Of all of my tanks, my Smok TFV12 Prince is my favorite. Best flavor, most vapor production, most realistic smoking replacement. But the prebuilt coils don't last more than a few days, and I'm 100% sure I'm priming them correctly. Replacing coils at that rate is frustrating and costly.

So I've been using the Crown 3,and the coils last much longer. Problem is, flavor and vapor production are both muted. It's not nearly as satisfying as the Smok setup.

I've read that the RBA on the Smok tank lasts longer, and it would seem that DIY is much cheaper than prebuilts. Do you guys find that to be true? How much of a time sink is rebuilding? Some of the kits make it look pretty easy, but I have no experience to accurately judge. Would it be smart to pick up two RBAs, build both, and always have a fresh one to pop in while I repair the other?

Any and all thoughts are welcome.

I have been using a squonk mod and bottle feed RDA lately. Easy to replace the coil and cotton.

Building your own is definitely the cheapest and best way to go in the long run. I stopped out of laziness though. Now I'd rather just buy a coil, toss it in, and it's good for a while.

I guess it's comparable to reloading in the firearms world. You can tune your builds exactly to your preference but you gotta put in the effort to learn how little things change the outcome.

I go back and forth between rebuildables and factory coil tanks. When I'm feeling lazy, I'll use my Smok Baby Beast. But I prefer my Geekvape Zeus Dual. But I rarely even "rebuild" that one, either. I use premade standard Claptons in them.

I switched to the SMOK RBA's in my Prince and Baby beast tanks.
It's kind of an art form building wicks. Too little / Loose wicks will leak. Too much /tight wicks won't flow well and you'll get dry hits. But once you hit the sweet spot of wick building, it's awesome. I can go sometimes up to 3 weeks on a build before re-wicking. Then it's just pulling out the old wicks, light up the coils to burn them off, and make new wicks. The cost of cotton is cheap.

I make my own coils as well. Lots of tutorials on line showing how it's done.
I've even gotten into mixing my own juice.

It's kind of like reloading for your ammo. Once you acquire the basic materials, cost of finished products is pennies compared to buying ready made stuff.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

To answer my own question, I'd say emphatically that RBAs are worth the time. Watched a few YouTube tutorials, got a good idea of how the finished product should look and operate, and was vaping in less than an hour. I broke one of the coils adjusting it, which was 100% my fault, but no problems otherwise.

I was aiming for a 0.3 ohm build, and ended up at 0.29 ohms. Good enough. Wicking and priming was easy, I'm able to vape at higher wattage with better flavor and bigger vapor production. No leaks.

I guess I'll keep some of the old prebuilts around for emergencies, but I don't see myself ever choosing to use them preferentially again. I wish I'd gone this route sooner.

Absolutely worth the time, and building them now is just few minutes. Replacing wicks takes a minute and is around a penny!

I am slowly exploring the vape world.  I have tried RTA’s, Sub Ohm Tanks, and RDA’s. RDA’s don’t take much time.  But so far nothing has equaled them in flavor.  Probably have not found the holy grail yet-but think RDA’s are the right direction.

I like using the

Wotofo Profile Unity
Wotofo Profile on a squonk
and have ordered a Wotofo profile 1.5

I have RBA's for a few sub ohm tanks....They seem to work well and right now I am waiting for a RBA for the smok nord/rpm40/fetch to get here

With everything there is a learning curve.  I hate giving up on RTA’s before I get past that curve - as they promise so much.  My Zeus RTA works, but it is somewhat muted compared to the RDA’s I have tried.  The Unity is much more picky about it’s wicking or it leaks like a sieve. On 3 attempts I have gotten it to work marginally once.  I have never had an RDA not work.  I currently have a Recurve 2 set up as a dropper and 2 profile unities set up on squonks.  One of the squonks works as good as a dripper.  The other, works ok, but I still get the urge to drip it and get a burst of flavor.  I suspect I have not mastered wicking it yet.

I have a bottom flow RDA coming in Friday, with my first mechanical mod.  Fingers crossed that I can get through the learning curve and the bottom flow’s flavor is worth the effort.
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But back to the question.  With premade coils and pre rolled cotton, the total effort to RBA’s is not much.  You have to cut the legs to length on your coil (sometimes simply by mounting the coil and cutting off the excess), insert it and tighten some screws, test fire it on a test deck (abet controlled mods can probably handle that too), usually tinker with it a few seconds with a brush/tweezers, then threading the cotton and cutting it to shape.  Less than 3 minutes maybe.  The rebuildable mesh decks are even easier.  The mesh is precut - wrap around a shaping tool and mount.

The mechanical mod is the real question as to if it is worth it.  Controlled mods are common and work well.  They not only add safeties but allow you to easily adjust power with a few button taps.  The only 2 options on a mec are changing the coil/wick, and how you press the fire button.  Not unlike the difference between cooking over an open fire, and using souse vide....   Souse Vide can be perfect every time - yet purist will still turn back to the fire.