Basic Electrical Run Down

So I started this youtube channel Vaping with Physics where I explain the physics of vaping. I figured I would let people know on here if anyone is interested, as the channel is brand new and no one knows about it yet. I'm starting basic with defining the typical electrical terms you hear. So far I have done a video on voltage and one on current/resistance. I plan on doing circuits next, specifically the difference between parallel and series and how that affects vaping. I also did a review of the hero box from drip club just to add some variety. Now i'm not a Phd so I won't be going TOO deep into things, also I want to keep it math friendly for people who aren't already into science anyway. I'm still an undergrad (one more year) but I have a pretty good understanding of most of the stuff, at least to qualify making youtube videos I would think. Let me know if you guys think this is a good idea and if you have any suggestions for topics to discuss. I also am still getting used to recording myself talk so I will improve over time with that hopefully. Right now it kind of just feels like I'm talking out loud to myself lol. Anyway check it out if you'd like: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOUjfyixErMVk77nmvGqHSA  

I am not sure where this should go but this was the best place I could see. Anyway I need a bit of help here it should not be too hard. I am look to build a dual 26650 variable voltage cordless power supply for electroplating small parts . I need to be able to vary the voltage from about a .5 volts to 3.5 volts if it possible average voltage about 2 volts I would like it to compensate as the battery runs down a bit don't have to perfect but just help it keep the voltage steady so it will need to have a volt meter I see those all over in the diy mech mods
So I want to use a dual 26650 battery sled
A 1 amp usb charger port
I need a project box big enough
digital volt meter
I would think a mosfet to vary the voltage with a potentiometer
resetting fuse
and I would guess A piece of that project board stuff with all the hole in it like a for building stiff like this on I can't for the life of me remember what they call that board I built small projects on this stuff when I was kid so that was some time ago LOL it just a board with lots a little hole in it it's a sort of a PCB

I have a basic idea for this thing but last time a built any kind a power supply it was in high school and I am 53 now so I am rusty as Hedouble toothpicks LOL. So I really use a bit of help from someone that is good with this stuff I am sure I can build it that not the problem is getting the right values and wiring diagram and finding sources for the parts I sure one I have a wiring diagram and the values I can google most of that stuff but tips pm someplace maybe you got stuff from that has good prices and don't take a 100 year to ship LOL

In the end this will be the power supply for a silver plating with I have hope to maybe add some little videos picture and stuff of it. this will be kinda fun and I want guys to see how easy and cheap it is to electroplate silver for your box mod so when I done with the power supply I will do a tutorial help fold out in return for help with this
I will be doing stuff like nickel silver platinum. even gold plating

Any help with this would be great if it works out maybe I can plate some small parts for you as a thanks  

I've always wondered whats better for efficiency. In a regulated mod I can't imagine it really makes a difference in vape performance, I'm currently keeping my builds at a lower resistance by winding parallel coils. My goto build comes to about 0.4ohms and I run it in the range of 28-38w, usually set at 32w, if I wound it in series it would be around 1.6ohm which would need about 7v to get to 30w and at my Aegis solos max voltage of 8v would provide 40w. The only issue with this is that it limits the wattage range you can run at, since I sometimes do crank this build upto 42w, although it does start to burn above 45w.

The one advantage of running at a high voltage and a lower current is that theoretically there should be less energy loss in the transmission of power to the coils (like in the pin, the posts and the wiring connecting the 510), although depending on the construction of the mod/tank it may not be significant enough to provide any benifit. I can imagine that it's not that simple either as the mod is having to boost the voltage more which may cause the voltage conversion efficiency to suffer. Although in my dual cell mod it may be benificial since the input voltage is around 6.4-8.4v, although I tend to use this for my higher wattage builds.

This may just be me because I'm obsessed about how much voltage is dropped across cables, I always use the high quality wiring and keep it as short as possible because it is actually quite surprising how much energy you can loose through a cheap cable. Even good quality wire at higher amps can drop a significant amount of power.  

I have a smok rpm80 which is a aio pod system and when i am in a quite enviroment and press the fire button to vape, my ecig makes a noticable electrical buzzing noise. Is that normal and/or does anyone else have this problem or know how to fix it?  

