Stacking a core

[PRR]

TV show about the building of McIntosh tube amps, showing chassis stamping, winding, stacking, and test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HgS6gvokEI
You want to watch all 5 minutes. Highlights include winding at 2:00 and *stacking* at 2:40. Never saw that machine.

Another video just on Mac winding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoU3ff7FY2s

Yet another Mac insider video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcX_pjLQ7dc
Good sequence at the winder at 2:12

 

[Tubetec]

Wow serious gear ,
Its amazing its able to be produced in the US and still remain profitable ,
Do they still produce the tube models?
Just getting the hang of the winding machines at work ,it has a foot pedal clutch , and is only limited in wire gauge by the strenght of the person using it ,big crossover inductors are a perfect first step in the learning process .

 

[emrr]

Good stuff.   

 

[PRR]

The contraption, screen-grabbed.

You stack E and I lams in both side. The machine deals from the bottom of the deck. It slides an E and it catches an I on top. It inserts to the bottom of the stack in the bobbin. I assume the basic machine has spacers for different size cores. Different widths could be handled by drilling the side plates; it appears this particular setup is one-size. There are light springs on the fingers(?) which deal the lams. I assume the red lever clamps the bobbin. The thingie behind the core may sense when it is full-up and stop the cycle. The motor would be ample in my house furnace and is overkill at this production rate. There is a name LAMATOR on the machine, but the only links I can find are to agricultural digging-tines.

Here is a smaller hand-crank lam-stacker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRKv-9cogCY
Same exact gizmo; both may be option hand or motor.
More: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Lamination+Stacking+Machine

Making lams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrc0R3kjWDk

 

[boji]

Cool vids! Thanks PRR.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

You stack E and I lams in both side. The machine deals from the bottom of the deck. It slides an E and it catches an I on top. It inserts to the bottom of the stack in the bobbin.

At first, it seemed to me the I's were inserted by magic ('cause hidden by the E) but this vid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zglWfe-V3uE
shows how they are inserted on top of the E.
It shows also how the bottom plate is shaped with a ramp.
Still, the stack must be filled by hand, or a cawl.

 

[CJ]

interesting that the Mac coils do not get dipped. they must use tape between layers to prevent  vibration.
that tar will not get very far into the winds,

i use to stack cores, a machine would cut strips off the rolls of 29gaM6, anywhere from 1 1/2" (what a pain) to 12", a magnet would hold it to the top of the conveyor belts, every three chunks would trip a stop to come down which would also trip after three chunks and drop it onto the other three chunks that were situated up stream, then you would slide the table over to another table which was used to band the core together. 
there you would use two buzzer contraptions to vibrate the steel together til it had a gap the same width as the size steel you were cutting.  if you went to far then you would have to pull the lams apart 3 at a time, what a pain, so you vibrated the legs together leaving about 1/16" of spare room just in case, this gap would get hammered shut by the coil/core assy person with a core tool made out of non hardened steel.

one time i went outside to get some fresh air while my core machine was running. the dereeler lever got stuck in the on position, so when i come back in, there is a big pile of transformer iron looking like film from a projector that had unraveled on the cutting room floor, so i had to manually feed it into the machine before the boss showed up, never left the machine after that, some joker would sneak up and hold the lever on when i was not looking,

a lot of the equipment in the transformer shop is hand made,  the most ingenious piece of equipment i saw was the little core stacking tool for hand stacking 3 x 3 cores of medium size, somehow, the magnet made the lams walk up a stainless steel plate where you could easily feel 3 lams, after a while you could pick 3 lams by feel without looking and stack them on a rack in rapid fashion,

still do not know why it worked, or who figured it out, but it looks like this>