# What I Wish I Knew About Rebuildables



## Alex (19/8/14)

What I wish I knew about Rebuildables. 
All Credit to: JasonDJ

Greetings, all. I wrote this up thinking about all the things I've learned about rebuildables in the past couple of months since I started using them. I hope that in the future, this can become a commonly referenced post and that all of you can share your knowledge and what you wish you knew when you stepped up your game (or maybe you just started right out in the rebuildables and never messed with a pre-built). So, without further ado...

*What is a rebuildable?*
A rebuildable is an atomizer that you must wick and coil yourself, as opposed to typical clearomizers (such as the Aspire Nautilus, KangerTech Aerotank, T3D, Smok Aro, etc) which use pre-assembled cartidges. There are two major types of rebuildables, RDA's (rebuildable dripping atomizers) and RTA's (rebuildable tank atomizers). The acronym "RBA" stands for ReBuildable Atomizer and historically referred to drippers, however since RTA's have been gaining popularity it now can encompass both.

*RDA's and Dripping.*
Dripping is a means of getting peak flavor and vapor production. It is, possibly, the purest way to vape. The dripper contains 1 or more coils stuffed full of a wicking material. The user will drip fluid into the RDA's and soak it up into the wicks. The majority of these will consist of several basic parts:

Drip tip. The "mouthpiece".
Hood. This is the top piece that attaches the drip tip to the unit itself.
Base/Build Deck. This is where the coils go, and usually contains 2 or more screws. The coils will either be wrappd around the screws themselves, or going through post-holes below the screws.
Juice well. This, well, holds the juice. This may be part of the base or may be a separate basin, such as in the Magma RDA.
The dripper that I use most often currently is the Stillare, and is a clone made by Cigreen. This is (currently, August 2014) a very popular model around ECR because of it's wide adjustable airflow. We'll get more into that in a minute.

*RTA's*
Rebuildable tank atomizers are very similar to the clearomizers that vapers are familiar with, but, well, rebuildable. These give the user more flexibility in resistance, wicking material, coil design, etc. They also generally give better flavor and vapor production than pre-builts. There are two very common classes of RTA's:

Genesis. These are RTA's with the coil present on the top. This is a more classic design, but seems to be fading into obscurity as of late. Perhaps it will make a comeback like drippers did.
Vacuum, bottom-coil. These are the more popular ones and include models like the Kayfun, Fogger, and Taifun.The coil is present at the bottom with a small wick extending out into the juice.
The RTA that I use most often is the Taifun GT, a clone which I had purchased from AngelCigs, and what REALLY got me into rebuilding.

*Coils? Wicks?*
If you open up one of the Kanger-style coils (or at least, one of the older ones with the large "cup" gasket on the base of the stem) you will see that it contains a metal coil or two, stuffed full of a tiny wicking material. When you fire your vaporizer, the coil completes a circuit and heats up, vaporizing the fluid that is soaked into the attached wick. I chose this as an example because it is common and easy to open. Another great example is the iClear 30 coils, which you can just remove the top cap from to see the coil, and the long silica wicks protruding down to the bottom of the tank.
It's important to note that finding the best coil and wick is a _personal_ journey which requires a lot of experimentation.

*More on Coils.*
Most of the time, when you are starting out, you will be building coils with A1 Kanthal. Kanthal comes in various thicknesses called gauges. Lower gauges are thicker, where higher gauges are thinner. Most people that I've talked to start out building coils with 28 gauge Kanthal, as it's easy to work with and builds fast-heating coils without having very high resistance or very small coils.
Going up or down in gauge is a trade-off...lower gauges (thicker) offer less resistance, but heat up (and cool down) slower. The inverse is true for higher gauges. Once you factor in total surface area, it becomes a careful balancing act to get a coil that's not too hot, not too cold, not too skinny, not too fat, not too short, not too long.
Your basic coil will be several wraps of kanthal around a firm, known-diameter, circular surface. Most people use drill bits or 2mm screwdrivers, however people use all sorts of stuff around these parts -- q-tips, toothpicks, zipties, you name it.
In my Taifun, I typically stick around 1-1.2 ohms. This gives me about 8 wraps of 28 gauge Kanthal around a 5/64" bit and I find that this is ideal for me. This is called a micro-coil, due to it's small size. Most vacuum based RTA's do not have a lot of airflow, so it's not ideal to run a very low resistance coil, as these heat up quickly.
In my Stillare, I prefer a much hotter coil, and run 5-6 wraps of 26 gauge Kanthal around the same 5/64" bit. With two of these coils in parallel, I get a total resistance of 0.3 ohms, which is perfect for me.