Hi, I was thinking about buying the Kanger 1.2 ohm enclosed wick but am not sure exactly what wattage or voltage to use. I currently use the Protank 3 on my Istick 50w. I am currently using the 1.5 ohm wicks and run my device at 9.2 watts and 3.8 volts. So I was wondering if this is right and if I should up the wattage for the 1.2 ohm coils and leave the voltage the same?  

I have been vaping for 1 year and 3 months now, I have been using an ego twist VV and I usually vape the same liquid all the time, I vape it in an evod with 1.8 ohm resistance and I vape at around 3.7 to 3.8 Volts.

Question, I just bought and received a Vamo 5 today and got two original Panasonic 18650 batteries, everything is fine. My evod works great on the Vamo and I use it at 3.7 volts just like I did on the ego twist. My question is this, what is the difference between vaping using voltage or vaping using wattage and which should I do and why in reference to my Vamo 5?

Also if I use voltage setting does it auto adjust the wattage or if I use wattage setting does it auto adjust the voltage, also what is the advantages and disadvantages of both in the Vamo 5?

Thanks!  

Nitecore D4 Digi Charger - UPDATED 27/04/2015 Recall | Electrical Safety First

Posted this here so more people see it.  

So I need to make sure right off the bat that no one misunderstands this post as somehow an attack on any vaper of any kind. I'm posting this because I have become genuinely curious and feel I may be missing out on my vaping experience. I've had an APV of some kind or another for the last 2 years or so, nothing ever real fancy or expensive (I just got an istick 50W and love it) but APVs none the less. I have found that I only really vape at very low Watts/Volts compared to many on this (as we speak I'm vaping The Virus in an old original model protank with a 2.2ohm coil in it at 3.8V--6.5W). Now it's not because I don't own a device that can reach the Watt levels I want, any of them can; in fact, I purchase higher resistance coils so I have a bigger range to vape at. My first VV battery was an ego style twist, and I have always kept with the same mentality (again, I'm not suggesting this is the right way, or better than others at all)-- I start at a low voltage, hit it, and continue to raise it .1V at a time until I get a burnt hit. I dial it one down, and there I am. Now I always use the Variable Voltage setting, and where I vape usually works out to be in the 5.5-7.5W range. Now, I have noticed that this is astoundingly low for the devices I use. My question is: when vaping at such high Watt levels, how can you taste the juice at all? I mean, at home (obviously not out in public) I would love to be getting even more satisfying vapor from these devices, which is clearly possible. So what am I doing wrong? What am I missing? Why is it that in the 6-7W range even my hits taste so burnt and dry I would never dream of continuing? All of your information/advice is greatly appreciated. Vape On.  

I've seen many threads where people are just getting into vaping and it seems now that it's growing popular at an extremely fast rate. Vaping as opposed to smoking has always been a great alternative, but now that more satisfying equipment is readily available and popular, it would be great to have an ongoing guide for someone brand new. If you're just getting into vaping now you're going to be hit with a million different devices, a trillion different atomizers, and an infinite amount of ways to rebuild. All of this information can seem very intimidating and overwhelming, but having communities like ECF to get advice are very helpful.

I remember when I first started learning about how devices work and how sending current through a coil with different resistances at different voltages can yield different results, and then add in different ways to get to that same resistance, the possibilities go on and on. It's not easy to someone brand new, but with proper information it is easy. If we all had a single ongoing information source referring to device capabilities and ohms law available to members and the public a lot of questions would be answered everyday and thoroughly.

I say ongoing because vaporizer equipment is expanding so fast. The amount of gear and vape related things are moving so fast. I remember seeing a good amount of youtube videos with Phil Busardo visiting vaporizer headquarters and manufacturing stations across seas and here. We also see a lot of expanding on the site. I have only been a member since 2013, but the amount of stuff coming out today is much more than before. There is also a lot of traction on this forum, but that's what makes it good.

I've read a lot of good information on the forum before and some of the posts are really spot on, I feel it should be compiled to one source. I've seen Baditude and Susan~s both have readily available links for solid information multiple times. It would be great to access all the detailed information from all the great posts I see on threads all in one place, like a ongoing source with everything like: battery safety, hybrid top cap mechanical, cleaning a mechanical, coils, example chips in regulated devices and how they work, liquid and the ingredients, the effects vs cigarettes, the proactive community and the apposed laws. For someone brand new they see so many new things at once. It wouldn't have to be a day to day updated guide, just a compiled, easy to understand with examples, information source about vaping up to now. I've seen a lot of good posts and wish I could quickly pull up the same posts without searching. I think we deserve some sort of guide, vaping isn't an underground type of thing.

