Problems with temp control

[TonyMcD]

I've used my DNA250 (Finder250) for several months without issue, and the issue has since resolved itself. So there is no rush here. But the other day I ran into some problems with temp control mode. Sorry to make such a large post, but I wanted to be as descriptive as possible.

 

BACKGROUND INFO:

I have experienced these problems before on cheaper mods, but never on my DNA250. I usually use the SMOK TFV12 King with the two post RBA head, and 24ga titanium coils built to ~0.20 ohms. I generally keep the wattage at 60 and the temp between 200 and 300 depending on the coil. I've also been using the default profile and default titanium material. How it would always work is when I take a hit, the wattage would initially kick up to 60 (or whatever i set it at). Then when the temp was reached it would lower down to between like 10 and 20 watts. And it worked exactly like that, exactly the same for months.

 

THE PROBLEM:

But one day the temp control went wild. I didn't change any settings or the coil or anything. One hit it was fine, the next it sucked. It would kick up to my selected wattage at first. Then after a second or two it would drop down to 1 watt. It would stay at 1 watt for a couple seconds, then kick way back up to the selected wattage. Sometimes, i would get a temperature protected message in there too, but not always. Also, the temperature reading on the mod never went over temp. Even when at 1 watt it wouldn't go down, it just hovered around the max temp.

 

TROUBLESHOOTING:

So the first thing I tried was rebuilding the coil, no change. Then I built a new coil on a new atty. I actually tried like 3 or 4 different model attys and built coils to several different resistances, but still no change. I also tried a prebuilt coil cartridge thing. Then I started playing around with the temp and watts. Increasing the wattage had no effect. If I lower the wattage down to 20 (still using my 0.20 ohm coil) it worked. It wouldn't give me an error, and it wouldn't drop down to 1 watt. But it would also take 4 or 5 seconds to warm up, so was unusable. As soon as the wattage was increased enough to warm it up within a second (about 40), then the problems started happening again. If I lower the temp, no errors or wattage drop, but again as soon as the temp is high enough to produce vapor the problem occurs.

At this point I was starting to get pissed. I connected my mod to EScribe and reset everything back to factory defaults and performed a hard reset. I also tried messing with the preheat settings, but neither increasing or lowering had any effect. I opened the case up and cleaned everything out real good (and did not notice anything out of the ordinary). The threading on both the mod and attys was also thoroughly cleaned with a wire brush. I tried several different kind of batteries. Nothing I did resolved the problem. However, the most interesting thing I noticed though was if I increase the temperature to about 350 or higher, it works fine. But unfortunately that temp produced way to much vapor to be usable. If I used wattage mode, that continued to work as normal.

 

CONCLUSION:

So this went on for about a day. I was using it at 25 watts and just waited for it to warm up each time. And then, all of the sudden it started working as normal again. I have no idea why. I did not change any settings or the coil or anything. It happened the exact same way as when the problem occurred, literally one puff had issues, the next puff worked just fine as it always used to. So, anybody got an idea why this happened? The understanding that I have is it would way over power the coil causing it to go way over temp (although the screen never indicated it was over temp), and then the mod would try to fix itself by going down to 1 watt. After a couple seconds cooling at 1 watt it would jump way back up again. But why did it not do this before, and why did it all the sudden fix itself? What exactly does the temperature protection screen mean anyways?

Edited January 1, 2018 by TonyMcD

[giz_60]

The Smok atty's are notorious for causing weird problems due to the floating pin in the base.

[TonyMcD]

I discovered that while troubleshooting. However, as I've stated, I tried several different atty's. Here are the non-SMOK tanks I've tried:

• Derringer RDA
• Target Pro tank
• 1 Vandy Vape Wire mesh tank
• 2 RBA tanks - unknown

[Wayneo]

11 hours ago, TonyMcD said:

..... and 24ga titanium coils built to ~0.20 ohms. I generally keep the wattage at 60 and the temp between 200 and 300 depending on the coil.

I've found Titanium coils loosen up in some atty's, so you ought to check for loose coonections (no comment on Smok). This 200 and 300, is that °F or °C?

11 hours ago, TonyMcD said:

Also, the temperature reading on the mod never went over temp. Even when at 1 watt it wouldn't go down, it just hovered around the max temp.

I don't understand this at all. Did you see this in 'Device Monitor', and Max temp is the temp you set it for? A printscreen of Device Monitor while firing would help.

