Mesh coil madness

[domesticextremist]

Yes, that's mesh coil.

I picked up the idea from a reference to it on UK V, which led me
to a French vaping site. After some hours struggling through the thread
with my rusty french, I figured out what they were doing.
Mostly they seemed to be making super low resistance coils (1 ohm) for
DID style RTAs , but were claiming good results for vapour and flavour.

Well, curiosity got the better of me so I thought I'd try it on my Vapo dripper.

Firstly I cut a 4 x 45 mm piece of mesh

[domesticextremist]

Then I rolled it lengthwise into a really tight cylinder (about
1mm thick), using a cocktail stick to get things rolling.
Then I crimped it flat by squishing it with some pliers



Once it is flat it is a bit wide, so coiling will be limited.
I wound it around a 2mm mandrel and got nearly 4 turns.



It is very springy and opens out when not under tension.

I don't have a DID, so I had to figure a way to attach it to my
Vapo dripper. It is too big to go through the holes in the posts, so I got
some lengths of no res wire and screwed those into place.
I then wrapped them around the posts trapping the end of the coil
underneath a wrap of wire. The rest of the wire was then wrapped
around the screw to hold it tight.

After securing one end, I poked through a double thickness of 2mm CE2
wick then secured the other end of the coil, getting it as tightly wrapped
round the wick as I could.

Primed and fired:



Quite a bit of vapour, but it takes a while to get going. I guess there's quite
a bit of thermal mass there.

[domesticextremist]

It meters at 1.6 ohm, but I'm not sure I trust that number form my
ropey old multimeter.
It seems to run best on a 4.0V or higher device. Regular Ego batteries
don't seem to make enough vapour.

I did a dry burn and the connector and switch on my VV battery got very,
very hot:




It does give good vapour and flavour, but I'm not sure how long I will run it
for - I will probably revert to a regular wire and wick arrangement because
I use the Vapo dripper a lot these days.

Anyhoo, just thought I'd share.

[blakey]

I tried this, you got it going a lot better than I did, I ran it in an RDA using no res wire for the connections and making a tube from the wire so that it incased a 2mm wick. I found that it never burned even, it got hotter at the point where I connected the no res wire. Gave it up as a bad job
May give it another go when my did finally gets here

[domesticextremist]

Well, I never said it was easy - it's fiddly as hell and took a
couple of tries to get right.

I like the idea of a hybrid mesh and fg wick coil - might give
that a go sometime.

[cactusjack]

Sept 25, 2012 20:45:12 GMT domesticextremist said:

I use the Vapo dripper a lot these days.

Anyhoo, just thought I'd share.

I am well impressed with the Vapo dripper it works very well for me as well.

[domesticextremist]

I love mine, I really do.

Easy to coil, robust and adaptable - what's not to love?

I know it's the same as the other Phoenix clones (VH Dripper,
Big Dripper etc), but it's the cheapest one out there and worth
the wait for delivery.

[cactusjack]

Vapo dripper

[Gordy]

i tried this once too... worked quite well on the cyclon but wasnt really worth the extra hassle for me

[domesticextremist]

Well I reverted to a regular wick and coil this evening. The main reason
being that it ran down my riva battery too quickly, so I guess it might have
been lower resistance than I thought.
the weird thing is on a regulated Ego it hardly gave any vape and I had to
put it on the Riva to have enough oomph to get it going. perhaps I need to use
a bit less mesh next time so there isn't so much metal to heat up.

Still, it was a bit of fun.

[Perpetua]

I have a job keeping up with all your experimentation's Dom, you must have an ' enquiring ' mind I think.

[domesticextremist]

I do, it gets me into all sorts of trouble