How many people "sculpt their wicks?"

LOL, that sounds vaguely NSFW.

What I am talking about is sculpting so that air can only flow a certain way.

See pic.

Someone from this forum (and if you are reading this, I am sorry I don't remember your name) does this.

He is the person from Norway who made the video about airflow. I remember that part at least.

ETA - it's Oen.

The science appears sound. Air flow is directed at the coil, and turbulence around the coil is reduced. Also, this appears to work better if the coil is close to the air intakes, but not too close.

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bombastinator said:

That’s a whole lot of wick. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it for that reason before . When I think wick sculpting it generally has to do with RDTAs. People will trip the dangling wick to a point sometimes.

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Ya - takes up a lot of juice! And cotton.

It does work though. What happens is that the air can only go through the channel I made. On this deck it's even more of an issue, since without all this wick there would be turbulence from the other empty side.

Google "air flow and coil placement in rda YouTube" - I don't recall now if Oen goes into wicking in that video, but he makes good points about reducing turbulence.

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LOL, I suck at finding sources. I googled "wick sculpting vape" and it came back to this thread.

I know someone else does this (cause that's where I got the idea). They even use e-juice as a kind of adhesive when they "sculpt."



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listopencil said:

I pretty much use my wicks just to allow the proper amount of juice into chamber. I tend to keep the area around the coil and the air hole as clear as I can. But I have been using a KF5 clone and a Big Buddha lately. They seem to be built that way though, just let the chamber do its thing and stay out of the way of quality engineering. I do have some RBA's that I could monkey around with because they really aren't all that well made. I might play around with that at some point.

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Cool! When you do it, just kind of imagine a clear channel from your RBA/RDA air intake that goes around the coil up to your drip tip.

The coil has to be directly over the air intake (if it's a bottom intake) or aligned exactly with the side holes.

The air goes straight to the coil, then is channeled up to the drip tip.

The other advantage is that when you drip, it's GONNA hit wick, LOL.

ETA - and this is kind of obvious. When you use this much wick - if *any* of it touches the walls of the atty - you will totally get leaks. The wick can only touch the middle of the coil, the well, the posts, etc.

Amazingly, the juice just kind of stays in the cotton. The wicking action of the cotton is stronger than gravity. It's like having a tank, almost. Also - the coil has to have clear airflow around it on all sides.

Paul Mohr said:

Looks like way too much wick to me. I would think this would actually mess up the air flow, not improve it. I would rather have the air move over the coil and swirl around as it goes up. This would prevent it from doing that.

In the end though it is what YOU like best. My only advice would be try it both ways. Try a normal amount of wicking material so the atomizer works the way it was designed, then try it your way. See which one you like better and go with it.

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Yes, will do. I noticed for dual coil builds that it doesn't matter that much. But appears to make a difference when I use a single coil on a deck designed for two coils.

I have some more RBAs coming in the mail and will experiment some more.

I also have some factory pre made coils coming and those would be ideal for testing, since I know they are each the same.

ETA - and this is just anectdotal, since I haven't done a pure A/B test - the vapor is thicker. I *think* this is because it's actually flowing smoothly and not experiencing turbulence. But again, I only notice this on a single coil build on a (dual coil) deck where the other side is normally empty.

sonicbomb said:

I have been wrong about air flow in RDAs all the time...

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Yes!

That's it.

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