Dripping for beginners

Dripping is one of the most popular ways of vaping, so there is a lot of questions like "how to start", "what to buy", etc. I decided to write SIMPLE tutorial for beginners.

A few comments for the start:

1. For me (and for the beginning) the sensible limit of coil resistance for dripping is 0.5 ohm (especially for mech mods - here you can read why) and that we stick to in this guide.

2. Sorry but there is no way to create the good set for dripping for 25$. Nor for 35 ... So, if you have the Spinner and you want to use it with dripper FORGET about it. Of course you can try but or you will damage the battery (and more or less yourself), or you will get effect worse than on Vivi Mini.

3. I always STRONGLY RECOMMEND TO USE GENUINE STUFF - especially for dripping the clones often are not able to take such extreme loads what subohm coils generate.

4. You use this guide at your own risk - generally dripping is not the rocket science but requires caution and attention.


WHAT WE NEED TO HAVE?

Something like that:

1. The RDA (rebuildable dripping atomizer) - best some recommended design. Good if the atty's posts have drilled holes for coils - it DEFINITELY makes easier to mount thicker wires. In this guide I use the CLT atty.
2. Mechanical mod - it is recommend to use hybrid connector to reduce the voltage drop on thread.
3. Battery - IT MUST HAVE reliable high discharge current. So there is no place for any SuperDuperFire 6800 mAh. Minimum continuous discharge current must be 10A but the more the better. So, purple Efest or Sony VTC 4/5 will be perfect.
4. 26 AWG wire (0,4 mm) - for example Kanthal D, buy a few meter ;-)
5. 100% cotton wool.
6. Ohm meter - standalone or embedded into some good vv/vw mod. You should definitely have it.
7. Things making life easier:
* flat tweezers,
* screwdriver or drill bit or other rod with a diameter in the range of 2-2.5 mm,
* wire cutters or nail clippers.

Really worth to stick the equipment mentioned above. If you say "eee, I don't have 26AWG wire, so I will take the 30AWG" you will fail - according to this guide you won't create good coil using 30 AWG wire.

TYPE OF COIL

On RDA we can run most of popular setups (including mesh). In my opinion the best one is microcoil with natural cotton (regular cotton wool or MUJI pads). So we will use it and we will start from one coil because it is absolutely sufficient for the beginning. Multi-coils setups are a little overrated...


LET'S START

1. Cut about 3" (8 cm) of wire and prepare "winding device":

2. Wind 6 wraps:

a) quite tight, but without much worry about it - later we will squeeze it hot,
b) at this stage it is worth to shape the coil suitable to the atty posts - I did it for CLT posts

3. Install the coil in atty (securely tighten the screws):

 
4. Now be sure to check the resistance:

If everything went well we should get resistance within 0.5-0.7 ohm range. Of course it depends on rod diameter and posts configuration in your atty. I got 0.7 ohm on 2.4 mm screwdriver.

Below you can see APPROXIMATE coil resistance in depends on the number of wraps and wire thickness for 2mm rod diameter:

 * - with such small rod diameter and thick wires multimeter often shows the same values.


5. Microcoil finishing - be careful not to apply the tweezers to the heater under voltage, so:
a) heat the coil - no worries, to the whiteness:

b) switch off voltage and after that squeeze microcoil by tweezers, few seconds:

 c) repeat 2-3 times to get compact heater:

6. Now cotton ... Take a piece, more or less as you see below:

and tighly roll - one end may be lubricated by water or liquid:

7. And drag the cotton by the coil:

This action is quite stressful at the beginning because there is no option: we always take too thin or too thick piece of cotton, but stay cool - it is a matter of practice.

8. Already close - now only put cotton in the atty.

9. Well! Apply the liquid:

Dry wool absorbs the liquid very slowly so do it slowly.

And FIRE! 

10. Now we can put the top cap (air hole MUST BE in line with coil):

and vape! Carefully, to not fall of the chair :-)


ONE IMPORTANT NOTE

After coil finished, when you put cotton to the atty ALWAYS BLOCK THE MOD (or better remove the atty from mod). If you won't do it mod will start with 99% probability. And then everything depends on where do you have your fingers... One time I had it on coil and then my finger looked like this: