Plus ohm RDA, single coil builds.

[Biig Jonnie]

I've been wondering lately if there are others like me, that have only just started to drip using an RDA but aren't wanting to go down the sub ohm route?

For me flavour is more important than vapour, although I do want to achieve a nice amount, dense and warm too but I'm not willing to sacrifice a huge amount of battery and I'm not about to pretend using 30ml of eliquid a day is normal! My first ever RDA build was based in a video I watched in YouTube, I've put a single 0.8 ohm Clapton coil right down the middle of the only 2 posts on my deck and put a good amount of cotton in the juice wells.

I vape this with a tight airflow at 25 watts and it's great! Big amount of vapour, does not overheat and battery lasts longer however flavour is muted and less than a tank would give.

I Want to know really if anybody can tell me the best single coil build to make that has good vapour and great flavour but is OVER 1 ohm.

Sorry for waffling and all help. Is really appreciated.

 

[anthonyb]

I might not be as much help here with the coil as others that are more experienced, as I'm happy with plain kanthal wire and have only ever used pre- made Clapton coils.
You should get in the replies to you coil question, loads of different ways to achieve what you want. With kanthal alone there is many ways to get a good + 1 ohm build, with the many different thicknesses of wire.
For me, I like to use a 3mm diameter former with 24awg (0.5 mm) wire, it's takes 5 turns to get 0.5ohms, (which is what I use) so it should about 10 turns to get +1 ohm, which would make the coil very big. So to attain a smaller sized coil (less turns) at 1 ohm you would need to use thinner wire. This is one of those everyone is different things.

For flavour, I have learnt it's how you wick the coil that counts, more than the coil itself.
As is well documented, you need the right amount of cotton running through the coil, not to much and not to little. But what is not so well documented is how your cotton should be after it leaves the coil. It should be a nice sweeping bend and not a sharp corner. A sharp corner will strangle the coil, hindering the flavour molecules from getting through. Think of a straw, if you bend it at the point where it's meant to be bent it's fine. But if you bend it lower down, it collapses and not longer works well.

 

[Simon G]

I've been wondering lately if there are others like me, that have only just started to drip using an RDA but aren't wanting to go down the sub ohm route?

For me flavour is more important than vapour, although I do want to achieve a nice amount, dense and warm too but I'm not willing to sacrifice a huge amount of battery and I'm not about to pretend using 30ml of eliquid a day is normal! My first ever RDA build was based in a video I watched in YouTube, I've put a single 0.8 ohm Clapton coil right down the middle of the only 2 posts on my deck and put a good amount of cotton in the juice wells.

I vape this with a tight airflow at 25 watts and it's great! Big amount of vapour, does not overheat and battery lasts longer however flavour is muted and less than a tank would give.

I Want to know really if anybody can tell me the best single coil build to make that has good vapour and great flavour but is OVER 1 ohm.

Sorry for waffling and all help. Is really appreciated.

I don't think the muted flavour is because you have a sub-ohm coil and I don't think putting one in above 1 ohm is going to transform the flavour either, that makes no sense at all to me.

.... I don't really know what to suggest as a 0.8ohm coil is exactly what I would recommend and what I would use in a single coil RDA. I think you'd get more variation in your vape by adjusting the wattage and airflow.

 

[oldhippydude]

For vaping at lower power, I am not sure that a clapton is a great idea.
Like you I vape with restricted air flow and build coils around the 1 ohm mark.

I just use simple kanthal coils 28awg 2mm or 2.5mm diameter. Spaced or micro coils I do not find makes much difference. You could try stainless steel instead of kanthal as that gives more wraps for any given resistance and ramps up quicker, some folk prefer it.
I do not put much cotton on the deck, just touching is enough for me. You do not want wick to get in the way of the airflow.

What makes the biggest improvement to flavour on an rda is getting the coil directly in line with the airflow. use the rod you built the coil on to shift the position of the coil to achieve airflow directly on the coil. Experiment with coil position, a little higher or lower and probably pull the coil further from the posts towards the air.

I do not think there is a best way, just a bit of experimenting to find what is best for you.
Good luck.
Enjoy.

 

[Cliffyboy1962]

Correct me if I am wrong, as I am new to building (I suppose) but is it not true that to get a plus ohm coil you need to use much thinner wire, say 30 awg Kanthal at 6 wraps might give you approx 1.5 ohms. Whilst this will work, it is a very small wire and has a low contact area restricting vapour production. Also it would be a very flimsy coil making wicking it quite difficult.

Most importantly though it cannot absorb much power before it gets too hot and that must translate directly to amount of vapour production possible.

