We’ve grown to expect seeing mechatronics project incorporate a standard complement of components, things like stepper motors, Arduinos, lead screws, timing belts and pulleys, and aluminum extrusions. So when a project comes along that breaks that mold, even just a little, we sit up and take notice.
Departing somewhat from this hardware hacking lingua franca is [tuenhidiy]’s automatic coil winder, which instead of aluminum extrusions and 3D-printed connectors uses simple PVC pipe and fittings as a frame. Cheap, readily available, and easily worked, the PVC does a fine job here, and likely would on any project where forces are low and precision isn’t critical. The PVC frame holds two drive motors, one to wind the wire onto a form and one to drive a lead screw that moves the form back and forth. An Arduino with a CNC shield takes care of driving the motors, and the G-code needed to do so is generated by a simple spreadsheet that takes into account the number turns desired, the number of layers, the dimensions of the spool, and the diameters of the wire. The video below shows the machine going through its paces, with pretty neat and tidy results.
Being such a tedious task, this is far from the first coil winder we’ve seen. Some adhere to the standard design language, some take off in another direction entirely, but they’re all instructive and fun to watch in action.
Is it just me or does this youtube channel have no subscibers at all not even 1?
Two comments, lots of views.
Perhaps it would do better if the music was toned down.
There’s also Dave Gingery’s purely mechanical universal winding machine: https://gingerybookstore.com/CoilWindingMachine.html
I don’t know about you, but the universe I live in has lots of toroidal coils and Dave Gingery’s “universal” winding machine doesn’t wind toroids.
So many of these already… I’d be impressed if it can wind a toroid
Wasn’t an automatic toroid winder featured on Hackaday many years ago?
https://hackaday.com/2020/06/05/homebrew-coil-winder-makes-toroids-a-snap-to-wind/
Reminds me of my first coil winder as a kid. A drill, a magnet, a reedswitch and a calculator. enter +1 = with = being wired to the reed switch. Manual positioning, but auto winding and counting.
A coil winder attachment for a miniature lathe using a calculator as the the counter exactly as you mention was described in ‘Making the most of the Unimat’ by Rex Tingey, published in 1979. I bought that book back in the early eighties and thought it a great idea at the time.
https://www.allbookstores.com/Making-Most-Unimat-Rex-Tingey/9780852426760
By using a motion planner (grbl), he is able wind a row of coils perfectly evenly. Compare this with ones that don’t (ie simple arduino program) and you will see they pile up the coils on the outside edges of a row.