lego coil winder / General Chatting / Forums

Forums

4hv.org :: Forums :: General Chatting

« Previous topic | Next topic »

lego coil winder

1 2 next

Move Thread

LAN_403

Marko

Fri Mar 24 2006, 09:21PM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145

Few days ago I ran at big box of old (mostly technic) lego parts in my wardrobe and tought if I can make some use of it.
This came first to my mind.

I found winding TCs with very thin gauges (0,1 and 0,05mm) horrible punishment, hours of meddling with invisible windings and tripping the wire when get too nervous.

First I tought only to make rail and moving head of technic, but as I had plenty of it I built entire automated winding 'machine'.

Principle is simple: one motor spins the former, PVC tube in this case.
Other one is mounted inside moving head, with excessive amount of reduction (two worm gears, plus its own internal reduction) that makes head need hours to get from one side of rail to another.

There is a wire roll in the head (old telephone relay winding, huge amount of 0,1 wire) and samll amortiser used to jam the wire so it needs force to be pulled out of head, otherwise it would overlap if motor stops.

I use transistor with potentiometer to regulate main motor, so I can adjust speed of rotating and winding stacking exactly to speed of head.

Firstly I had problems with that, head moved too fast and vibrated, roll of wire was outside of it and it pulled head up-down as wire unwinded.
I had to remake entire head, use more reduction, secure it better to prevent vibration and put the roll on it.

Now I finally got it work without problems.
It isnt fast, needs amybe the same amount of time to wind a coil as it would need for winding by hand, but it is far more fun to sit and watch it doing dirty job for me

Besides this i doubt im capable of building anything like this of raw materials, it needs micrometer precision so this seemed neatest solution.

I tought about scrapping dead printer and using its precise head with stepper control, that might be a CNC winding machine

but il have to statisfy with this for now.
For bigger coils I have wooden construction with slow motor but ofcourse wire must be hand-guided there and it is still hard job...

Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Sat Mar 25 2006, 05:10AM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735

wow....what a trip. pretty cool man

Dr. Drone

Sat Mar 25 2006, 05:56AM

Registered Member #290 Joined: Mon Mar 06 2006, 08:24PM
Location:
Posts: 1673

vasil

Sat Mar 25 2006, 06:13AM

Registered Member #229 Joined: Tue Feb 21 2006, 07:33PM
Location: Romania
Posts: 506

Cool!
Good work Firkragg!

Alfons

Sat Mar 25 2006, 09:40AM

Registered Member #134 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 10:44PM
Location: Belgium
Posts: 86

Indeed! I never had the time nor guts to even start building any automatic coilwire; let alone one made of LEGO!

Great work!

stop4stuff

Sat Mar 25 2006, 11:51AM

Registered Member #64 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:25AM
Location: Southampton, UK
Posts: 68

nice one Firkragg, isn't Lego great :)

i made a Lego/Znap manual coil winder a few years ago, mostly for making coils for alternators/generators, see here

Marko

Sun Mar 26 2006, 05:56PM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145

Nice one too, actuylly anything is better than winding by hand.
I finished this coil, varnish was bad but this was only a beta-test and winder assed it.
PVC former had few fractures and holes and made some problems, I had two bad overlaps butI managed to unwind them and continue.
It is a bit hard to find equilibrium of rotation speed and head transalation so I must watch it frequently.

I have more pictures if anyone is interested...

Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Sun Mar 26 2006, 07:10PM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735

It's just a combination of your gears not being fine enough for the job and the step size not being large enough. I would try maybe one or two wire sizes larger. You might not get any overlaps at that point, of course you have to reprogram everything for the larger wire.

Or what you could do too is see exactly where the overlaps occured, find that turn# and the length and see what your error is and write an error limit function.

Marko

Sun Mar 26 2006, 07:27PM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145

I said that had overlaps at places where PVC tube had holes, i didnt bother to buy new tube and this was remant actually for garbage.
I just smoothed it a bit but one scratch was really bad and wire flpped around it, maybe 3-4 turns.
It is not some cosmetical not functional failure as you must look carefuly to see it,

Rest of the coil is perfection.

And whole point was to make this wind 0,1 and 0,05mm wires as this sizes are near impossible to wind by hand.
Il also try soon to wind smaller secondary with 0.05 wire, that will be *interesting*...

Hazmatt_(The Underdog)

Mon Mar 27 2006, 12:28AM

Registered Member #135 Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735

okay...sorry!

1 2 next

Moderator(s): Chris Russell, Noelle, Alex, Tesladownunder, Dave Marshall, Dave Billington, Bjørn, Steve Conner, Wolfram, Kizmo, Mads Barnkob