expecting.when happy thread some cotton wool through the coil...it shouldn't be too tight as it will expand quite a bit when its wetif you use too much cotton wool it could restrict juice flow and you will burn the cotton trim off the ends leaving enough cotton to fill the base of the atomiser then prime with juice ...and give it a blast I cant express enough times the importance of keeping the wick wet with juicedont wait till the flavour drops off to re-drip as it will probably too late Findings and Conclusions i gotta say i was quite impressed with the microcoil, it certainly produced a lot more vapour than a conventional coil... obviously having the much larger heating area being the reason the cotton wick was interesting, as ss mesh brings out differences in juice compared to silica, cotton seemed different from either of those two.... notable juices being the custard that seemed smoother and the El Toro which had a richer more tobacco edge than i have sampled before. changing of the wick with cotton wick it couldn't be easier... there is no need to replace the microcoil. just carefully pull the old cotton wick out of the microcoil, give it a few short blasts allowing it to glowing red and turn any build up to ash. thread in some fresh cotton and away you gosince i did this in a dripper i have tried it in several other devices like the Kayfun etc... following the same process and rewarded with great resultsi hope this is useful, if you have any comments or questions feel free to ask
can you identify the atomizer used in this thread please
so it is ok to squeeze the coils together and fire the battery at the same time?
Has anyone here tried the Peaches&Cream brand cotton yarn that Walmart sells? It is undyed, 100% cotton. I have tried it, and the results seemed to be OK, but I was looking to see if anyone here has used it.Thanks!
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Touching. A "nano-coil" on the other hand, is just a micro-coil with VERY narrow inside diameter (like, wrapped on a needle). And a "dragon-coil" is a micro-coil with the wick on the outside, leaving one end open, so it spits vapor out of a tube of coil. A "tin-man" coil is a sloppily-wrapped micro-coil made from ribbon wire. Let's see... Well, those are the biggies. Beyond those they get WAY complicated (the Clampton-coil - wires coiled around other wires and then formed into a coil themselves...).The distinctive feature of the micro-coil is that they start glowing in the middle, and then it works its way to the edges.
> But in practice I need my specs + a helping hands magnifying glass + light, to get any coil that's even half as neat and perfect as those.Or, you can go to Fasttech and purchase one of their bags of 50 closely wound coils, for about $4.00.If you do, watch the resistances listed carefully. Also be aware that all their prewound coils are small diameter wire and will not handle a lot of wattage.