Schatten machine upgrades? Or, replace?

[rhoads]

Im having trouble keeping up with demand, so Im looking to upgrade the Schatten winding machine I have.

Is it worth fitting a faster motor? How much faster can I wind compared to the standard Schatten winder? Ive never used another winder...

Alternatively, without having to build a winder from scratch, what is the next step up from the schatten machine?

[Bill M]

I had the same problem. The schatten winder, at full speed, under load spins at approx. 700 rpm. It takes about 9.5 minutes to wind a typical strat coil to 6k ohms. I personally like to hand wind at about 1000 and that is why i designed and built a new winder to my specs. Anything above 1000 rpm and the coils start getting sloppy. Thats for me anyway. If you are doing any kind of production with the schatten, Id question its reliability as its not a heavy duty piece of machinery. Thats why i had a heavy duty one built to my specs.
As for the next step up. Adams maxwell winders, old coweco winders. Even used you can expect to pay $ 400 on up for one and still have to modify it for pickup winding.

Bill

[belwar]

Well it really depends on your goal.. Are you sticking with Hand Winding, or are you going to move into machine winding? Machine winders are great once you dial in what you want. Also what is your budget?

There are TONS of great auto tranverse winders out there used, and often they come up on E-bay. I've seen several myself for 400-600 dollars. I just bought a vintage 1963 coil winder the same as fender uses for $440 bucks of the bay. It came with a full set of gears that allow me to do traverse rates from 30-400 Turns per layer. It will handle 18 gauge to 50+. You just have to hunt and im sure you'll find something.. it took me 2-3 months of watching the bay to find what I wanted.

Now if you want to built you own, then thats another story!

[David King]

Listen, a winder is about as simple a piece of machinery as there is. It sounds like just adding a sewing machine motor would be a substantial upgrade to the Shatten to start with that and make sure the counter is still accurate at the higher rpms.

[rhoads]

Been handwinding to date, and really we cant keep up. I want to stick with hand winding for now, but would consider a fully auto setup too.

I dont have a budget. Maybe a grand would be the limit, but obviously cheaper is better. There is probably a full auto setup for that price, but I really havent had a chance to look into it.

Labour is the largest cost in the manufacturing of the pickup, so we are looking for ways to wind about 20% faster. Our bottleneck is the winding process (and cleaning wax!).

So far all Ive seen on ebay is cheap chinese machines, and they dont really look suitable without mods (and appear a bit too cheap).

[Dave Kerr]

You could always look to gang up more than one coil per wind using the mini-lathe/tailstock approach. If you've had good results with a certain setup, you might want to think twice before committing to mucking around with substantially faster speeds.

[rhoads]

yeah we have converted the schatten shaft to suit our own interchangable stocks, which will allow multiple bobbins, but we havent yet tried that method, because the standard motor just doesnt seem to be strong enough, and I needed to make a suitable tensioning hand piece.

Winding two or more coils at once would be a definate time saver.

[David King]

I hope that you're following Elepro's CNC winder controller project,
cnc winder controller board
as that will put you into a whole different league for a about 1/10th of the retail cost of a cnc winder.

In the meanwhile pickup a junk sewing machine at Goodwill for $5 and swap the motors or just sell that overpriced shatten doohicky and start over. If you can wind pickups you can probably build a decent winder.

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by rhoads

Im having trouble keeping up with demand, so Im looking to upgrade the Schatten winding machine I have.

Is it worth fitting a faster motor? How much faster can I wind compared to the standard Schatten winder? Ive never used another winder...

Yes! My motor died.. twice. To the credit of Les Schatten, he wanted me to send the winder to them for repair, but it was still working, albeit slower, and I had pickups to wind, so they sent me a new motor. That fixed it, but now it died again. So it must be the motor speed controller board.

So since I had pickups to wind I removed the belt from the motor, and the left bobbin holder, which I never use, and I chucked my DeWalt variable speed drill on the shaft. I stuck something under the drill to support it, and started winding that way, with my left hand on the drill trigger.

This was supposed to be temporary, but I really like being able to wind faster than with the stock motor. I go about half way up on the drill speed, and it's at least twice as fast as the fastest speed on the original motor.

So replacing the motor could be a good thing. I can wind a coil in half the time as before.

Alternatively, without having to build a winder from scratch, what is the next step up from the schatten machine?

My next step is to build a winder. I already got a counter and some proxy switches. I'm going to pick up a Shop Fox bench top lathe to use as the winder's base. Then I just have to make a control box to house the counter and an outlet to switch the motor off at the preset.

After that I'm going to figure out some kind of auto traverse and tensioner. My goal is to load up a bobbin and press start.

I'd love to find a used machine like belwar did, but I haven't seen any.

Amazon.com: SHOP FOX W1704 1/3 HP Benchtop Lathe: Home Improvement

Amazon.com: SHOP FOX W1704 1/3 HP Benchtop Lathe: Home Improvement