I thought the whole recent shift towards Sub-ohm coils was to allow more power to be delivered to the coil allowing larger internal diameters and bigger wicks and hence more vapour production overall. Modern RDAs are surely designed with the deck size and airflow to accomodate sub-ohm coils and therefore not using them would be under using the capability of that RDA.

I genuinely don't know about the early days of RDAs and plus ohm coils and so would be delighted to be put right here.

 

[oldhippydude]

Correct me if I am wrong, as I am new to building (I suppose) but is it not true that to get a plus ohm coil you need to use much thinner wire, say 30 awg Kanthal at 6 wraps might give you approx 1.5 ohms. Whilst this will work, it is a very small wire and has a low contact area restricting vapour production. Also it would be a very flimsy coil making wicking it quite difficult.

Most importantly though it cannot absorb much power before it gets too hot and that must translate directly to amount of vapour production possible.

I thought the whole recent shift towards Sub-ohm coils was to allow more power to be delivered to the coil allowing larger internal diameters and bigger wicks and hence more vapour production overall. Modern RDAs are surely designed with the deck size and airflow to accomodate sub-ohm coils and therefore not using them would be under using the capability of that RDA.

I genuinely don't know about the early days of RDAs and plus ohm coils and so would be delighted to be put right here.

Thinner wire has more of the surface area in contact with the wick. Imagine having 1kg of rope and 1kg of thread layed on a flat surface. Which has more contact.

The op does not want a coil that requires lots of power.

You are right that most modern drippers are not designed for this type of vaping so are pretty crap for folk like me.

 

[Cliffyboy1962]

What I am trying to understand is, if the old way of plus ohm coils and thin wire and low power produced good vapour and flavour, then why did things change?

 

[oldhippydude]

What I am trying to understand is, if the old way of plus ohm coils and thin wire and low power produced good vapour and flavour, then why did things change?

Because new devices came out that could produce more power than was required, so some people wanted to use as much of that power as they could. It is a result of people chasing numbers rather than the experience. It is like digital camera buyers going for max pixels rather than best lense,

 

[Simon G]

What I am trying to understand is, if the old way of plus ohm coils and thin wire and low power produced good vapour and flavour, then why did things change?

It's a simple question that doesn't have a simple answer.

The answer is 'mechs' because they are regulated by resistance.

It's because people started drilling holes in tanks to have more airflow, are more air needs more vapour to 'balance' the vape.

It's because people wanted bigger clouds and needed more airflow.

It's what @oldhippydude said (and he's probably as cynical as me) ... how can a company sell you a 200w device when you only need 10w?

It's all these things and more.

There's no doubt that thin high resistance coils work, I'm always blown away by the performance of my naturevape coils, which are tiny micro coils made of thin wire 1.8ohms and at 7 or 8 watts produce better flavour and vapour than a 0.7 ohm nautilus coil.

People like to make massive generalisations about coil resistance but on regulated devices it doesn't make as much difference as you'd think. A 1.8ohm nautilus coil really isn't that different to a 0.7 ohm nautilus coil to vape on even though it's a huge difference in resistance. Why? because it's fitted in the same tank with the same airflow, same sized chimney and fitted in the same coil head and you just adjust the power so it vapes how you like it.

Those 0.2 smok coils that run at 150w? (or whatever) ... there's no doubt in my mind that you could make the same thing with a higher resistance that would need less power and vape just as well if not better. But for that company in particular that whole high power thing is a selling point now.

..... also there's almost no difference between a 0.9ohm coil and a 1.1ohm coil on a regulated device, but one is 'sub-ohm' (and all the connotations that come with that) and one isn't (and comes with another load of connotations) but in reality you'd be hard pushed to tell any difference on a regulated mod with the power adjusted accordingly.

...or maybe I'm just talking a load of nonsense as people seem to have different experiences with different gear, we do all vape differently..

 

[Simon G]

Correct me if I am wrong, as I am new to building (I suppose) but is it not true that to get a plus ohm coil you need to use much thinner wire, say 30 awg Kanthal at 6 wraps might give you approx 1.5 ohms. Whilst this will work, it is a very small wire and has a low contact area restricting vapour production. Also it would be a very flimsy coil making wicking it quite difficult.

These are the 26awg 1ohm coils I used to use in my corolla before I started using SS in TC... they are 8 wraps 2.5mm ID, which is a nice size for most things I use. If you used a 3mm ID it would come up to about 1.2 and if you used 27awg it would come up to around 1.4 ohms.

you don't need to use super thin gauges to make a plus ohm coil, if you spaced these out slightly you'd have a decent sized coil for a smaller sized RDA too.

If you were not using Kanthal and using something with a lower resistance like Nichrome or SS then you'd struggle to get the resistance above 1 ohm though, so you are neither right or wrong.