What Gauge SS Wire To Get?

[longy01]

Hi all.

Not posted for a while so apologies for that. I was ready to order some 316 SS wire from stealthvapes so I could try some TC builds. I remember damb telling me a few months ago that it was best to aim for a resistance above 0.5ohms with SS due to it's low TCR to achieve the best accuracy, which makes a lot of sense. I was about to order some 28 gauge which at 9 wraps would give me my target resistance but I saw something today which stopped me in my tracks.

Mike vapes did a review on a new RDA ( The Ice Cube 3 ) today, and the build he used was a 24 gauge, 7 wrap build around a 3mm bit, which came out at 0.19. He seemed quite happy with it running it on the Cuboid in TC mode.

My question is how can he be getting an accurate TC experience with SS at such a low resistance?

If any of you are using 316 SS, and are building this low or close to it, I would appreciate your opinion on this.

Many thanks.

 

[chimerax]

All depends whether you're building spaced or contact coils, and how thick your wire is in my experience over the last month using SS.

Thicker wire will have a longer ramp up/down time, and it's going to be easier for a mod to measure the temp over that time. Thinner wire heats faster and makes that measurement more difficult. I use 26 and 28g SS. On my Xcube2 it's pointless with 28g, but the DNA200 handles it like a champ.

I have a great 0.5 build using 3mm 26g contact coils in a Kennedy, but trying to squeeze that kind of build into an RTA wasn't great. However when I tried 28g spaced I got 0.24 and it actually worked pretty well. Still gets hotter when chain vaping than a Ti build, but overall was still better than Kanthal.

I tend to stick to Ti for tanks now, and just use SS for RDAs.

 

[danb]

Mike vapes did a review on a new RDA ( The Ice Cube 3 ) today, and the build he used was a 24 gauge, 7 wrap build around a 3mm bit, which came out at 0.19. He seemed quite happy with it running it on the Cuboid in TC mode.

My question is how can he be getting an accurate TC experience with SS at such a low resistance?

The higher the resistance, the more precise the TC. What is precise enough for a good TC experience is a bit of a guessing game, and depends on how accurately the mod can measure resistance changes (which is not something I've ever seen listed in a mod's specs).

For a 0.19 Ohm SS coil, a temperature change of 5C corresponds to a resistance change of about 0.001 Ohm. Maybe the new chips coming out now can measure that accurately and it works well. The only solution is to get some 28 g and some 24 g and compare them.