Pickup coil winder, optimized for easy-to-build. Stepper motors and computer control. The fun part, the programming isn't done yet.
http://geofex.com/FX_images/coilwinder.pdf (http://geofex.com/FX_images/coilwinder.pdf)
I´m working on something similar, I will use an old printer , the printer head is the wire guide and the paper feed cilinder the wiring motor.
the idea is use the standard printer protocol, I can program the start and finish point of the coil.
at this point I have the printer and a software that I can use to send printer mesages , I need more time to test all the commands, transform the printer and make a decent friendly interface.
the big problem is that I don´t have time to experiment. :icon_evil:
your opto switch is a good idea but maybe you will need a small point laser to have a good precision. it must be like a 36awg diameter isn´t??
if you have a good atachment for the coil I think is better programe the guide to the known limits.
by the other side,I think , for a guitar pick up is not necesary the motorized guide. (if you don´t want a scatter coil pick up ;) )
if you use a good distance from the tensioner you will have a good coil.
12afael
I just use a hand-cranked drill in a vise, stick the wire spool face up on the floor, and keep a pencil and paper nearby to record every 100 handcranks. I've considered mechanizing the process over the last quarter century, but quite frankly I don't churn out or even NEED enough pickups to justify investing the time and energy for a winder. The other thing is that I find my wire through surplus (snagged a KILLER 3lb roll of #42 Electrosola last week for $12) and the spools are rarely of a form/weight that could merge with an automated winding process. Finally, a winder is really the sort of thing one sets up for a specific type of coil, simply because the manner in which the bobbin is secured and turned can vary with pickup type. What I need to use for a SC Strat type is different from what I need for a P90, which is again different from what I need for a PAF-size HB bobbin or SC-sized dual-rail. If I have to invent a mechanized device for the sake of maybe 3 pickups, I'd rather just wind by hand. But that's me.
On the other hand, if I could find a way to electronically or electromechanically register each hand-turn of the drill so that I didn't have to stop and record number of turns, then I could stop any time and wouldn't have to give my wife the evil eye when she barges into the garage and makes me lose count while I'm winding (and suffer the consequences of doing so for another 2 days!).
For you, Mark, anything is possible. Do you have a way to mount a magnet/reed switch, magnet/Hall effect (to-92), or opto-interruptor on your hand drill so it's activated by the turning?
What I have in mind is ... a PIC (that didn't surprise you, did it?) which has a "zero" button and a "remember" button as well as a two-line display. 9V battery powered, it resets itself to naught when the zero button is pressed. While it's on, it counts pulses on the turns sensor, displaying them on the display. When you're interrupted, you press the "remember" button. This stores the current count in non-volatile memory. You can then turn the thing off and it will pick back up at the stored count when you turn it back on.
Any other operations needed?
Mark, I use an old calculator like on this article http://europa.spaceports.com/~fishbake/counter/count.htm
it work very well just don´t wind too fast or you will loose some turns.
QuoteWhile it's on, it counts pulses on the turns sensor
have more sense to me use the pic to manage the turns.
I'll need to check the parameters of the drill this evening. I'm kind of leaning towards John/Jon Fisher/Tyrone's approach, though. Very low-tech, but if you say the things he is able to turn out, you'd be saying "Where can I sign up for this so-called low-tech?". Gonna get me a $1 4-banger calculator at lunch today. :icon_smile:
Hey guys check these out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgYbgnVp15U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcvlm6mNgjM&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNMl26Uq-3M
Looks like these guys have done most of the difficult work!
Quote from: R.G. on July 24, 2007, 11:05:08 AM
For you, Mark, anything is possible. Do you have a way to mount a magnet/reed switch, magnet/Hall effect (to-92), or opto-interruptor on your hand drill so it's activated by the turning?
What I have in mind is ... a PIC (that didn't surprise you, did it?) which has a "zero" button and a "remember" button as well as a two-line display. 9V battery powered, it resets itself to naught when the zero button is pressed. While it's on, it counts pulses on the turns sensor, displaying them on the display. When you're interrupted, you press the "remember" button. This stores the current count in non-volatile memory. You can then turn the thing off and it will pick back up at the stored count when you turn it back on.
Any other operations needed?
I placed an old variable speed drill in a wooden cradle, and mounted a resettable 12v pulse counter on it. I then made a Hall effect switch driving a mosfet, this pulses the 12v to the counter and advances the count every revolution. The Hall effect is activated by a small magnet that is stuck on the drill chuck, you can move the magnet to set the start point. This has worked very well, and was very easy to build. The pulse counters are widely available for next to nothing at surplus houses and hamfests. The PIC idea is very cool though...