11 hours ago, TonyMcD said:

However, the most interesting thing I noticed though was if I increase the temperature to about 350 or higher, it works fine. But unfortunately that temp produced way to much vapor to be usable. If I used wattage mode, that continued to work as normal

OK, looks like you're talking °F, and I don't usually get any vapor at that low temp. So now you're just using straight watts with that Titanium wire?

 

11 hours ago, TonyMcD said:

The understanding that I have is it would way over power the coil causing it to go way over temp (although the screen never indicated it was over temp), and then the mod would try to fix itself by going down to 1 watt

I DO NOT have this understanding.

[TonyMcD]

3 hours ago, Wayneo said:

I've found Titanium coils loosen up in some atty's, so you ought to check for loose coonections (no comment on Smok). This 200 and 300, is that °F or °C?

Sorry, all temps I stated have been in F and all temps will be in F. I have tried different mods, all cleaned with alcohol and wire brush, all brand new coils for each mod. I used nickel, nichrome, ss316, a ss316 mesh, and two separate rolls of titanium. So at this point I am certain it is not the atty, or the coil.

 

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Also, the temperature reading on the mod never went over temp. Even when at 1 watt it wouldn't go down, it just hovered around the max temp.

I don't understand this at all. Did you see this in 'Device Monitor', and Max temp is the temp you set it for? A printscreen of Device Monitor while firing would help.

Max Temp is the temp I set it for (I've been referring to it as working temp). The temp reading I am talking about is the reading displayed on the mod (which will be referred to as temperature reading, or "temperature"). I have it set to display ohms, profile, and "temperature" (that is the exact name off the setting, the same as "Temperature" in device monitor).

When I take a hit at around 20watts, "temperature" will start at like 100F using the full 20w and slowly rise up to my working temp of 250F. Once "temperature" reaches 250F the wattage will drop to between 10-15 and the "temperature"will stay around 250F (This is how it is supposed to work and always has) At higher watts like 50, "temperature" will almost immediately rise up to my working temp and then just hover around there, even while the wattage drops down to 1. A couple seconds later the wattage will jump back to 50 for a half second then back down to 1, all the while "temperature" hovers around 250F.

Sorry for the wordiness, but I tried to be as clear as possible. Also I can not get a screen shot of the device monitor because like I said, the issue has since resolved itself This whole episode only lasted maybe 13 hours, and I took maybe about 150-300 puffs since the issue began.

P.S. By "hover" around 250F, I mean that the "temperature" reading would fluctuate anywhere from 248F to 252F. And just to be clear again, It would still jump to and stay at 1 watt even if the "temperature" reading stayed at 249F or lower.

 

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OK, looks like you're talking °F, and I don't usually get any vapor at that low temp. So now you're just using straight watts with that Titanium wire?

Yes, everything is F. My titanium coils are usually between 0.15 and 0.28. The temp I would need to get vapor would be between 200F and 350F depending on the resistance of that coil. And yes i was using it in temp control mode, and I am certain it was in temp control mode. I have the display settings arranged differently so I always know if it switches on me for some reason.

 

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The understanding that I have is it would way over power the coil causing it to go way over temp (although the screen never indicated it was over temp), and then the mod would try to fix itself by going down to 1 watt

I DO NOT have this understanding.

Well what do you think is going on then? That is the only the way it makes any sense to me. That is one off the reasons I bought the DNA250, hoping that this wouldn't be a problem. And it has been a dream with only this one exception. Other mods I have used would do this all the time, although not nearly to the severity that the DNA250 freaked out too.

 

I am going to take a screenshot of device monitor now. Remember though, this screenshot will not display the problem I was having, only how it is behaving now. Which is perfectly normal as far as I can tell. I will also include my current settings profile, just to be through. FYI if you load my profile, TI  -  0.20  is the default titanium setting just renamed. The  TI  -  0.10 and  TI  -  0.30  are basically placeholders. I loaded some test settings to play around with, but they are not usable as they currently stand.

Working Profile.ecig

Edited January 1, 2018 by TonyMcD

[Wayneo]

If it was a one off, I wouldn't worry about it. And like you mentioned, that printscreen looks fine.

Using Ti, with my single battery DNA's I'll turn off all preheat settings, but with multi battery I can blast it full and not encounter this 1 watt issue. Where do you keep seeing 1 watt? If you move your pointer over any area of Device Monitor, it will display the values at that time (like over on the right at the end of the puff)

As far as your .ecig file 'watts' is showing you have it set as tc sensing with full blown curves. You shouldn't need multiple profiles for Ti like .1, .2, .3, as TC is wire specific. Your printscreen (Profile 6) you 'lock' the ohms (is that because it's that Smok atty) ?

