Temp control - are you using it?

[Silver]

I thought it would be a good idea to start this thread to gauge how many of you are using temp control regularly in your vaping.

I see it has come a long way from those early days when Ni200 coils were finicky and difficult to work with. Nowadays temp control is possible on many coil materials - even Kanthal - with the Hohm Slice I see!

My experience with temp control is very limited. Have vaped on a few setups of my vaping mates and have dabbled a bit with temp control using stainless steel coils. It has left me rather underwhelmed and i have not enjoyed it much. I usually get a weaker vape and want more intensity. If I set the temp high enough its very similar to power mode. Hence i almost always use power mode on my several temp control mods.

Maybe it's just me and my vaping style - or that I havent experimented enough. Or maybe its just that I like that build up of intensity as the coil fires so the last part of the vape is more mighty! Maybe it has to do with the menthol burn I crave on longer restricted ling hits - which intensifies at the last part of the draw. I dont know.

Please vote on the poll above and feel free to comment in the thread on this.

What is your experience with temp control?
Are you using it alot?
Are you enjoying it?
Is it juice dependent?

 

[Spikester]

I've always been a fan of temp control since the day I bought my IPV4, where I used NI200 but since I managed to get my hands on a DNA200 there has been no looking back, especially not to normal power mode.
DNA200 with Stainless steal 316l dual fused clapton coils at 420f is my go to vape, it has great flavor as well as huge clouds, I even use it on my tornado tank and it works brilliantly, with no burnt cotton.
The simple fact is, it saves juice and battery life while still producing great flavor and great vapor production. Even when the mod is set to 100watt it barley ever uses that much as it uses it initially to get the temp of the coil to your desired point and then pulls off the power to maintain that temp. for example, ill use 100watt for less than a second and then the mod backs off to around 35watt just to maintain the 420f, thus prolonging the life of the battery.
That being said, you have to test and fiddle around to find your happy point with temp control and there are many aspects that effect that such as, temp setting, wire type, coil type and ramp up time.
With the DNAs and escribe it is far easier to test this, especially as you can use the "device monitor" in escribe to figure out your specific happy point in temp, your ramp up wattage and so on...

 

[Soutie]

Yeah I use TC and love it. You can set your power in TC as well as your temperature, the temp is really just an extra variable setting your maximum. you can easily set your mod to 200w but with a low max temperature meaning it will get to that maximum temperature VERY quickly but maintain it.

The one thing I love is the customisable vaping styles on these advanced TC chipsets. The 350J chip has something called SXi-Q and I understand the DNA chip has something similar. you graph out how you prefer your vape. I prefer a really quick ramp up so you can set the software to jump to 60w for the first half second then slowly drop the wattage to keep a constant vape as the coil heats up. In your case you can set exactly you want your vape to ramp up.

 

[Silver]

Thanks @Spikester and @Soutie

I forgot about the aspect of saving the battery @Spikester - hmmm.... That is interesting to me.
As for not burning the wicks, i seldom do that but I suppose thats just because I know what coil to build and what power setting to use.

@Soutie - i like the graph - good point about being able to customise the vape.
Id love to know what the graph looks like on my non temp controlled longer restricted lung hits.

 

[Stosta]

On all my temp control attempts I get nervous because I don't know what my battery is doing. The second I turn the temp up to something I want to vape, it seems like it over-stresses my battery. It's all a mystery to me. And as @Silver says, I'm now at a stage where I know how to wick and coil my tanks so that I don't get burned out, so I stick to wattage.

 

[rogue zombie]

I don't get along with any wire but Kanthal, and any coil but compact ones. So dont use temp at all.

 

[Neal]

My forays into tc have not been a success, which could be down to me not knowing what the hell I am doing, so kanthal and power mode is still my choice, single coil tanks and moderate builds work for me. All subjective of course, others will have their own preferences, which I think is the big advancement in vaping since a couple of years ago.

 

[Spikester]

I generally don't burn wicks a lot but I am an avid fan of dripping and its just nice to know that you can vape till the wicks are pretty much bone dry without getting a burnt hit. I am the type that can't stand the taste of burnt cotton.

 

[Soutie]

Id love to know what the graph looks like on my non temp controlled longer restricted lung hits.

I'm sure it would be a nice S curve, as the coil fires it will heat up rapidly and pretty linearly but then start tapering toward the end.

I would also think it would stress the battery less. IF you are running at 75w you run constant 75w, in TC you run at 75w until you reach your temperature, then you will either drop wattage or pulse depending on the chip giving the battery a breather.

