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Anyone have any secrets, methods, advice, etc... on how you wind your primary. I am using 3/4 " copper tubing, but forming this stuff into a nice spiral is really much harder than I expected. Please share your tips and tricks...
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
The big trick is to buy it already formed in a coil. Its typically called refrigeration tubing and is available in all sizes and diameters. McMaster-Carr has additional sizes if needed. Simply take the coil, and form around your supports.
BTW, 3/4" primary tubing is really thick. Unless you are building a monster system, you can get by with much smaller diameter tubing. For example, 1/4" tubing is more than adequate for coils up to 3kVA-5kVA.
Registered Member #79
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 11:35AM
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 673
Here's how I cut the primary posts for my DRSSTC. I wrote some programs to do it for you here: They will work for either pancake or cylinder primaries. My secret is to make the PVC tight, so the wire/tubing snaps in. You don't have to have a tablesaw and a jig, you could use a file and a tape measure. 3/4's kinda big like EVR said. He's right about refridgerator tubing being the best also; it's more flexible, thicker, and well, just better than normal tubing. Make sure you have tubing, not pipe. Pipe won't work at all. Start in the middle of the primary, and work outward. Bend the tubing in a circle a little smaller than where it has to go. It's not hard really.
Hi guys, thanks for the responses. Actually, I screwed up my original post. I do have 1/4" refrigerator tubing. I don't know where I got 3/4" from. I made the mistake of trying to form the tubing onto my coil form and bent the hell out of it. I think I'll need to go to the hardware store to get some new coiled tubing.
Registered Member #135
Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735
I've used 1/4 and 1/8 tubing for primaries. I'm using 1/8 now because of space limitations between turns. The smaller tubing is very soft and deforms easily. One of the best suggestions I can give you for smooth radii is to start at the outside and go in. It's much easier to curl the tubing and bend inside then it is to 'open it up' for larger radii. Now this does come at a price! When you finish the last inner turn you find that you must feed it through the bottom. And if you have to pull up a few turns in order to do so, you will find a lot of nasty kinks in the tubing at the very start of your coil. In this case, which was mine, you have to start at the beginning and go through the painstaking process of 'opening' up a lot of turns very carefully and being frustrated at every step of the way.
If I could have preformed the coil with the right pitch ready for 'drop in' I would have been so much happier. It came out with some bad warps in the coil, but nobody really notices. And you can't even tell in the pictures, just when you eye it up close.
Just do the best you can with what you have available and don't worry too much about looks. Pictures sometimes lie as I'm sure this one does. It looks perfect but its not. Maybe I'll get some pics of the bumps so you can see them.
And remember if someone gets out of line all you have to say is "That's nice, I'd like to see it now! ....OOoohh...so you DIDN'T make your own. My mistake. You gave me the impression that YOU were THE expert and that you HAD a perfectily built system."
Registered Member #162
Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3140
For copper tubing primary coils powered by normal ac line (2-3 kW max) circular/octagonal, round/flattened, neat/messy, smooth/dented, pretty/ugly,.... all work about the same in my opinion. (Primary "Q" will be more than adequate)
I'd use the dented/bent tubing initially for testing/tuning, later for cosmetic reasons you could replace it.
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Primary Winding