Ohm's law

With all that I want to present a small guide I prepared as a response to a few questions I see on the forum.

I feel the most common question is about Ohm's law and about understanding resistances for devices. Ohm's law is the most important piece of information pertaining to vaping since it's what we use all the time. There are four variables to know in the equations, but an easy way to help understand it is with the Steam engine online tool. In the online calculator you see resistance, voltage, current, power. The units are ohms, volts, amps, and watts respectively. An even easier way to understand it is thinking about it in an example.

The water pipe analogy
Think of the resistance like a pipe and you have water flowing out of the pipe and the water is amperage. There is also a valve on the pipe that you can turn to make the water(amperage) come out faster and that valve acts like a voltage control. The end result of the water flowing out the pipe is expressed by power, also known as wattage. You can increase the wattage by either decreasing the resistance or increasing the voltage.

Let's say you have a pipe set up with a certain width and water is flowing at a constant rate. Lets also say the pipe has a resistance of 1ohm and our valve to control the speed is set to 4volts. You can use Ohm's law and see that amount of water coming out is 4amps and the pipe's power is measured to 16watts. Now if you widen the same pipe more water(amps) can flow through it and you didn't touch the voltage valve. Adjust the pipe's resistance to 0.5ohms and as a result we see we just doubled the amount of water to 8amps and doubled the power to 32watts with a constant voltage.

Take the same pipe you started with, 1ohm, and instead of making it wider you just turn the valve and double the pressure or speed from 4volts to 8volts. You see 8amps of water flowing through the pipe and the power by the pipe went up to 64watts by adjusting the voltage only. Now put the two examples together and lower the resistance to .5ohms and increase the voltage to 8volts, you see even more power at 128watts and 16amps.

This can be applied to our coils and devices. Mechanical mods work like the first example in which we just made the pipe wider because that's the only thing you can adjust on a mechanical. You have a fixed battery voltage, and can only change the resistance. The second example is more like a variable voltage/wattage mod where you can keep the pipe the same resistance and just turn the voltage valve.

Understanding how these variables work will give you a better understanding of ohms law and how to build for specific devices.


Ohm's law and a regulated PV

Lets talk about personal vaporizers, or mods, a little more. Each device has: a resistance range it can read, an amperage limit it can push, a voltage range it can fire, and a wattage range it can fire. When you look at a device you want to know all of these things because it will determine what resistances will work the best on top. Some devices work well with a wide range, some work very well within a small area within that range. Lets look at an example.



Here is the DNA40(kanthal) and it's specs given by Steam Engine. I don't own one so I don't know the actual performance, but I want to use the numbers as an example. You can see the max voltage, max wattage, resistance range, and amp limit on the left. On the right there is three boxes, these three boxes is where all the information comes together.

Current limit 16 A vs 40 W
The box labeled “Current limit 16 A vs 40 W” measures the lowest possible resistance you can use to get all 40watts. When you decrease your resistance you are able to push more amps through your coil with available voltage and get more wattage. This is done by using ohms law calculator and plugging in the max amp limit along with the max wattage it can fire. You can see that the lowest possible resistance to get all 40watts while using all the amps is a bit lower than what the device can read. This means the DNA40 devices can fire it's lowest reading while still getting 40watts and it's starting to bump the amp limit. Not the best place to be, but it works as advertised.

Voltage limit 9 V vs 40 W
The next box “Voltage limit 9 V vs 40 W” measures the highest possible resistance you can use to get all 40watts. When you increase your resistance you are able to use more voltage to get to higher wattage without using as many amps. This is done by plugging in the max voltage for the device and its max wattage it can fire. You can see that highest possible resistance to get all 40watts while using all the voltage is a bit higher than what the device can read. Now you're starting to hit the voltage limit, but it's still firing 40watts.

Optimal resistance
The last box “Optimal resistance” sums it all up by giving you the resistance range along with it's median resistance. Then it gives you a “sweet spot”. This is the median from the original median and the high limit. Basically it's telling you that if you want all 40 watts and you want to keep your battery life in good shape to use a resistance around the “sweet spot”. You don't have to use the sweet spot, but keep in mind the less amps you pull, the more battery life you get while taking advantage of the device's voltage.