 

[Rob Fisher]

My forays into tc have not been a success, which could be down to me not knowing what the hell I am doing, so kanthal and power mode is still my choice, single coil tanks and moderate builds work for me. All subjective of course, others will have their own preferences, which I think is the big advancement in vaping since a couple of years ago.

I'm with you @Neal... I haven't had much sucess either... but that's because I'm not a tinkerer or manual reader... play with some Nichrome!

 

[Spikester]

Excuse the dirty coils but just to illustrate, even with the coils as dry as they are in the pic I can still take another hit and not be worried about a burnt taste.

Sent from my SM-N920C using Tapatalk

 

[Robert Howes]

Didn't have an accurate vote option for me. which should of been. Know plenty about Temp control but choose not to use it.

 

[Silver]

I'm sure it would be a nice S curve, as the coil fires it will heat up rapidly and pretty linearly but then start tapering toward the end.

I would also think it would stress the battery less. IF you are running at 75w you run constant 75w, in TC you run at 75w until you reach your temperature, then you will either drop wattage or pulse depending on the chip giving the battery a breather.

Thanks @Soutie

In my case, lets take a setup I use very often. Its the Lemo1 with a simple 1.2 ohm Kanthal 28g coil - 7 wraps - 2mm ID. I vape it with my "Strawberry Ice" strongish menthol blend at about 12.5 Watts.
I drag for about 5 seconds. The first 2 or 3 seconds its heating up. Then I get a lovely menthol singe for the last 2 seconds.

I have found this is perfect for me. I think I could go higher in power for a hotter more instant vape but on that device I like the longer draw. I can actually vape it for longer and the coil doesnt seem to be overheating at all. Maybe its the build up of menthol in my throat that gives me that singe toward the end and not the temperature or intensity of the vaping.

I suppose the battery life argument is more applicable at much higher powers though

 

[Silver]

Didn't have an accurate vote option for me. which should of been. Know plenty about Temp control but choose not to use it.

Id say the second option @Robert Howes
The difference between the first and second option is that they separate those who know and have tried temp control from those who havent tried it or dont know about it

 

[HPBotha]

look.... temp controll..... for the dripper - only. not that i use temp controll, 'cause i was made of sterner stuff. A good dry hit in the morning - man that just makes the chest hair iron themselves out lekker.

to be honest, i am a kanthal runner. still dont understand why people harp HAVE to have temp control. if you build a coil like a normal person and run it on 4.2V maxs then you should have no surprises... but running temp in a tank...WHY!??!? you can mos see the juice level

 

[Silver]

Still early days but the poll is initially tilting to normal power mode.

So far it seems the potential benefits of temp control are as follows:

• Being able to control the temperature of your vape and have it there constantly (versus normal power mode which if high enough, the temp just rises so you have to build the right coil) - as an aside, i still think you need to build the right coil on temp control to get an optimal vape - another discussion altogether
• Less dry hits
• Economise on battery life - when the power is backed off
• Economise on juice consumption
• Improve wick life
• Improve coil life ? - not sure about this but throwing it in because it sounds like it should apply
• Being able to customise your vape more if you are that way inclined with one of the more advanced temp control chipsets.

There is also the issue of not overcooking the juice where more toxins are released. Isnt that one of the main reasons temp control was introduced?

Its quite interesting because on paper, temp control seems to be something amazing and brilliant - and something that should be mandatory for newer vapers so they dont overcook things or get dry hits.

Yet my feeling is that it hasnt been as widely adopted as anticipated. Or am I wrong? Maybe its just seen to be too complex and the early Ni200 days gave it a bad reputation of troublesome coil building?

 

[Robert Howes]

Id say the second option @Robert Howes
The difference between the first and second option is that they separate those who know and have tried temp control from those who havent tried it or dont know about it

I dont mainly use power mode that is all I use. Tried extensively with the temp control but everything was a mission, even had a few coils blow up in my face (coils that are rated up to 45W dont like 180W being pumped through them to get them up to temperature as quick as possible). Now when I consider a new mod I dont even consider the temp control features as a selling point.

 

[Soutie]

What you could do in temperature control mode is set it the power up and the temperature at the point you like the vape. your ramp up will be really quick and the nice 'menthol' almost instant but then the TC will kick in not allowing it to get hotter, you could then drag for as long as you like without the vape getting overbearingly hot.

If you turned the power up in wattage mode then although the ramp up would be quick the vape would become very hot very quickly as there is nothing to reign it back.

