Wave winding machine

[Giampaolo]

I wondered whether the egg-bot could be turned into a wave winding machine to make wave-wound coils for ham radio.
A relatively well-known home-made hand-operated such machines is described in a booklet by Morris Gingery:
http://www.camdenmin.co.uk/products/build-a-universal-coil-winder

A nice video showing this can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIOocMoRsYQ&feature=PlayList&p=8764666677A62F7F&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=10

Maybe an adaptor can be made and sold as a kit?

Happy Easter
Giampaolo

[ragstian]

Hi

Great idéa. Not much of an adaptor is needed really.
If the pen arm horizontal part had a “V” shaped “hole” (to take different wire diameters) to guide the wire you would only need a ‘device’ to keep tension on the wire.
As the pen arm is moving along an arch rather than in a linear fashion the program driving the ‘egg-winder’ would have to take that into account to position the arm correctly.
To get the coil former to stay between the egg couplers just two cones could be used, by having different diameter cones you would be able to use a wide range of coil formers.
Stay tuned for an Inkscape “winder” extension.

RGDS
Ragnar
 

[Giampaolo]

Yeah, exactly, you don’t actually need a complex adaptor!
It would be really useful to me as I would like to wave-wind a few tiny coils for a high voltage power supply, and was about to collect material for building the Gingery winder, when I realized that the egg-bot is someting very similar or easily adaptabe.
I look forward to some useful advice on how to implement this function!
Thank you

[ragstian]

Hi.

First “proof of concept” run of Eggbot Coilwinder complete.
I abandoned using the pen arm as a ‘wire guide’ as it was ‘fiddly’ and did not work very well due to the varying distance between the wire feed and the coil former. Made a ‘addon’ from Lego, the addon uses linear guides (Lego style ;-) ), the pen motor drives the ‘carriage’ by a string wound directly on the motor shaft. With enough turns around the motor shaft and a spring tensioner there are no ‘slippage’, the motor ‘stalls’ when preventing the carriage from moving without the string slipping on the shaft. The whole “contraption” is a ‘drop-in assembly’ and going from Egg-bot to coilwinder and vice versa takes less than two minutes. Next step is to make drawings and fabricate the parts from laser-cut plywood. Will have to decide what kind of rail system to use.
See images;

Pulley;

To get the coil-winder to wind in ‘wave’ pattern you just have to change the program for higher carriage speeds back and forth. I will have to study the topic further as there are a ‘lot’ of variables involved.

RGDS
Ragnar
 

[Giampaolo]

Fantastic!
I’m in for the first release ;)

[Author]

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