These numbers are unique for each device that uses a different chip. If you start looking at the higher powered devices like the Sigelei 150W you'll see that you can only get all 150 if you build within a certain range that it can fire. Too high of a resistance and you'll use all the voltage before you start taking advantage of it's available amperage by lowering the resistance. This doesn't mean the device doesn't live true it it's specs because the it can fire all 150, but there is limitations. In order to to fire all 150w within it's 0.1-3.0ohm range the power source would have to give 20+ volts which is impossible for safe portable devices we have now.




Ohm's law and a mechanical PV

Check out how mechanical devices work, you only use the specs from the battery along with your resistance.




Take the Sony VTC4 for example. I used a resistance of 0.5ohms and a voltage of 4.1volts charged on this page. The page tells you how many amps you are pushing along with the wattage output. The amp limit is advertised to be 30amps, but the box under shows the “headroom” or I like to call it the buffer. In this example you only use 8.2amps, this is safe for the battery. You really shouldn't use all the battery's amperage on an unregulated mechanical, it's not very safe. A lot of people agree on only using about 75% of the batteries amp limit, leaving a 25% headroom to be considered safe. This works out to be about 22amps used and around 0.18-0.19ohms. You should only do this if you are aware of the risks.

Finding your resistance

Now that you looked at the devices, look at choosing a coil for your device. This should be easy now because you just saw what will work well on your device. Take your resistance you feel you would be comfortable with and go to the coil calculator.



I used a 0.5ohm resistance, selected the kanthal of choice, selected dual coils, and picked the coil's internal diameter. I also calculated the wattage with 0.5ohms and 4.1volts I want to use to get around 33 watts to plug into the heat flux(under results) to get an estimate of the vape temperature.


You want to pay attention to number of wraps, the coil width, and surface area. This will give you an idea of how big your potential coil is. What you can do from here is change the diameter, you’ll notice the surface area stays the same, but the width will change because the number of wraps change. You can also change the resistance and use a fixed diameter to change width and surface area. Try selecting different gauges too.


This is my first shot a making a simple guide. Please let me know what you think and feel free to comment. I wanted this to be as simple as possible and the Steam Engine is extremely helpful in doing so. I really think it would be a great idea to have the most popular questions to vaping with answers available to anyone new. I'm not saying people are not getting the right information, because they are and the time people take to make posts explaining things are greatly appreciated. I still think having a detailed, but easy to follow guide with examples would answer most of the questions. I've seen other great guides on the forum, but the technology moves so fast and having one ongoing source explaining everything would be awesome. There is so many things to learn besides battery safety and Ohm's law and all the information is here, but only for those who take the time to ask for it.


Thanks to Lars Simonsen who made Steam engine calculator. Also thank you to ECF member Dice57 for helping me with figuring out how most of this works.


A few links I visit:

Steam Engine | free vaping calculators
E-Cigarette Forum - Baditude - Blogs
E-Cigarette Forum - State O' Flux - Blogs
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/ecf-library/661383-basic-coil-building-safety-beginners.html
The ECF Library (this strongly represents the type of guide I'm talking about)
I would really like commentary on the idea of a single comprehensive vaping guide. I think the members here could easily do it, let me know what you think.  

I have been on and off for a few years, mostly off because hubby says the smell of some of my favorite juices is annoying. Well a short stay of me in the hospital changed his mind and he does not seem to mind the vaping as much out of me.

I feel like I looked down for a second and when I looked back up there is all kind of new stuff out there, the aspire esp, eleaf, etc. I switched from the store bought auto to the ego style battery (I always go passthrough) and had gotten up to Kanger t2 and protank for various types of juice. I am a basic person, I might be interested in getting into some of those higher powered mods later (the vapor production looks insane) but I basically want to just throw the tank on a battery and go. I like replacing the atomizers and am not sure I would want to build my own and such. Of the new stuff that has come out since the protank hit (was it a year or so ago?) what would you recommend to a basic vaper? I noticed ALL the ego batteries were out of stock at gotvapes so that got me thinking maybe the ego style battery may be on its way out. I was browsing some other equipment and I was looking at the Kanger IPOW 2 but like I said, I would rather not fiddle and I do want something that is a passthrough as well.

I do realize there is a lot of variability, and the reason the more customization and adjustable stuff has come out is because everyone has different tastes, but I really would like to hear what everyone thinks for getting back into vaping.