Its horses for courses really but i really like it, it allows for longer more comfortable hits from beginning to end. Its worth playing with if nothing else. But i think you are right, Ni200 gave it a bad name and people are slow to adopt it but there is a huge amount of R&D going into the TC side now.

one thing to keep in mind if you do play with it is your wattage will generally need to be higher on other wires, Kanthal is very quick whereas SS and Nichrome are alot slower heating up. Ni200 is terribly slow.

 

[HPBotha]

@Silver you are right on the money --- and to be honest Temp controll is the better way to vape --- personally i do not want to build with nickle, or even S.Steel... i still think the better option is premade coils for temp controll. So that you only work with a predefined coil with factory finished resistance. something like the notch, i popped all my notch coils like a 1 week old noob, so i could not test it really.

temp controll has great potential for juice vitality, but the way that i vape its pretty much down to me double clutching and feathering the throttle

 

[RichJB]

I didn't have a good experience with temp control. Perhaps that is more due to the limitations of Eleaf's Ni and Ti TC coils than any inherent flaws in the TC system, but I always found it an anaemic vape regardless of what temp or wattage I set. I only have two simple TC mods (60W iStick and Pico), not any of the fancier mods where you can plot your graph or set ramp-up specs. Additionally, my workhorse mod (Tesla Invader 3) doesn't even have a screen, let alone TC. A voltage potentiometer is the only user input. I'm a child of the 70s, turning a dial to a desired setting is about as technical as I get.

Other than the occasional puff on Spearmint in a cCell as a palate cleanser, I don't use stock coils any more and all my rebuilds are kanthal, Ni80 or SS. I have never burnt my cotton in any build so TC is solving a problem I've never had. The health issue is also non-applicable to me. I don't like or use super-low resistance coils so there is no call for me to build with Nickel, and I didn't much like the taste of Titanium anyway. So I have been quite happy to ignore TC, even on those mods that offer it. I might enjoy TC on a super-fancy mod that allows me to set it on all my wires. But I work on the principle that if I don't know about it, I won't miss it.

 

[Andre]

My SX Mini is permanently on TC, sporting the GEM tank with SS304 coil. Using the stainless steel tank, so cannot see the juice level @HPBotha. The GEM is a flavour tank with single coil option only and a very small chamber. Wicking just cannot keep up with the continuous heat increase of non-TC vaping even at lowish power (15 to 30w). TC solves this problem, giving me a great vape with the wick never running out of juice.

My Reos refuse to do TC, but the bf drippers on them are built to my preference per juice category and a dry hit on a ceramic wick is an ultra mild affair. Vaping at around 16 - 22w (0.8 ohm) for juices other than tobacco, tobacco at 30 - 40w (0.4 ohm).

I agree, @Silver, the biggest health concern for vaping is the effects of high heat (including, but not limited to, dry hits), which gave rise to TC. Unfortunately, high power enthusiast vapers do not get the same satisfaction with the limiting effect of TC. This, imho, is the single biggest reason why TC is not used by many enthusiast vapers. For us low power vapers, which I suspect is a large majority, this is mostly of academic interest - although it did solve a problem for me using the GEM tank.

 

[Silver]

Thanks @Andre - much appreciated
Now I want a Gem tank without windows !!

 

[Huffapuff]

I started using TC at the beginning of the year, mainly to save battery power and reduce juice consumption. It does take a bit of tweaking, but so did using VW mode, building my first coils and creating my first DIY juices - so nothing new there Once I started working with the TCR settings for SS316L I really got the results that I was looking for.

What I most appreciate about TC is that I can really customize my experience at any moment without having to change my build. If I want a harder hit I simply increase the temp and watts, things get a little too hot for me and I lower them - it's pretty straightforward in that way. And as most mods now offer a pre-heat function too I have a lot of fun playing around with the different options.

 

[Nico_gti]

Hi guys, might veer off topic slightly.
Got myself an Rx 200 and wanted to try out temp mode. Running 24ga ss, 7 wraps coming in at .24ohms. Got the rx set at 210c and 60w and keep hitting temp protection thus not really enjoying the vape. Any assistance?

 

[Soutie]

Hi guys, might veer off topic slightly.
Got myself an Rx 200 and wanted to try out temp mode. Running 24ga ss, 7 wraps coming in at .24ohms. Got the rx set at 210c and 60w and keep hitting temp protection thus not really enjoying the vape. Any assistance?

@Nico_gti are you running a spaced or compressed coil build? Something we discussed in a thread a few days ago that compressed coils lead to 'Sympathetic' heating of each other and throw the entire TC system out. Perhaps that is your issue?