What’s the Best Vape Coil Wire for an Amazing Flavor?
Vaping is a fascinating world with lots of products, techniques and materials. A vape coil wire is one of the most important things for your vape. For example, you can find many different types of vape coil wires such as Kanthal, stainless-steel, nichrome, titanium or nickel. In addition, some people use wires made with tungsten, but these materials do not really offer that many advantages and there are more difficult to source than other more common vape coil wires.
Each vape coil wire has its own characteristics and pros and cons. For example, some vape coil wires are more suitable for vaping with wattage while some others are better for temperature control.
There are some wire characteristics that we need to understand and pay a bit of attention.
1. How Thick is the Wire? Wire Gauge
This is called wire gauge and there are many different gauges. The most common ones are from 32 to 22, being 32 smaller than 22. You can find wires of 32, 30, 28, 26, 24 and 22, these are the most common ones.
2. Wire Resistance
The thicker the wire, the lower the resistance. For example, wires that are 32 or 30 are thinner and therefore it will take shorter to heat but higher in resistance. In other words, if you want a wire for sub-ohming, better a thicker wire. In addition, ramp up time, or the time a coil takes to reach the temperature, varies depending on the coil material and wire size. For example, stainless steel is the faster to ramp up followed by other materials such as nichrome and Kanthal.
3. Vape Coil Wire: Different Wire Materials
The most common material used in coils are nichrome and Kanthal but there are many other popular materials that are also used to build coils.
Nichrome
According to Wikipedia, “nichrome is the oldest documented form of resistance heating alloy”. It’s an alloy for nickel and chromium. It’s very similar to Kanthal. However, it has a lower resistance and heats faster.
Moreover, nichrome is easy to handle, and it lasts quite long. Nonetheless, its melting temperature is lower than Kanthal.
It’s very easy to find and widely popular. However, people with nickel allergies should choose other materials instead.
Kanthal
This is also a very common coil material. Probably, both Kanthal and nichrome are the two most common coil materials. Kanthal is an iron-chromium-aluminum alloy and it is used in a wide range of resistance and high-temperature applications. Kanthal is a great material for rebuilding and dripping. It’s also very popular in single wire coils.
Stainless Steel
Stainless-steel aren’t that common compared with Kanthal and nichrome. Stainless steel wires are usually composed of chromium, nickel and carbon.
Stainless-steel hold shapes very well. Its ramp up time is faster than nichrome and Kanthal. A stainless steel vape coil wire is also quite easy to source which makes it a very popular option. Furthermore, stainless steel vape coil wires have a low content of nickel, which is ideal for vapers who have nickel allergies.
Titanium
Some vapers think titanium vape coil wires aren’t entirely safe. There is a lot of controversy surrounding titanium vape coil wires. This is because if you heat titanium, a toxic compound is released (more than 648ºC) called titanium dioxide.
On the other hand, it’s easy to work titanium and it’s quite efficient. However, there are so many concerns about its safety that it’s not recommended as a vape coil material. Moreover, many vape shops don’t even sell it because they don’t consider it safe.
Vape Coil Wire: Conclusions
Both Kanthal and nichrome are very popular vape coil wire materials. Some vapers prefer stainless steel and titanium is another common option. However, titanium isn’t the safest option due to the possibility of releasing titanium dioxide, which is a toxic compound.