*Ohms? Parallel? What?*
Ohms are the measure of resistance, or how easily electricity can travel through a wire. Less ohms == less resistance == a hotter, faster heating coil. With two coils run in parallel (that is, side by side, sharing a positive and a negative), the resistance is equal to the average resistance divided by the number of coils. Almost always, your coils should have the same individual resistance. So, in my example above in my Stillare, each individual coil has a total resistance of 0.6 ohms. Since all the coils are 0.6 ohms, the average is 0.6 ohms. Divide that by two, and I've got 0.3 ohms.
To visualize this, look up a picture of a classic three-post dripper, such as the Stillare or the Nimbus. The center post is the positive pin. Both coils will be using the center post. The two outer posts are the negative pins, and are attached to the chassis. Each coil (in a dual-coil, parallel set up) will have their own outer post, which are connected, indirectly, via the chassis.
A lot of people get confused about the idea of there being less resistance while having more wraps and coils. On a very basic level, what is happening is you are sending less electricity into the same size tube. Consider a golf ball through a garden hose versus a hot dog down a hallway.
Steam-Engine.org has a great coil wrapping calculator which I reference daily. There are other, similar sites out there, as well as Android and IOS apps to help calculate the resistance of a coil, but it is NO REPLACEMENT for an ohm checker. You should get one. They're like, $15. That's less than two packs of analogs in most places.

*Airflow*
Coils and heat are only part of the picture. Airflow is another part. You need substantial airflow to have a good draw and produce a significant amount of vapor. More air will also cool down the vapor, making it easier to handle. More air will also promote a larger cloud as it is mixing in with the heated juice.
Too much air, however, can be a bad thing -- especially in vacuum-based tanks such as the Taifun. You can mod it to increase air-flow, but bear in mind that it does operate on a vacuum, and more airflow means less vacuum and prevents effective wicking.

*A bit about wicks.*
Wicks are what absorb the juice and move it into the coil. In your typical microcoil, the wick is threaded carefully through the coil so it may heat it up directly.
The most common forms of wicking nowadays are Cotton, Rayon, and Silica. There is also Stainless Steel Mesh, but I don't get into that.
Cotton and rayon are by far the easiest to work with, and what I will expand on most. Cotton is readily available at any health or beauty store, but I would recommend sticking to either Sterile cotton (found in the First Aid section) or Organic Cotton (found in the beauty section). These are your typical cotton balls which you would unwind, take a small bit, align the fibers, and thread through the coil. With cotton, it is said that 'less is more', and for good reason. Cotton holds a lot of juice, but expands as it soaks. Too much expansion and it will choke in the coil, causing a potential for dry hits. With sterile or organic cotton, many people prefer to boil it first to remove contaminants. I don't. But, some people use cotton yarn -- I've yet to try this, but due to the type of packaging I would _highly_ recommend boiling it before using it.
Because of its ability to hold a lot of juice, I've come to prefer organic cotton in my Taifun GT, which works on suction to carry the juice into the coil and hold it there.
Rayon is available at Beauty Supply stores such as Sally's. It's $10 for what is quite literally a lifetime supply. Well, maybe not a lifetime now that you've (hopefully) quit analogs. Rayon wicks quite quickly, but surprisingly contracts as it wicks.
Because of its fast wicking, I prefer to use Rayon in my Stillare, because what I drip will be quickly soaked up, and what remains on in juice well will be mopped up quickly and efficiently by the wick.
Then there is silica. I think most of this sub has moved on from Silica, but it has its place. It's basically a thread. I haven't messed around with it much since cotton and rayon have suited my needs well, but typically you would wrap your coil directly around the silica, being careful not to constrict it too much and leaving enough silica out to protrude into the tank.
Wicks, like coils, are a careful balancing act. My Taifun GT is a perfect example of this:

Way too little wick, you get leaking and flooding.
Too little wick, you get gurgling.
Too much wick and you get an occasional dry hit
Way too much wick and it's dry-hit city.

*Wat?*
I'm glad you asked. I'm assuming you mean "Watts". I'll take a second here to delve lightly into how your resistance matters on mechs, and I hope someone else can chime in for regulated mods, since my only regulated mod is my MVP 2.0 which doesn't have a tremendous amount of power.
With regulated mods, you hear a lot of talk about watts. More watts = more power == more heat. Think of a lightbulb. A 100W bulb is much hotter and brighter than a 60W bulb.
Mechs are beautiful, simple devices. They have no electronic parts, so short of adding in a "kick", the only control you have over the output wattage is via the coil. This can be both advantageous and cumbersome. Your voltage will always be dependent on the battery, which will peak at 4.2V and slowly deminish, and hopefully you'll put it on the charger before it gets much lower than 3.6V.
To calculate your wattage, take your Voltage, square it, and divide by the resistance. So if you have 4V of power and a 2 ohm coil you would take 42 / 2. This works out to 8 Watts.
Amperage is also a very important number to keep in mind, as you don't want to exceed the ratings of your battery. Know your battery and it's limits. Amperage is equal to volts divided by resistance. So, in the previous example, 4 volts over 2 ohms is 2 Amps, and very much within spec of pretty much every IMR out there. Amperage doesn't come into real consideration until you start talking about subohming and
Rapidtables.com has a great Watt-Volt-Amp calculator that I also reference quite frequently.
Also keep in mind that mech mods have voltage drop, which is the amount of voltage which is lost through the mod chassis. VapingWithTwisted420, aside from having a great channel (and a great review of the aforementioned Taifun GT), has a video that discusses and reviews voltage drops on several popular mods.

