Dry burning your coil

Hardware Rebuildable Atomizers and Tanks
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I have been building my own coils for a while now. I was just reading a post on here and @TheTinMan1 suggested dry burning your coils at low watts, pulsing it and bumping the watts up slowly until it glows. (Not trying to put you on blast brother, I love that your so willing to help and give advice). This just brought up something for me. is it bad to dry burn kanthol coils at high watts/volts? In my Griffin 25 I have a dual coil regular Clapton build that ohms out at 0.41 and I vape it around 55- 60 watts normally. I change my wicks ever 2-4 days some times I go longer than that if I had a good wicking and only vaping my unflavored base. (I just recently started mixing flavors again :slight_smile:) so when I dry burn my coils its usually at the 50+ watt ratting I was vaping on before I pulled the wick out to change it… am I doing it wrong? I thought I might have read something a day or two ago and someone briefly mentioned not to glow your coils super bright… I was thinking it was a titanium coil they were referring to and I let it go in one eye and out the other :wink: lol…

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Dry burning your Kanthal coils to a very bright glow will wear them out quicker - but, you know, it’s not like Kanthal is expensive… :smirk:

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Don’t mind at all man. I use kanthal and niChrome and I start at about 20 watts and bump up a couple of watts at a time till I get to 30 or so. By then they are nice and clean. It’s probably the most time consuming part of wicking but I have some coils that are 2 months old.

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One more thing, I found that using running water and a clean, soft toothbrush work wonders, too. I dry burn, rinse, dry burn, inspect for leftover particles or gunk, burn again, rinse, check again, if clean I give it a quick scrub with the tooth brush, rinse again, burn until dry. The last part was added recently and is kind of important - although Kanthal is resistant to corrosion, storing them wet or letting them air dry will decrease their service time.

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I’m sure if you heat them up and quench them in warm water with a drop of acid in, the crap would fly off but I don’t have any acid… used it all over Christmas :smile:

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Have you got some vinegar in the pantry perhaps

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Yes I have vinegar. You use that to clean your coils?

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I just dry burn my coils at a fairly high wattage (70+, use 0.1 ohm coils) and rinse them under running water and i repeat that procedure until the coils look nice and clean, the last dry burn is just to dry them up before wicking them again. Might add that i normally use only SS wire in my coils.

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No never, you said you were out of acid. You are not now. Lol

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Lol @Grubby is the one out of acid lol I try to stay far away

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I hope you don’t mind me resurrecting an answered post, but there’s some good info here for other noobs like me who are still learning, and I’d like to add my experience with dry burning so far…

I’ve used only SS316L spaced coils (26G through to 32G), and regardless if I glow them dull orange or bright white via short-pulse high Watts or longer pulse low Watts, quenched under tap or distilled water or not quenched, I get what I can only describe as a distinct metallic taste. Every time. So I don’t dry burn SS316L anymore.

Interestingly, I dry burn all new coils to make sure they’re working evenly, and I get no metallic taste at all. But as soon as I dry burn any coil after use, I get the metallic taste…

And truth is, it now takes me the same time (and less mucking around) to build a new coil as it does to dry burn. But I hate using anything only once and throwing it away, and I’m prepared to do some mucking around to re-use/recycle. I’ve heard so many people talking about weeks/months on Kanthal coils, So I’m vaping my first Kanthal build as I type. Will be interesting to see how many mls of juice before pookak, and whether dry burn is possible…

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I have done some SS but primarily use kanthal I tend to use SS for temp builds only. I have experienced the metallic taste with SS but not all the time and usually can re use them dry burn with no problem. I don’t ever have an issue dry burning kanthal I am starting to use SS more but don’t have a ton of experience with it yet. Maybe @Fenrir1 can chime in? He only uses SS for coil building

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Everyone is different but I get no metallic taste from 316L at all and my coils go for a month or more before I replace them. I also dry burn to clean them a lot because most of what I like to vape gunks coils rather quick.

The quality and purity of the wire you use also plays a big role in this. I would be interested in knowing who’s 316L you are having this issue with.

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@wvsanta brings up a good point. Places like advance vape supply and kidney puncher carry quality SS. After vaping on SS from them I now get a metallic taste from kanthal but it quickly goes away in less than half a tank and isn’t at all unpleasant. It’s just a little off flavor.

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I never experience any metal taste after dry burning my ss coils, i don’t exaggerate when i pulse them, meaning i try not to make them white or anything like that. I just heat them up and rinse them under water a few time and thats it. They do get reddish.
Hope that helps a little.

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SS 316L is all I use anymore. I get better flavor and I have to be honest here I dry burn the hell out of my coils especially the fused Clapton’s I run to get them clean.

I had this talk with someone recently also and I must tell you I am very familiar with the Taste of SS wire. I have done a lot and I do mean a LOT of welding and grinding on SS I my life but I have never ever tasted that horrible taste from vaping a SS coil.

As I said before everyone is different but it is SS for me rather I am vaping TC or power mode. .

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Ok Im a little confused here, I may have missed this point but Ill ask anyway… are we talking about dry firing when the coils are first built and mounted or dry firing after juice has already been burned on them? If its the later this tread is discussing, I never re-use my coils. Ive tried that and every time I fire them to remove old juice, the coils rust. I have cleaned them off but I dont trust the cleaning process enough to reuse them once this has happened, especially with coils like Helix or Clapton wires. Kanthal is inexpensive enough that I dont really worry about building new coils and all I use is Kanthal.

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Mainly the discussion is dry firing to clean the coils after vaping.

For me on two rda’s I need to clean 1-2 weeks. Often the coils are dirty and the wicks are pretty clean. So when it’s time I remove the wicks. Pulse the coil. Dip in hot tap water. Pulse and dip. Then light brush with a tooth brush. Then pulse dip and pulse. Then I’m good to go.

Personally I will reuse my coils twice then replace. I’ve never had a metallic taste on ss316L.

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diito. i re-use my ss316 coils 2 or 3 times, usually vape 120 - 150ml of diy (no sucralose) between re-wicks but could go longer if I wanted since I use rayon. Here is the one I re-wicked today after 120ml of no woman no cry and once I saw it I wished I would have just refilled the tank with new juice and not bothered taking it apart to re-wick.

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Yes dear, it was titanium. You are not supposed to dry burn titanium - ever!
I’ve never read any cautions about dry burning kanthal or stainless steel.

This is to Jayrell who started the thread. Sorry Fozzy71. Plz be nicer.