How to Clean Your RDA Coils

We’ve talked extensively about how to clean your vape coils here on the ROBO2020 blog. Until now, though, we’ve focused on removable coils for vape tanks. What about the many people out there who use rebuildable atomizers? Is it possible to clean an RDA coil – preferably without going through the tedious process of removing and remounting the wires? As a matter of fact, it is. It’s also surprisingly easy with the ROBO2020 automatic vape coil cleaner. We’ll describe the automatic method of cleaning your RDA coils first, and then we’ll continue by describing two manual RDA coil cleaning methods. You can consider the three methods and decide for yourself which is the best fit for you.

Before You Begin: Do These Things Every Time You Clean Your RDA Coils

Regardless of the cleaning method that you use, there are two things that you need to do every time you clean your RDA coils. The first thing that you need to do is remove the wick or wicks. Regardless of the cleaning method that you use, the cleaning process will ruin the cotton – and in any case, the cotton is most likely already ruined from burning or coil gunk, so pull it out and throw it away.

The second thing to remember is that, every time you clean an RDA coil, you’ll need to re-tighten the mounting screws and check the coil’s resistance before you use the coil again. That’s because there’s always a chance that the cleaning process will dislodge a mounting point or shift the coil out of place, which can potentially change the coil’s resistance, create a hot spot or even cause a short. To prevent those things from happening, you’ll need to check the coil’s resistance and test fire the coil as if you were building a new coil from scratch. It’ll only add an extra few seconds to your coil cleaning routine, and the effort will ensure a good vaping experience.

After you’ve checked the coil, you can re-wick it and resume vaping.

Cleaning Your RDA Coils the Easy Way With the ROBO2020 Automatic Vape Coil Cleaner

By far, the easiest way to clean an RDA coil is with our own ROBO2020 automatic vape coil cleaner. That’s why we exist – to give vapers everywhere a way to clean their gunky coils in just 30 minutes and reuse the same coils over and over.

For people who use tanks with pre-built coils, using ROBO2020 is a matter of saving money. As you’re well aware, pre-built coils are expensive, and with today’s heavily sweetened e-liquids, they simply don’t last unless you clean them. That might be why you started building your own coils. With an RDA, building a new coil isn’t really a matter of expense, but it does eat up a significant amount of your time if you do it every day.

After removing the wick from your RDA, all that you need to do is open the ROBO2020 coil cleaner and add water. Drop the entire RDA – build platform and all – into the water before closing the ROBO2020 and turning it on. In 15 minutes, the coil will be clean. Empty the water, close the ROBO2020 again and start the drying cycle. In another 15 minutes, the RDA will be dry and ready to use. Check the coil’s resistance, re-wick and vape.

Learn more about how to use the ROBO2020 automatic vape coil cleaner.

Cleaning Your RDA Coils With the Dry Burn Method

Coil gunk is comprised primarily of caramelized sucralose and other residue from your e-liquid. The dry burning method is one simple way of removing the gunk by burning it. Burning the coil gunk turns it to carbon, which you can simply blow off of the coil. When you’re done, you should have a coil that looks almost as good as new.

To use the dry burning method, remove the wick from your RDA and press your mod’s fire button in brief pulses until the coil begins to glow a dull orange color. When the coil begins to glow, you’ll see smoke rising from it. That’s the gunk burning away. After a few pulses, the burning will stop, and the coil will begin to glow more brightly. You’re all done at this point. Blow away any remaining carbon and allow the coil to cool down completely before re-wicking it.

The dry burning method for cleaning an RDA coil has two downsides. The first downside is that it can actually be quite difficult to remove all of the gunk from your coil through burning alone. If the coil isn’t completely clean, you’ll find that it begins to gunk up again much more quickly than it did when you initially built it. Some people use wire brushes to aid with the removal of the gunk. If you do that, remember that you can’t touch the coil with the brush while pulsing the coil because the brush is conductive.

The second downside of the dry burn cleaning method is that some people are uncertain about its safety. Heating a coil until it glows – and continuing to do that repeatedly – causes stress to the metal and may increase the likelihood of inhaling small particles.

Cleaning Your RDA Coils With Soap and Water

The second way to manually clean an RDA coil is with soap, water and some old-fashioned elbow grease. Remove the wick from your RDA and remove the RDA from your mod. Fill a bowl with warm, soapy water. Drop the RDA into the bowl, grab an old toothbrush and get scrubbing. The goal here is simply to scrub the coil until you’ve removed all of the dark gunk and can see only white metal.

When you’re done cleaning the RDA coil, rinse it thoroughly to remove the soap. Allow the coil to dry completely before re-wicking it.

The hand-scrubbing method works fairly well to clean an RDA coil, but it does have a significant downside in that waiting for the coil to dry can take some time. Remember that if you’re using a coil made from a complex wire such as a Clapton or alien wire, there will actually be water inside the twists and braids of the wire. Since water conducts electricity, you shouldn’t use the coil until it is completely dry – and that may take a while. If you prefer to clean your RDA coils using this method, it might be worthwhile to buy a second RDA. That way, you can use one RDA while the other dries.