Priming the coil of your device’s atomiser (or tank) is a little but all-important, additional thing to do with your e-cig or mod should you want maximum efficiency in its functionality and high-quality vaping – and to avoid those terrifying, awful-tasting dry/ burnt hits you get every now and again. In short, it’s all about optimising your vaping experience – and seriously, what vaper isn’t interested in doing that?
In essence (and, actually, in practice), priming’s pretty simple; it basically means saturating the wicking material that sits in your atomiser with vape juice, ensuring the material doesn’t overheat and burn. So, here’s what you need to know for successful priming…
How to prime an atomiser coil
- Attaching the new coil– having disposed of all the old coil, you’ll need to screw on the new one.
- Saturating the wicking material– first, locate the juice holes on the atomiser’s head; through these holes the wicking material ought to be exposed and easily visible (it may even stick through them when the device’s constituent parts are all correctly put together). Next, you’ll want to drop a tiny amount of vape juice (preferably purchased from the likes of a high-quality e liquid wholesale suppliers) in every one of the holes, so the wick’s thoroughly saturated.
Now, saturate the wicking material proper; note that smaller atomiser coils need just a drop or two, while larger atomiser heads usually require a good deal more (be sure, though, you don’t over-saturate the material, otherwise you might flood the device and end up with e-liquid getting into your mouth as you try to vape).
- Start vaping… with dry hits– now the atomiser’s filled and (re)assembled, attach it to the battery and take around five dry hits; this means tightening the airflow valve (should yours have one) while covering the air-intake holes, as you take a few drags as you would when vaping normally. The result’ll be you’ll syphon e-liquid from the atomiser on to and into the wick (but make sure your hits are limited to just five and aren’t too deep, otherwise you could flood the tank).
- Break in the coil– saturating the wicking material’s certainly the most important aspect of successful priming but don’t underestimate the importance of breaking-in your device’s new wire. This is because a wire naturally expands when it’s heated and, conversely, contracts when it cools. To do this, make sure you start off vaping at a lower wattage than usual and, following a select few short drags, slowly build up the wattage until you get to your normal wattage setting.
The benefits of priming
- Helps eliminate dry/ burnt hits– frankly, avoiding dry an especially burnt hits is the primary benefit of priming; a dry coil that’s not been properly saturated in e-juice inevitably results in dry/ burnt hits because the heat generated when you fire up a device has no liquid to make contact with (merely the coil), so an unpleasantly charred taste can be the only eventual result
- Enhances e-juice flavour– priming also augments an e-liquid’s natural taste by adding to it an intensity and richness; indeed, you ought to be able to taste the difference on the very first post-coil-saturated drag you take
- Lengthens the coil’s life– finally, a big, big benefit (certainly when it comes to your wallet) is that a primed coil will almost definitely last longer than one that’s not been and, principally, this is down to the fact the coil’s been broken-in, thus it’s able to function to its maximum efficacy; by contrast, a burnt coil will be compromised and so its life-expectancy shortened.