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A coil winding machine

 

Rick,

Replying to the list as I want to capture this in the archive.

First thought is build a coil winder.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/382128211265

I just ordered a copy. It's one of the few Gingery books I don't recall buying. Dave explained concepts well, so it's worth the money even if you don't copy the machine.

That should give you a sound grasp of the mechanical design. Add an MCU, rotation and translation to position the wire and you'll easily have perfect coils. However, if you're going to wind 40 AWG you'll need a very precise electromagnetic brake to properly tension the wire.

Consider using a pair of hand tighten drill chucks mounted facing each other with common drive to both spindles to hold axial parts. The drill chucks are dumpster dive stuff. Turn it under MCU control while moving the wire feed back and forth to lay down an ideal winding. The MCU already knows how many turns it's made.

To make such a machine, obtain a pair of junk drill motors, disassemble so you have the shaft and bearing supports inside the otherwise empty housing. Make sure you take them apart, clean them and put them back together with proper lubrication. Then clamp the chucks on a short piece of 1/4" drill rod.

Make a wire mount that will hold the drills by the handles while you let concrete harden to permanently secure the drills. Then remove the temporary mount and the drill rod. Your winding spindle is ready. Cut holes in the drill housing for belt clearance and use a common shaft and two belts to drive the spindles under computer control.

Then add steppers or DC motors and a Hall effect sensor, screw or belt drives and wire tensioning. A junk ink jet printer is perfect for the translation of the wire feed.

I'd also like to suggest including an airbrush spraying polyurethane as the layers are put down. At the end of a layer, spray the layer for a single turn. This will bond the winding very firmly.

This is all basic Arduino sketch stuff. Age 8 and up ;-) It's really quite cool. I'd sneered at it for a long time, but it's a very useful inexpensive tool for solving problems such as yours. Low mental overhead. There are so many sketches for the Arduino out there it's impossible to keep track.

A custom winding machine requires taking bits from several of the most basic tutorials in an Elegoo Starter kit and combining them.

I have some junk drill motors and was wondering what to do with them. I now know. Thanks!

Have Fun!
Reg
On Sunday, February 18, 2024 at 02:52:53 PM CST, gren <hrgerson@...> wrote:



hi Reg,

Good job on your jig !

?Wondering if you have some thoughts ?
??? I need to make dozens ( say 60 )? of my own Rf chokes wound on? 1meg 1/2W resistor forms.
There need to be a consistent # of turns, Counted, about 1100 to 2000 turns of #20 to #40 copper enameled magnet wire.

I don't want to buy a Coil winding / counting turning machine...

My (likely stupid)? Mk I? idea is:
Was thinking about using a drill or Dremel tool, a Varaic to control the speed and a double Chuck mandrill with an HP Rotary Encoder on one end.
Having the rotary encoder connected to a Freq. Counter to count pulses should translate into revolutions & thus # of turns.

Using a variac + a Speed controlled Dremel tool might make it slow enough to do the Rf choke windings in controlled manner
by moving the freely spinning Cu bobbin from Left to right to Left until the correct # of turns has been reached.

Do you have any better ideas ??

thanks,
rick
 

We bought the excellait Adams-Maxwell machines, for $300..850 in USA.

Look for used machines in EU from Micafil, Switzerland

Jon
 


Thank you Reg, Jon and others,

? Apologies, have not come to any conclusions yet:

There seems to be all sorts of coil winders on eBay at an affordable price range of $30 to $100, which is the ballpark for this project.
??? I have not yet decided how elaborate a contraption might suit needs.
Clearly an inexpensive manual unit with a Veeder Root counter could be powered with a stepper motor, and yet the ~ $100 more modern unit below might suffice.

The original? principal interest was for winding some 50 small Rf chokes on 1 Meg 1/2W resistor forms,
??????? but the simple controlled mechanical ability now leads to??? dreams about winding? a few HV transformer replacements for other repairs, etc.
?? Undecided, still thinking about this ....

e.g.)

thank you
 

ROFL!

I forgot to mention that dead CD/DVD drives are perfect for moving the wire feed.

So the choice is:

Spend money on COTS

or

Acquire Arduino embedded system skills at 5th grade level

Which is best depends upon personal context and schedule. The latter is always the better course, but sometimes other factors dominate.

I'm very interested in the idea of winding inductors for op amp feedback on axial capacitors at AF.

Need to do some turns and wire size calculations...

Have Fun!
Reg

Sigh...

I just bought one of these:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/111618691372


On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 08:38:28 PM CST, gren <hrgerson@...> wrote:



Thank you Reg, Jon and others,

? Apologies, have not come to any conclusions yet:

There seems to be all sorts of coil winders on eBay at an affordable price range of $30 to $100, which is the ballpark for this project.
??? I have not yet decided how elaborate a contraption might suit needs.
Clearly an inexpensive manual unit with a Veeder Root counter could be powered with a stepper motor, and yet the ~ $100 more modern unit below might suffice.

The original? principal interest was for winding some 50 small Rf chokes on 1 Meg 1/2W resistor forms,
??????? but the simple controlled mechanical ability now leads to??? dreams about winding? a few HV transformer replacements for other repairs, etc.
?? Undecided, still thinking about this ....

e.g.)

thank you
 

The eBay coil winder arrived today and I'm really pleased. I'm sure there will be issues learning to set it up properly as the "manual" is 1/2 page of text, but for the price I'm quite delighted. A lot less time consumed than building the Gingery machine.

The wire translation screw has right and left hand threads and at the limit of travel switches the half nut from one side to the other.

I'll need to make a bunch of different spindle fixtures to increase the range of coils it will wind, but the design and manufacture are very good. My sole concern is the maximum wire size is stated as 24 AWG which is a bit small even for a 5 W QRP loading coil. It looks to me as if it would handle 14-18 AWG with modest effort.

I'm feeling a strong urge to do a retro project such as a salt box coil for a crystal set with cat's whisker, etc.

Have Fun!
Reg
 

Pi chokes use a universal wdg to minimize shunt C and need "shoes" or sheaves to hold pi in place till varnished.

In 1950s a mechancal winder was made for such use, no motor, hand crank.

Those still appear at ham fleas on occasion.

Jon
 

LoL! I was looking at the supplied bobbin holder and thinking "that won't make a Christmas tree choke". Do you have a photo of the setup for such?

Nothing like hand power for rapid response to a wire misfeed.

But the basic mechanism is sound and well made. It just needs some "accessories". For the price I'm extremely pleased.

The photo shows the bobbin holder. For the OP's project a live chuck on the RHS and a driven chuck on the LHS would clamp any leaded form properly (in photo, not machine). I plan to make such because the idea of making AF resonant circuits by winding "oh too fine" wire around capacitors is very appealing.

The cheaper winding machines require hand feeding and simply are not practical for more than 100 turns.

Have Fun!
Reg

On Sunday, March 3, 2024 at 03:58:33 PM CST, Froggie the Gremlin <jonpaul@...> wrote:


Pi chokes use a universal wdg to minimize shunt C and need "shoes" or sheaves to hold pi in place till varnished.

In 1950s a mechancal winder was made for such use, no motor, hand crank.

Those still appear at ham fleas on occasion.

Jon





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