I found another thing that might help, a 5 gallon bucket available cheap at Home Depot for mixing paint. It has a perfectly smooth inner surface with an outward curving lip. It looks like the perfect thing to put a spool of wire in to contain the loop that swings out while winding at high speeds. Anyone used one of these?
An older kick at the pickup winder can:
Recoil (http://www.geocities.com/thetonegod/coil/coil.html)
Andrew
I think my view of coil winders is colored (perhaps jaundiced is a better word) by the sheer number of coils I've wound.
Somehow, winding coils does not trip my "pride in having made that" switch. It's just a task to be done. As such, in my view, a CNC machine to do whatever coil I want is more interesting to me than any possible form of hand-guided winding. There are zillions of possible setups which can be hand guided. Those are OK, even clever; just not my cup of tea. My experience is that a hand wound coil can never be replicated. If I do pickup coils, I think I should be able to make a design #34-a again if I want. Hence again, CNC. The CNC challenge does pique my interest.
However, CNC machines typically involve lots of precision machining to get them to be able to do the job. When you tell a wire traverse to move 0.074 to the left, you meant 0.074, not 0.074 +/-0.010. As such, there is a steep hill to get over in making a precision winding machine.
What I was after was a winder that involved almost no construction, and was CNC-able, and could be built out of cheap and easily orderable items.
I think I got there. Two live and one dead steppers, a belt and two pulleys and some other hardware mounted on a plywood plate met my objectives. The mechanical stuff is all doable with hand tools, and you can arrange this to be precise, repeatable, and entirely automatic if you want to do the programming. The most complicated machining is cutting, filing and drilling the brackets to hold the steppers, which I think ought to be made from aluminum L-bracket screwed to the mounting platter. If you like the double sided tailstock approach, it's easy to find another dead motor the same size as the coil-spinner, replace its rotor with a drill rod, and apply pressure from the outboard end of the drill rod.
The important problem I was solving was cheaply buying the precision needed to CNC. It's all in the motor bearings.
I've got access to all the cheap 2nd hand stepper and other motors I want. What I lack is the time. And to a large extent, what I lack is the inclination too. One of the things I like about winding my own is coming up with something different every time. Kind of a sonic adventure. besides, even if it were in my power to perfectly replicate the scatter and number of turns, and even the wire, every single time, I'm building these things with cast-off bobbins from busted pickups, or fashioning the bobbins myself from bits of plastic and occasionally machined bits of house nails for polepieces along with ceramic bar magnets I find here and there that look like they wouldn't be a complete waste of 50 cents. In short, the non-wind aspects of the pickups are so inconsistent as to make any precision essentially winding throwing pearls before swine.
On the other hand, a simple winder for folks who DO want to be able to make at least a modest number of PUs with a consistent (and perhaps commercially supplied) coilform/bobbin is a godsend. So certainly don't let my "It's nice, but..." attitude deter anyone.
Another issue that should be thrown out is how often would you use a piece of this type of equipment. I wind coils for myself and a handful of people which means I don't wind pickups often. I built my winder knowing that while initial I was going to wind some pickups I was should set it up for other tasks so as to not over dedicate the tool. The mounting mechanism I used allows me to use my winder for other tasks like winding inductors and transformers as well. This is why I refer to my winder as a "coil winder" and not a "pickup winder".
I'm not beating on R.G.'s design of course. When I made my winder the design goals were different. I wanted cheap, easy, fast, and flexible. Part of that meant relying on simple materials like wood and brass as well as parts that I already had like motors, springs, shafts, etc. Mine also packs into a plastic bin for easy storage to save on work space. I have upgrade several portions of my winder since that article including switching to a uC based control system. I have thought about adding a servo guide.
All in all I like both. :)
Andrew
R.G, any chance you could post the design for the turns counterr?
I've been wanting one of those for many years since I wrote my dissertation on guitar pickups and had to wind a number of pickups by hand. Now that's not a great deal of fun, but I do still use my very first zebra humbucker I wound with 41 gauge wire to 7.5k with an alnico 5 unpolished magnet (courtesy of Tim at BKP). It has a really nice balanced open sound that works beautifully on my semi-hollow dean. At some point, i'm going to add a sustainer in the neck, because I rarely use the stock neck pickup, but that's another story ;)
Sure. Why not?
