Coil winding rigs

Hey, I thought I would start a thread on coil winding machines.

First, just to be clear, having a coil winding rig is NOT necessary for replicating the experiments on this forum, or finding the effects that Chris wants us to look for. Hand wound coils are just fine.

With that being said, if you happen to have a perfectionist bug in you, or would like to just have better coils for one reason or another, a coil winding machine is really nice! And I thought it would be interesting to see what others are using. Maybe share concerns while building a rig, or issues with purchased rigs, etc. So I'll start by sharing mine.

So I've been spending a couple weeks on this, and kind of went back and forth with ideas. Here is a picture.

I went with wood because it's easy to work with and for some crazy reason I still don't own a welding machine. I used threaded rod, which I'm really not a fan of because of it's tendency to loosen every nut while it's turning, but it's easy to find in the stores.

Here are some specs:

• Wire guide and wheel above the spool so I don't have to touch the wire (so I don't kink it, etc)
• Tension wheel, adjustable, to keep the wire tight. Which makes the wire lay down tighter and more even on each turn.
• Manual hand crank. I tried the electric motor/gear housing in the picture, but it was too wobbly and not geared down enough, spun too fast. Manual seems much better. Maybe later I'll try another motor.
• Threaded rods are actually on quick disconnects so it doesn't take 2 hours to unscrew all the nuts and change a bobbin.
• The distance from wire guide wheel to bobbin was calculated so that the maximum angle of the wire on the bobbin does not exceed that of a 0.8mm wire thickness. This actually helps a lot to ensure each turn lays down right next the the previous one.
• The bottom wood separates in the middle, held together with clasps, just in case I need to separate the wire spool and bobbin a bit more. Because of thicker wire or a bigger bobbin, etc.

So this works quite well, I'm very happy with it. Here is a picture of the first coil. Only about 50 turns, but 3 layers and no crossovers or strange looking turns.

Beautiful!

So I'm still waiting on Amazon to deliver a mechanical counter I will install. And waiting on more 3d printer filament. I need to re-print the bobbins, as the ones I have were printed with a small tilt. Issue with the 3d printer frame. Fixed, but I need to re-print the bobbins. Anyway, a week or two and I should be winding coils. Then I can finally get back to some experiments.

Video for the people who don't like reading.

So share if you have a nice coil winding rig. It's nice to see other's ideas!

Marcel