Help with homemade pickup winder electronics!

[SkinnyWire]

Cheapest best bet for a motor is probably a sewing machine motor. They're easy to work with and adapt to the purpose:

SEWING MACHINE MOTOR - LATHE - ROCK TUMBLER - FISHING LINE SPOOLER | eBay

They cost a bit more new, but depending on how much you wind you may never need more than one. Small (say 2 Amp) variac for speed control. No issues with speed changes under load/operation as with a dimmer. You can usually find them on eBay as well. Make sure they're 110/220VAC.

I concur with the IR optical sensor for the counter. That's what I use. You can get them from Digi-Key for a few bucks with darlington pairs to drive the output (don't recall the part number on mine, but I can dig it up). All you need is a wall wart and a resistor or two to generate a rectangular wave of whatever duty cycle you want (based on how you make/break the IR beam). Feed that to the input of a digital counter, and you're good - Veeder-Root or Durant makes digital LCD counters with 10-year batteries that are nice. I didn't check this one close to see that it functions in the manner required, but it gives you an idea of what they look like:

Durant 53300400 Digital Counter H18 (706) | eBay

In my opinion, simpler is better. Fewer moving parts means fewer thing to break and easier repairs when they do break. Good luck. Have fun.

[fenderlad1122]

Cheapest best bet for a motor is probably a sewing machine motor. They're easy to work with and adapt to the purpose:

SEWING MACHINE MOTOR - LATHE - ROCK TUMBLER - FISHING LINE SPOOLER | eBay

They cost a bit more new, but depending on how much you wind you may never need more than one. Small (say 2 Amp) variac for speed control. No issues with speed changes under load/operation as with a dimmer. You can usually find them on eBay as well. Make sure they're 110/220VAC.

I concur with the IR optical sensor for the counter. That's what I use. You can get them from Digi-Key for a few bucks with darlington pairs to drive the output (don't recall the part number on mine, but I can dig it up). All you need is a wall wart and a resistor or two to generate a rectangular wave of whatever duty cycle you want (based on how you make/break the IR beam). Feed that to the input of a digital counter, and you're good - Veeder-Root or Durant makes digital LCD counters with 10-year batteries that are nice. I didn't check this one close to see that it functions in the manner required, but it gives you an idea of what they look like:

Durant 53300400 Digital Counter H18 (706) | eBay

In my opinion, simpler is better. Fewer moving parts means fewer thing to break and easier repairs when they do break. Good luck. Have fun.

hey mate thankyou for the advice i am logging everything thats being written for future use. i got an old sewing machine from my mother in law its my new pickup winder, a few posts up theres a link of it i havent had to do anything to it. im going to add a mechanical counter to it just hooked up to a calculator like you said the simpler the better.

thanks again your a ledgend.