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When to change coil/wire? (Rebuildables)

Depends on the juice how often you dry burn and rewick. Depends on the coil if you just replace it or dry burn, wouldn't want to throw fused claptons in the bin at every rewick.

I dry burn round wire coils a few times before I replace them. I rewick when I start tasting the gunk burning off my coil, it's like a mini dry hit, you'll know it when you feel it. Generally rewick once a day, but some of my current juices have me rewicking every hour, I've managed to extend that to 4-5 hours by using temp control to stop the coil getting to the temp where it burns the gunk off the coil.

Once an hour?

How much juice does that translate to?


There's a lot of variables though - juice being a big one.

Then there's resistance, power level, coil and wick material, and the device (tank or dripper).

When I was DTL dripping I could be rebuilding every evening (after maybe 10ml of juice per rda) and now I'm doing about double the volume but that takes a good few days in MTL rtas with unflavoured juice...
 
@pdg Probably less than half a boro tank, at 20-25w with Zonk Mixed Berry. I'd estimate about 15 pulls, bloody ridiculous.
 
I rewick my rda's twice a week but with coils I'm a total lazy bastard. I've had the same Ni80 quad core claptons in my 2 recurves for about 8 month's [emoji23]
Really must get around to changing them.
 
Looking at the variance in replies you can see there are many factors and reasons behind coil/wick changing, personally I have found in my hastur mini's that I can go a week between coil and wick changes, I give the whole thing a good clean, new coil, fresh wick and I'm good for another week, currently using 28awg kanthal in them at around 1.2 - 1.3 ohm. When I remove the coils they are quite gunked up and as has been mentioned a 100mm bit of kanthal costs coppers so even if they weren't so manky I would still put a new coil in, plus the more you do it, the easier it gets !
 
Ah, so its mostly when they get to gunky.
I was was thinking the resitance might change or they dont glow even when dry burning or something.
 
Ah, so its mostly when they get to gunky.
I was was thinking the resitance might change or they dont glow even when dry burning or something.

Exactly, it also depends how many devices people have on the go, which determines how much use each one gets. I rewick daily as a minimum but only use the one device so it gets a lot of use throughout the day.

Resistance can change ever so slightly over time, never been an issue for me. If the coil isn't glowing even anymore, give it a strum and get it firing even again.
 
Ah, so its mostly when they get to gunky.
I was was thinking the resitance might change or they dont glow even when dry burning or something.
You should get a good few weeks from a coil providing you take care of it. I dry burn and dip my coils each time I rewick. Takes about 30 seconds to do.
The resistance can change the more gunky the coil becomes and this can often be a sign that it’s time to give things a clean. I’ve noticed no drop in performance what so ever from dry burning. Usually I’ll change my coils if I deform them by accident when removing the wicks it just if I’m bored and want something new in there.
 
For example, I'm using some Malaysian juice, Tasty Fruity Honeydew to be exact. I rewicked about two hours ago, looked down the chimney just now and the coil is black and the cotton where it touches the coil is also black (spaced coil). The only reason I'm not getting a harsh hit is because I'm running it no higher than 450F in temp control, any higher and the gunk will start to partially burn off and be inhaled, like a kind of dry hit.
 
Used to be a coil change once a week no matter what (Sunday hobby) but now tends to be once a week rewick and a couple of weeks for coil with a dry burn in between.
Fruity liquid though so not too gunky
 
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