*Juice*
When dealing with rebuildables, and drippers in particular, juice is important. High VG Juice becomes much more enjoyable, since you are getting much more flavor and OMG CLOUDS. PG becomes less important, and infact far less desirable since both the throat hit and the flavor are heavily amplified.
Most people also cut down their nic level by at least half when using a dripper. I found the same was true for me using an RDA and an RTA -- I instantly dropped down from 18mg to 6mg. Even 12mg was unbearably harsh on my throat in my Taifun.
You _can_ cut your juice down with off-the-shelf, food grade (USP) glycerin. CVS carries this for about $6 for a small bottle in the skin care aisle. This is what I did. You will be sacrificing some flavor and will want it to steep a bit before using it again, shaking it 1-2 times a day. You'll also notice that VG thickens up your juice tremendously. In my case, after cutting my 18mg juice down to 6mg, I had VERY thick juice. So much so that even the most carefully wicked coil would get dry-hits in my Taifun. There's a trick to this though...
The trick? Vodka. Or distilled water. Vodka, I find convenient because it comes in small bottles and unless you've been pounding it, it's gonna be relatively sterile. You don't have to buy the good stuff. I have a 200mL bottle of Karkov that cost me $3 which I'm using to thin my juice out, and generally put it in at a rate of about 10% on an 80VG juice. However, if you're in that 18-21 group, or if you're in recovery, and can't get or don't want to have in your house, your own vodka, Distilled Water works. Don't use tap water, especially unfiltered tap water. You don't want to be vaping microbes, chlorine and flouride.

*Maintenance*
Make sure you keep your RTA's and RDA's clean, much like any other. Cleaning can be a simple matter of using paper towels, q-tips, warm water, and/or vodka.
People have different preferences for changing wicks. Some do it daily, some do it every few days, every week, or every time they change flavor. Myself, I do it when I feel like it. Sometimes I'm really lazy and I'll just drip straight VG to "flush" my wicks.
Coils, on the other hand, can last much longer, typically several weeks or until you want to try something new/different/just feel like it (the most likely). I will typically remove the wick, dry-burn it to a nice orange glow to get any excess crud off, and rinse it under warm water as it begins to cool. Maybe repeat this once or twice, then heat it up one more time and pinch the coils with a pair of tweezers or needle-nose plyers to get them well aligned again.

*Safety*
Lastly, don't be dumb. Know the limits of your battery and don't push the resistance too low to make big clouds. You don't want it to vent. Vaping is much more difficult without lips or cheeks, and we don't need the bad press. If you need a towel to hold your mod, you're doing it wrong.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/electronic_cigarette/comments/2dy5ev/what_i_wish_i_knew_about_rebuildables/

Reactions: Like 8 | Winner 5 | Informative 22 | Useful 1 | Optimistic 1


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## Rooigevaar (19/8/14)

Sticky!

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 2


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## Riddle (19/8/14)

Thanks for this thread @Alex ... very informative. Will be a great help to many people out there.

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## vaalboy (19/8/14)

Really great thread - thank you for taking the time!

Reactions: Like 1


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## Andre (19/8/14)

Great post. Agree: Sticky please. In Modders Paradise?

Reactions: Agree 2


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## Alex (19/8/14)

Andre said:


> Great post. Agree: Sticky please. In Modders Paradise?


 
done.

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## Oupa (19/8/14)

Awesome post @Alex

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## Riaz (19/8/14)

What I Wish I Knew About Rebuildables: YOU WILL NEED MORE THAN ONE

Reactions: Agree 2


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## Lyle Abrahams (19/8/14)

Nice one. We'll done there @Alex

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## Alex (19/8/14)

Thanks guys, but just to be clear. All the credit goes to the original poster.

Reactions: Funny 3


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## Yiannaki (19/8/14)

What an epic post!

Thank you @Alex

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## Mike (19/8/14)

Hahaha @Alex guys forget to read hey

Reactions: Like 1


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## Riddle (19/8/14)

Haha okay I honestly did not take note of the first part... Thanks to @jasonDJ as well as @Alex for reposting.

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## DoubleD (19/8/14)

Great thread @Alex , thank you.

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## Rellik (19/8/14)

Wow, very helpful. Thanks @Alex

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## Matuka (24/8/14)

A great read and very informative. Thank You!

Reactions: Like 1


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## Guunie (19/1/15)

No Need to add anything to that because you just said it all  and saved me from making many mistakes when I start slaving my plume veil

Reactions: Like 1


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## Arthster (19/1/15)

As we came to expect from @Alex, Another fantastic post. Well done brother.

Reactions: Thanks 1


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## kelly22 (7/6/15)

Great post thank you

Reactions: Like 1


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## Michael Buys (30/12/15)

Thank you very much for this informative post, Alex. Sharing it around and it is helping myself and alot of others with "noob concerns"

Reactions: Like 1


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## Mr. B (21/11/16)

Very informative and helpful. Thanks!


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