Installing A Coil & Wick
Installing A Coil & Wick
I'll assume you have read & understood the previous sections, have the appropriate recommended tools/equipment including your chosen tank/wire and cotton. If you haven't familiarised yourself with previous sections then go back now and get a good handle on them
For our example we'll use a Direct to Lung RTA, the Destiny (review)
Here we'll use an example of (2x26)+36 clapton, but almost any similar wire will suffice because we can choose the number of turns to fit both the tank's build deck and also suit the sugggested coil inner (heating) surface area in the region of 60-80mm². Note that this value suits the rest of the setup guidelines on this page and my utube RTA video, but there are many other valid setup & useage configurations for this type of tank.
Your tank may include some prebuilt coils, which'll likely be suitable, but I suggest Kanthal A1 or Ni80 as some mods have an anomaly that causes power drop-off as the coils heats up when using SS316L (see this page, scroll to "inaccuracies"). If you've purchased pre-built coils then I'll assume you've chosen a variety that physically fits your deck, perhaps following some adjustment.
Having one pair of inline terminals, the Destiny is equally good for clockwise or anticlockwise coils (see this page scroll to "Clockwise/Anticlockwise Coil Windings"), but in-line legs will facilitate installation. Pre-made coils with inline legs are unusual (the left-most coil in the pic), but we can easily modify the more usual offset type (on the right) with a slight bend before or during installation.
I suggest taking effort to get the coil as neat as possible. This will be easier/quicker with a coil winding tool (see this page for options) but with practice even using a 3.0mm drill is OK. Here we'll use 6 turns which (according to WireBuddy ) nicely fits the Destiny's build deck and gives us a heating surface area in the desired range.
For the Destiny, winding/fitting/wicking the coil is demonstrated at this part of the video For other tanks I suggest searching on youtube for a tutorial video.
The Destiny ideally takes coils with inline legs (left). But the usual offset type (right) are easily modified using snipe nose pliers, or if preferred with bending upon installation