... grumble... now I have to go write the code... mumble... complain... :icon_lol:
This is one of those things where the requirements are simple enough that writing the code is not needed to start with.
UM... I think this works:
START
(Initialize memory, variables and registers)
(Initialize timer for interrupts every 10mS)
READ location in EEPROM that flags a stored value of turns
READ location in EEPROM with number of turns
IF stored_value =TRUE THEN
DO
GOSUB WRITEDISPLAY (stored_value)
ENDDO
ELSE
DO
GOSUB WRITEDISPLAY (0)
ENDDO
ENDIF
MAIN_PROGRAM
(look at switch values)
(if turns counter has changed, update CURRENT_COUNT in memory and gosub write into display
(if reset button pressed, note timer value, and wait until its been pressed for a full second)
(if remember button was pressed, write the current count into EEPROM and set the "stored_value" flag)
GOTO MAIN_PROGRAM
SUBROUTINE WRITEDISPLAY
(code that writes to your particular display)
RETURN
INTERRUPT_ROUTINE
(save state)
(read all the switches)
(debounce switches by not recognizing a switch change until the switch has stayed changed for 4 10ms intervals in a row.)
(if a switch has really changed, update its variable in main memory, otherwise leave it alone)
RETURN_FROM_INTERRUPT
END
this is the most beautiful winder that I ´ve seen
(http://www.jogis-roehrenbude.de/Leserbriefe/Guido-Speer-Wickelmaschine/Gesamt-frontal.jpg)
http://www.jogis-roehrenbude.de/Leserbriefe/Guido-Speer-Wickelmaschine/Trafowickler.htm
and here is a great thread about a diy automated transformer winder.
http://www.prodigy-pro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10898&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=winder&start=0
R.G, is there anything you can't turn your hand to? :icon_biggrin:
That winder certainly puts my own efforts to shame!
I think I could get the motorized winding device made easily enough.
Making a counter is not a 'usual' task, but I could hack through that too.
How exactly must the wire be wound, I mean is the idea to get the first wrap on neatly at the left of the spool, the next wrap adjacent/parallel to the first, all subsequent wraps on the first 'layer' all forming a flat surface?..ie each left to right movement of wrapping being exactly 1 wire thicknesses side by side?
Is there a benefit to super neatly getting the wraps on [or is that possible], or is it generally a matter of making each L to R [and R to L] movement of wraps an even number of turns?
I haven't read much about the L to R movements, ie how perfectly each of the turns needs to go on there.
I have a matched set of Epiphone HB paperwieghts.
What makes the difference between EPI's [which are...less 'luster-ey'], and Gibsons HB's?
They both have:
Magnets, Bobbins, coils, covers, and look nearly identical, is it mostly the windings responsible for the sound? Are the rest of the components worthy to work with? ..say, after a wound a few, would I be able to get improved sound?
I kind of guessed they'd be precision machine wound to begin with, perhaps it was a design goal that EPI HB's are having a different amplitude/frequency response compared to PAF's.
With all the EPI's running around with replacement pickups, I haven't run into a winding method which started with a stripped EPI HB.
I know about what I want in a pickup: 'Quality' tone, I must try the wind your own approach.
If your interests run that way, Pete, you have to go over to the pickup makers forum at MEF. As good when it comes to pickups as this place is for pedals.
what the address of that forum?
http://music-electronics-forum.com/home.php
The winding forum is a sub-forum, look down under Instrumentation.
I had to register originally, don't know if that is required now .
This machine has a 25 to 1 'counter' shaft [vertical, used for the cam driven zigzag or buttonholeing I guess].
So with a 25 turn clockface [from paper and felt tip, tape], and a takeup reel mounted to the 'counter' shaft, and a color coded count-thread wound on the 2nd take up reel, I'll have a sure fire, accurate counter system.
Between the count thread color code reads, the 25 turn clock face under the counter wheel pointer, and a black mark for '0' on the bobbin flywheel, I'll have a super simple and accurate count system, indefinitely stores count.
Daft, the only thing I need is a steady-pull take up bobbin like on a cassette, cassette deck is too big though.
I just tested it doing 1.5 wraps down around the drive bobbin [just a metal bobbin shape on the top of the shaft], and also 3/4 wraps [less likely the thread will catch on itself], both drove the thread lentgth with no slippage...provided I had a take up 'reel' helper keeping tension around the drive bobbin.
I don't know how a take up reel on a casstte drive system works exactly, if it were as simple as using the motor direct drive...that'd be nice, a PS and mounting system would make a much better self contained counter.