DIY E-Nail

torturekiller420 said:

Built this today. Im getting ready to wholesale a bunch of parts and will have extras for sale for anyone interested in building their own unit. I will never use a dremel again after today, from now on i will be patient and take the boxes to work and mill and drill them. but 5-10 at a time so there ready.

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Looks nice man. Do you have any of these said "extras" for sale yet?

I could really use some help I have every thing wired correctly but the pid it reads EEEE and the ssr light does not turn on and it's a brand new ssr any suggestions will help thanks!

That odd. I'll be attempting to assemble mine this weekend and will report how it goes.

Hey guys I'm planning on trying to assemble this unit once I order all the parts and i found this coil: http://www.oil-coil.com/Kevlar-Coil-Assembly-20mm-ID_p_28.html which seems good but I'm wondering if I should go for the option with the xlr connector already soldered to the end, and if so, what female connection am I going to need?

nathan7 said:

That odd. I'll be attempting to assemble mine this weekend and will report how it goes.

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Thanks man if you can post a wiring diagram I'm using an Auber pid and the only probable I'm having is the ssr light isn't turning on and the the pid reads EEEE

got everything to start my build. i was just curious, how are you guys mounting the ssr? do you have a ground screw going all the way through your case, or are you using some sort of epoxy?

sourorbetter said:

So I've been on a long mission trying to figure out my build. I wired everything perfectly and exactly how you put it. The best I was able to do with it was get to 90 degrees. I thought the pid had an issue so I called Auber and they said it was my coil but it works perfect on the analogue dnail I purchased the coil with from D-Nail. I end up sending the the pid to auber to be checked out and it's working fine.

A few days after that I take my Borobook Quartz banger and coil to my buddy's place to use on his D-Nail and it doesn't work. The D-Nail displays "PFA" which means it doesn't sense a heater. I immediately call D-Nail's support line and they tell me that D-Nail's pinout on the XLR is different than in this tutorial. They're XLR pinout is 1. Positive 2. Negative 3. Tc + 4. Tc- 5. Ground

I still haven't been able to switch the pinout since my friend has my soldering iron to test this myself. Has anyone experienced any trouble using this setup with D-Nail coils? I saw mention of someone using one.

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Yeah thatll happen. In my tutorial we used ones without any xlr connectors and soldered them on ourselves so we made up the pin combination. so thatll do it. If youre good at soldering you can just cut the cord and wire it however you want or change the pin out of you xlr on your box.

Daniel710 said:

Thanks man if you can post a wiring diagram I'm using an Auber pid and the only probable I'm having is the ssr light isn't turning on and the the pid reads EEEE

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Is your coil connected? Because it seems like it isnt if thats happening. If not you might have a coil without a thermocouple. Or maybe connected the thermocouple to the wrong slots.

dorifto710 said:

got everything to start my build. i was just curious, how are you guys mounting the ssr? do you have a ground screw going all the way through your case, or are you using some sort of epoxy?

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Theres a couple options. If youre using a metal housing you can get some thermal grease/paste depending on how permanent you want the ssr in there. I ended up getting 2 bolts and running them through each hole on the SSR and epoxyd the bolts to the bottom. I had to cut them down a little because i was using ones i had lyin aorund the house but you could probably find some 1/2"-3/4" long bolts thatll work fine. I put the bolts through, then tightened the nuts down to they held nicely, then cut them so size (leave this out if buying them), then used epoxy to glue them in place.

This is so the bottom of the SSr is off the ground of the plastic box. Even though they dont get very hot plastic sucks at transfering heat so if youre not going to heat since you should at least let the bottom of the SSR be off the bottom of the plastic enclosure.

Can you suggest a correct winging diagram because I believe I have everything correct with the coil connected! The only thing I can think of is that my pid is blown.

budbro18 said:

Is your coil connected? Because it seems like it isnt if thats happening. If not you might have a coil without a thermocouple. Or maybe connected the thermocouple to the wrong slots.

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I have a D-nail extended life coil for one of Units and it works great, and i actually wire my units with
Pole1-A/C+
Pole2-A/C-
Pole3-TC+
Pole4-TC-
Pole5-Ground

I find this is the most "standard" wiring now amongst enails and coil heater wiring.

I went ahead and changed the pinout in the unit as mention above. Since there was a short in my coil I took off the Kevlar cover and found that the wires were melted and fused together, it was all bad. I cut the wires and put my own from the spare that I had from building the enail. The only downside to that is, the gauging of the wires are like twice as thick as the norm. No biggie tho I got it back together and it's working now!

