Building a Coil Winding Machine: Part 1: Prototype

RE: Building a Coil Winding Machine: Part 1: Prototype

ccandiotes — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 19:39:04 GMT

Very nice solution shabaz. A lot of effort put into this. Thanks for sharing!

RE: Building a Coil Winding Machine: Part 1: Prototype

shabaz — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 21:28:36 GMT

The linear slide tables mentioned in an earlier comment arrived today.

They are of metal construction (I originally thought the base might be plastic, but fortunately it's not). They arrived slightly greased, so I wiped that off the outer surfaces.

The one in the foreground in the photo below has 2 mm pitch, and the one behind it has 6 mm pitch per 360 degree revolution of the stepper motor. There is a bearing on the shaft.

The threaded rod is approximately 1/4 inch diameter, so it will probably be quite delicate, only for lightweight applications.

The wires connected to the stepper motors are bare-ended. The other end is permanently attached to the stepper motor, although it may look like a connector, it is not.

They look great, but I still have no idea if they are any good, I have yet to power them up. However I built the coil winder PCB finally, so with some code modifications (since I used a different motor driver than the earlier prototype had), hopefully I can try them out very soon!

Also some applications might need limit switches, so I might investigate that. For the coil winder I think there's no need, there can be a phase in the configuration where the user has to move it by pressing buttons, to set the limits each time it is used, since only a short traversal is required (however there is an expansion connector on the coil winder PCB, to optionally add things like limit switches).

RE: Building a Coil Winding Machine: Part 1: Prototype

shabaz — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 23:11:45 GMT

That took longer than expected.. I still need to tidy up the traces and improve the heat transfer further as well, but the first pass now has no errors/warnings.

The board is general-purpose, it isn't designed for any particular enclosure, and could be used for all sorts of scenarios where a couple of stepper motors might need controlling.

The board size is 95 x 68 mm, i.e. about soap bar size.

RE: Building a Coil Winding Machine: Part 1: Prototype

shabaz — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 23:20:26 GMT

This seemed too good to pass on:

It's got a score of 4.9 out of 5, from 17 reviews on another seller's page (the shipping cost was too high there). I purchased two, for a total of £44 all inclusive of taxes and shipping, so averaging £22 each which seems spectacular. I went for the 2mm pitch, and the 6 mm pitch. I think 6mm will work, but might be problematic on the thinnest wires. If that occurs, I'll swap out for the 2mm one. There is a 4 mm option, which will probably work for all scenarios, but 2 mm was the safe option (at a slower speed), and 6 mm for trying super-fast speeds as an experiment. I think I'll be able to find other uses for the 6 mm one, if it doesn't work out; or I could always reuse the stepper motor from it elsewhere.

RE: Building a Coil Winding Machine: Part 1: Prototype

DAB — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 19:00:34 GMT

Nice project.

RE: Building a Coil Winding Machine: Part 1: Prototype

shabaz — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 18:33:38 GMT

Some improvements hopefully below!. The chosen stepper motor drivers are now more powerful, and there will be little code changes needed for them.

Also, I assigned an extra microcontroller pin to the keypad matrix connector, so that up to 20 keys are supported if desired. Plus there are expansion connectors for limit switches or anything I can't anticipate right now.

Plus, more current capability for the Pi Pico, in case the wireless version is ever used. I'm going to start the PCB layout in a bit, I don't want to spend too long on this project since it's just a means to an end.

RE: Building a Coil Winding Machine: Part 1: Prototype

michaelkellett — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 07:59:55 GMT

I bought one of those cast iron hand cranked machines a long time ago for winding loudspeaker coils. It's one of the full frame ones a bit like this:

The standard of build of mine is very poor and it has needed a lot of TLC and modding. Hand cranked is best for the loudspeaker coils because one is lookeing for perfect layers and painting with epoxy glue as you wind (slowly).

Your article has prompted me to go and look on AlieExpress for a motorised one for transformers.

There is a good video on the web somewhere about building a DIY toroid winder.