 

[Wayneo]

OK, just put my .18 Ti coil to 220F at 70watts, no preheat. Similar to you it dropped to 4 watts, no vape. 

4 hours ago, Wayneo said:

OK, looks like you're talking °F, and I don't usually get any vapor at that low temp.

Back up to ~400F, and there it was ....... vapor. 

Edited January 1, 2018 by Wayneo

[TonyMcD]

1 hour ago, Wayneo said:

If it was a one off, I wouldn't worry about it. And like you mentioned, that printscreen looks fine.

I still want to know why this happened. If I could have attributed it to a bad coil or tank or anything then I wouldn't worry about it. But as of right now, it seems to me that it was some problem with the mod itself. And if it happened once, it will happen again. Like i said though, it's not a rush.

 

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Using Ti, with my single battery DNA's I'll turn off all preheat settings, but with multi battery I can blast it full and not encounter this 1 watt issue. Where do you keep seeing 1 watt? If you move your pointer over any area of Device Monitor, it will display the values at that time (like over on the right at the end of the puff)

I explained this already... Whenever I went above a certain threshold of wattage (dependent on the resistance and temp setting) it would have the problem. It would heat up very fas, produce vapor and then within 1 second drop down to 1 watt and stop producing any vapor. Then two or three seconds later it would heat up very fast again and produce vapor. Again, within a second, back down to 1 watt and no vapor. The whole process repeats. There were also temp protection warnings sometimes, but not always. If I lowered the wattage enough, it would work like normal. It would run at specified wattage until up to temp and then drop down to whatever was needed to keep producing vapor. However, the wattage had to be lowered to the point where it would take 5 sometimes 9 or 10 seconds each time to get to warm enough to produce vapor.

Example, Titanium 0.20 - 250F. Anything above 20watts creates the 1 watt drop issue. at 20watts, it takes 5-7 seconds to reach 250F and start producing vapor. Once it reaches 250F the wattage dropped to about 15 and it kept the temp up and vapor steady. But it is unrealistic to have to wait that long to take a hit. Also, I did mess around with preheat, set it to max, set it to low, changed many other settings, nothing effected it. Well actually, lowering the preheat made it take even longer to warm up...

 

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As far as your .ecig file 'watts' is showing you have it set as tc sensing with full blown curves. You shouldn't need multiple profiles for Ti like .1, .2, .3, as TC is wire specific. Your printscreen (Profile 6) you 'lock' the ohms (is that because it's that Smok atty) ?

Thanks for catching the watts settings, i just messed with it, and the watts and Ti  -  0.10  tend to sometimes revert back to defaults when I mess with other settings. I had to manually swap all the values on them because there was no other way to move watts on top of the titaniums (you can't delete or move the original titanium or nickel value). The reason I have multiple settings for my titanium TC is because I prefer the lower temps. I don't want to have to put the temp up past 300 ideally. Better taste. And yes, the lock is because I am using the Smok atty. I plan on upgrading soon to the Kayfun V5, if its ever in stock. Until then, I like the Smok because it's large, simple, super easy to use, and (other than the resistance) works decent enough.

 

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OK, just put my .18 Ti coil to 220F at 70watts, no preheat. Similar to you it dropped to 4 watts, no vape. 

6 hours ago, Wayneo said:

OK, looks like you're talking °F, and I don't usually get any vapor at that low temp.

Back up to ~400F, and there it was ....... vapor.

My .15 Ti coil at 215F at 50 watts (or anything higher) works fine. It does preheat, and then the wattage drops to about 15, which produces the exact amount of vapor I want. If I set it to 400F, it crackles and bubbles and burns, it's way too much power. And it's not like I'm taking weak hits, it clouds as good as anybody else. I tend to take stronger hits than most people tbh.

Also, the problem I had was never 4 watts. It was always specifically 1 watt, never 2 or 3, always 1.  If it drops down to 2 or 4 or whatever, the temp just needs to be increased. My issue is a completely different thing.

But thank you for the help so far! Also, thanks for reading all of this too. I tend to put a little to much detail.

Edited January 1, 2018 by TonyMcD

[Wayneo]

G'day. Maybe someone else can chime in.

Enjoy your mod