Now on to my next issue, tuning the pid. I set it to 560 and it just blows by it and I just turn it off once it gets to 800 since it doesn't seem like it will stop. I tried pressing and holding the auto tune button but that does nothing really and it quickly gets to 7-800 and the coil begins to get red from the bottom. I tried to search online but I haven't been able to find much and I can't figure it out from the pid manual.

Sounds like the temperature sensor lines are reading null? Seems the heating works but there is no monitoring of this effect via the TC?

sourorbetter said:

I went ahead and changed the pinout in the unit as mention above. Since there was a short in my coil I took off the Kevlar cover and found that the wires were melted and fused together, it was all bad. I cut the wires and put my own from the spare that I had from building the enail. The only downside to that is, the gauging of the wires are like twice as thick as the norm. No biggie tho I got it back together and it's working now!

Now on to my next issue, tuning the pid. I set it to 560 and it just blows by it and I just turn it off once it gets to 800 since it doesn't seem like it will stop. I tried pressing and holding the auto tune button but that does nothing really and it quickly gets to 7-800 and the coil begins to get red from the bottom. I tried to search online but I haven't been able to find much and I can't figure it out from the pid manual.

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Ok this is a problem and mainly because the controller comes set at 700 degrees and doesnt have any data on the coils heating time and shit. Basically what you have to do is go in there and disconnect the HOT between the coil and the SSR. Make sure you wrap it with some tape and set it in a way that it wont make contact with anything.

Turn on your system and crank the temp down to like 300. Then let it sit there for a second to make sure it remembers and kick it off. Wait a little just in case anything in there can build up current and then go back in and reconnect your HOT to your coil/SSR (whichever you chose to disconnect).

And for the first run itll be a little scary and depending on your lighting itll get red hot and probably over shoot to 600 ish but itll be fine. Then once it bounces back down to 300 ish or whatever you set it for run an autotune cycle. Itll probably bounce up to 7-800 possibly higher but the coil should be able to handle that. When i clean off my nail every so often ill usually bump it up to 850-900 so they can definitely handle those temps. So after about 5 minutes or so of autotune you should see the SSR light on the pid go from steady constant blinking to a slower blinking and probably hear a slight click as it sets into autotune.

After that turn it up to 700 and start experimenting with temps. Im using quartz so i have to go a little higher than if i was using titanium. When my nail was brand new i had it at 700 and it was fine. But over time it got seasoned and 725-750 is needed to really finish your dab like i used to on 700. Gotta take my coil off and hit it with a torch and really get it hot haha.

One last thing if your putting your coil on your nail and its a little stiff you should let it heat up first. For me its easy because of the quartz i can be holding the joint of the quartz while the pid is set to 950 and barely feel warmth. Working with titanium though might be different since its easier to accurately mill/cnc titanium that it is to make quartz nails be exact.

So I took off the hot from the ssr and set the temp to exactly 300. I put the hot back on the ssr and turned the unit back on. It passed 300 and kept going all the way to 1003 and I turned it off out of fear of damaging the coil. Ive been doing this with the coil sitting on my window's track with the window open to prevent my quartz banger from breaking. I didn't get to run the auto tune and to be honest I worry about the coil breaking from the unit passing 1000 degrees.

I put the pid in auto tune mode and its been going at it for more then 10 minutes now and I can't set a temp when pressing the up and down keys, it doesn't respond at all. The temps have been between 950-989. Initially it shot up to 1006 and then began to back down but stabilized around 950. The ssr light is still blinking as the temp fluctuates.

cool thanks a ton man, I've been looking everywhere for pictures or info but couldn't find it. ill make sure to post some pics when I'm finished!

alright, so i believe i have everything hooked up correctly according to the wiring diagram on the reddit post. and yes unfortunately i have the mypin. (i found the auber after i ordered). but for some reason when i turn my unit on the coil itself starts heating, like the wires that are wrapped in the kevlar start heating up. did i wire incorrectly? I've triple checked and my wiring seems to follow the diagram to a t. also my coil works fine in my dnail, so i know thats not the problem. do you guys know which wires i could have possibly mixed up?

could i have possibly soldered my xlr backwards? i did 1 tc- 2tc+ 3ac+ 4ac- 5ground. its a coil manufactured in china, but it also seems to have an extra connection next to the 1 terminal, is that a ground thats supposed to be connected to 1?
was i supposed to do 1 as the ground then 2tc- 3tc+ and so on?

So I contacted Auber and D-nail and I set the exact parameters for a 100 watt coil and it kept heating up non stop. D-nail support believes it's the heater's thermocoupler sensor is shorted. I'm going to test my unit with my boy's coil that works. I expect it to and I'll just buy a new coil. I'll report in how the test goes.