Cnc Coil winder

[Tubetec]

Ive decided to buy one of the Chinese Cnc coil winders ,  it'll do upto 1.2 mm wire,
It really is an amazing bargain at 550 euros , I'll be able to pick up some work off it in the longer run too ,I can rewind pickups for my buddy , do a few transformers and chokes/inductors for audio .
The boss at the motor winders has agreed to allow me to house the machine there for the moment , so I'll be able to work on stuff there in my own time as well as well as have access to the materials . Im just figuring out now how to construct the bobbins for the c cores  , Ive cut some thin strips of bakelite  which I will  put between the core and the coil, each transformer will contain four seperate cheekless  bobbins ,and then I can experiment with reverse wound coils on two of the four bobbins . For now I have .08mm diameter enameled copper ,I might spin up a test coil on my hand winder tomorrow and see what values of inductance I get off the c cores  , the c cores themselves are like a thousand razor blades stacked on top of each other ,Ill probably use shellac  furniture polish to seal them up and and even out the slightly tarnished appearance , I also have the special black textile wrap used in motor winding which I might wrap  the coils with .

 

[fazer]

That looks like a lot of machine for the money.  Keep us informed on your diy .  Be nice to knockout a need part.

 

[CJ]

Cool!

 

[Tubetec]

I see coil winder tensioners available on ebay , they range from very cheap ,to very expensive . They look like something you could easily add to almost any winding machine . Could anyone explain the benefits of using a tensioner.

 

[Whoops]

looks great the winder

you should have fun

 

[rackmonkey]

EDIT, misread what I quoted earlier.

I’m surprised no one has piped up to answer this. Especially with finer gauge wire, you need a tensioner to prevent spool runout, which results in a birds nest of wire in the worst case.  Without it,  when you stop the winder, the spool keeps spinning. Without the bobbin taking up the slack, the wire comes off the spool and gets tangled up as the spool keeps spinning.

you can make your own tensioner to do the job. but if the ebay versions are cheap, why not. one way or other, you need some “brakes” on the spool. Blame Newton for that. 

 

[Tubetec]

Yeah big heavy spools of light gauge wire have lots of momentum if there turning ,So far I have only wound light gauges with the wire coming off the spool upwards and not mounted on a rotating spigot , I made one of the paper disks to prevent tangles , although I suspect a different grade of paper would be needed to accomodate the various size wire too . I see the tensioner units on ebay come is a variety of different types regards gauge , and either magnetic or electronic tension control .

I remember about winding fishing gut onto a reel ,you need to make sure the line comes off the bobbin the same direction as its wound onto the fishing reel , otherwise the wire twists . Im certain the same principle is involved with copper , I wonder if CJ has any 'rule of thumb' that covers this aspect of winding.

Those Veeder root counters arrived today , Shockingly good quality  stuff , sure enough a drop of singer light machine oil on the one with the jammed reset fixed it right up , While they are 5 digit, the two larger ones  do upto 9999 with 1/10th's of a turn on the rightmost digit, one counts up clockwise the other down  and a funny mickey mouse shaped reset lever, the smaller of the three is a little odd , 0-99999 ,but either direction of rotation one turn equals a positive increment on the display ,so  theres no way to count down  or unwind turns with it .

 

[pvision]

For a reel damper you could use a version of the Hartford damper . It's a friction disc against the spinning reel with an adjustable spring tension

The Hartford damper (I believe he got the design from Truffault) was used on cars before the introduction of hydraulic dampers

Nick Froome