Toroid winder tensioner

I'm trying to design a small toroid winder, for making EQ inductors around 1"-1.5" in diameter. Can anyone explain or show some pictures of how tension is kept on the wire once it leaves the shuttle? Nothing I've seen so far has explained it well enough.

I've seen systems that seem to use a fabric covered pad in the center of the shuttle, this seems simplest to implement on such a small scale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V7D0x9BYAt8

But I'm not against building a more complex spring/idler system if necessary.

Thank you!

a felt covered plate against a steel plate with a light spring setting the tension will work,

it sits inside the shuttle in back of the ring,


make the plates adjustable so you can move them around a bit til it runs nice,

attach the plate to a swivel thingy u joint type,
which gets attached to a round shaft, you turn the shaft to vary the angle of the plate, the shaft gets mounted in a clamp which can be loosed to move the plate in or out,
put a flange where the wire enters so it funnels into the plates,


you will waste a bit of wire with these machines as the delicate process is dialed in,

save the wire of course, electric cars are making wire expensive these days,

paid 15  bucks a pound the other day for a 5 lb spool,

some of these recycle places are taking mug shots of people and cars bringing in metal from freeways and construction yards,  8)

I was hoping you'd chime in on this, CJ.  Good news, this sounds pretty easy to make then.

I've already wasted a good deal of wire playing around with the dumb little wooden model I built to get my head around how these things work.  : A little more wont be an issue.

Am I right in thinking that if I avoid any ferromagnetic materials near the coil being wound, I can measure the value while still on the winder, then wind more if needed? The apparent ease of precision is what lead me to switch from pot cores to toroids.


There's some great info on this Russian winder manufacturer's site if you dig around a bit.

http://www.namotka.com/products/unit.php?cat_id=44&prod_id=198&pic_id=521

http://www.namotka.com/products/shpula_tab.php

CJ said:

save the wire of course, electric cars are making wire expensive these days,

Click to expand...

not only electric cars will make copper more and more expensive in the near future:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/111490/jp-morgan-gets-big-holiday-gift-the-sec

i think it is time to buy ;-)

wow, the next james bond movie will be Copperfinger, 

here is a pic of a yuze winder with the tension thingy,

I'm going with a belt system, like the Yuze winder CJ posted. I attached a big pic of a similar unit. The drive belt also serves to hold the wire on the shuttle, while allowing the needed amount to slip out the side as it's wound around the toroid.

To make it cheap and easy to make, I'm planning to use delrin for most of the winder, and as many off the shelf parts as possible. I'll post some blueprints when it's done if anyone else wants to build one.

ed rees said:

I'm going with a belt system, like the Yuze winder CJ posted. I attached a big pic of a similar unit. The drive belt also serves to hold the wire on the shuttle, while allowing the needed amount to slip out the side as it's wound around the toroid.

To make it cheap and easy to make, I'm planning to use delrin for most of the winder, and as many off the shelf parts as possible. I'll post some blueprints when it's done if anyone else wants to build one.

Click to expand...

I don't quite understand where the wire is spooled from , does it get loaded on the large belt driven ring , then used to wind the toroid ?

It looks like some of the parts can be taken off automotive timining belt components at the Local pick & pull , namely from mitsubishi and others, which use a number of small to medium size idler pullies  cam sprockets with sealed beaings that run the cams and crank as well as balance shaft. Similiar components can be taken from other timing assemblies from other vehicles , Honda , Toyota .... etc etc the list is numerous and cheap.

I wish I was a mechanical genious , but without a blueprint this would be a difficult project. If a blueprint were available that would be great. I hope this thread does'nt die

Hi,
  A little off the question but have you considered EFD series cores and bobbins?

  I do a lot of custom magnetics desigs and winding on bobbins is so much easier. The EFD are pretty low profile. Magnetically they are not as space efficient as a toroid but they have many other better qualities.

If you need a few let me know. A couple years ago I bought a pallet of EFD20 sized parts really cheap from China. For protos I might use 2 or 3 in parallel onut I also have some larger sizes laying around. Oh, and years ago I bought an old "George Stevens" winder and had some tooling made for EFD sizes.

Bob K.

Yes, the wire is first spooled onto the ring or 'shuttle'. The ring is able to be opened, to allow it to be placed through the toroid's center before it is spooled with wire.

I promise to follow through with some blueprints and build instructions once mine is finished. I'm making sure everything can be done with tools most of us have access to (jigsaw, small drill press, etc...) I'm using 1/8" aircraft grade aluminum for the frame. Furniture grade plywood or thick plastic sheet would also work fine. I don't expect there to be much stress on the machine with 34awg wire.

Now I'm just waiting for all the parts I ordered to arrive before I continue the design. I'll have an update early next week.

cool!

and you don't need any software to control the thing so that eliminates 90 percent of the hassles,

just make the ring rotation manual then you can do back and forth winding and stuff like that,

bobbin wound inductors are a lot easier but you have to really watch the gap,

toroid gap is very stable,

Yep, that's what I was planning to do. I'll run the shuttle a lot slower than an automated winder, so I can still get nice even windings. 

It'll have a sewing machine style foot pedal for the shuttle, and a simple hand crank for the ring rotation.

sewing machine is a great idea!

i was gonna use a wah wah pedal, but the DCR to AC amp engineering would not be needed of Singer helps out,

Just scavenged a good motor/pedal setup off a kenmore sewing machine from the '60s. $10 at goodwill. I'll have to add a reverse switch for spooling the shuttle.

Check this thing out. No use to me, but it's a pretty sweet system for winding non-circular cores.