What kinds of coil-winding tensioner do people use, or avoid?

[Joe Gwinn]

I've been thinking about what technical properties and designs are required of a tensioner for it to work for winding pickup coils, which are far from round, and I'm curious to know what makes and models of tensioner are known to work or (more to the point) not to work for winding pickup coils.

Lots of people use spring-loaded wool felt and/or their fingers. This works well until production volume grows, and the fingers wear out.

I recall Possum trying an Azotic tensioner, which failed miserably, and was returned to the maker. (I think Possum became despondent and reverted to felt.)

I also recall that there were tensioners on the old mechanical Leesona winders used by Fender in the 50s and 60s, so I assume that these tensioners did work.

Anyway, I'm fishing for ideas and experiences.

[ken]

Joe,

I still use fingers for most things, which also really helps when I go ultralight fishing. Four pound test fishing line feels like a garden hose next to 43 gauge wire.

On my Stevens winder, I'm still using the weirdo tensioners I got when I bought it. Here is an example.

The only problem was trying to find spare parts - there aren't any. Also, the tensioner has to be kept obsessively spotlessly clean with no lube anywhere
or it will break the wire. However, it works great as long as you don't wind too fast... or the wire wasn't put on the spool too tight or too loose...
or the electric brake was maladjusted... or the moon was full...

ken

[Steve Conner]

I only have experience winding the ordinary sorts of coils used in electronics, which are made roundish for easy winding. It's a mystery to me how anyone can wind pickup coils at high speed at all, let alone control the scatter consistently.

[Tom Phillips]

It's a mystery to me how anyone can wind pickup coils at high speed at all, let alone control the scatter consistently.

+1 to that. On a related note I recently ran across an interesting video interview with Abigail Ybarra. She has been winding pickups at Fender since 1956. The video is available at The Queen of Tone.. (Abigail Ybarra) - YouTube
Tom

[madialex]

+1 to that. On a related note I recently ran across an interesting video interview with Abigail Ybarra. She has been winding pickups at Fender since 1956. The video is available at The Queen of Tone.. (Abigail Ybarra) - YouTube
Tom

notice there are no limiters.

[Joe Gwinn]

I only have experience winding the ordinary sorts of coils used in electronics, which are made roundish for easy winding. It's a mystery to me how anyone can wind pickup coils at high speed at all, let alone control the scatter consistently.

It's amazing what one can learn to control by hand. Think of a golf swing. The club head is moving far too fast for thinking, and yet if you close your eyes you'll miss, so the eyes are somehow in the control loop. But it takes lots of practice for this to work.

I saw a guitarist in a concert a few months ago. Don't recall the artist's name, but he had very long thin fingers (spider fingers) and in a riff his fingers literally disappeared into a blur. The hand is truly quicker than the eye. Again, one cannot think that fast, and lots of practice is required. Nor was he looking at his fingers as he played.

[Joe Gwinn]

On my Stevens winder, I'm still using the weirdo tensioners I got when I bought it. Here is an example.

Who is it made by? Are there any markings? The photos isn't quite clear enough to tell how it works, although I think i see a brake shoe and lever arm.

The only problem was trying to find spare parts - there aren't any.

The manufacturer is long gone, maybe even the name is gone.

Also, the tensioner has to be kept obsessively spotlessly clean with no lube anywhere
or it will break the wire. However, it works great as long as you don't wind too fast... or the wire wasn't put on the spool too tight or too loose...
or the electric brake was maladjusted... or the moon was full...

As for the no-lube requirement and fussiness about the feed spool, the tensioner may be missing its pre-tensioner.

How fast can you wind, in rpm?

What usually breaks? Hmm. Do you have a broken tensioner I can borrow? If I can (given the capabilities of the machine tools in my shop), I'll make new parts and repair the unit. Not to mention measure its every detail.

[SonnyW]

On my machine winder, I use two sets of felt tensioners, plus the Azonic whisker disks. I have different sizes for different spools of wire. The wire comes off the spool vertically and the whisker disk slows it down enough to eliminate tangles, then it goes through a guide and then through the first felt tensioner which I keep fairly loose. The second felt tensioner is in line with the first one about three inches away and it is the one that I adjust the tension with. Both of them are just a couple of pieces of 1/4 inch felt about 1 inch by two inches, the top felt is glued to an aluminum plate and tensioned with two thumb screws. The spool is stationary but the guide and both felt tensioners move with the traverse. I use a Jonard spring gauge to adjust the tension to whatever grams I need. It works for me.



The four contraptions on the rod I am not sure of the function of, I think they might be tensioners for larger wire. The three rollers to the side are part of a taping attachment that I don't use, but in either case I didn't take them off.

[ken]

Here is the back of the unit, 'upside down' so you can see manufacturer's markings and also right side up with the adjusting knob at the top.
You can click on the photos to make them bigger.

I did some research, and found out this is part of a 'gang tensioner' used with a winder that can wind many small coils at once. Think little bitty TV or radio tuner oscillator coils. The winder has a long arbor (mandrel) and the coil forms all mount on it in a long row like shish kebab does on its stick when you're barbecuing. I made a long arbor for it so I can use the machine to wind humbucker coils the same way - four at a time.

This unit is bolted to a rod through the hole in its middle, and the rod is then mounted in a rack with a spool of wire dedicated to it. Each tensioner would be set up to deal with a specific gauge of wire. Want to change wire gauges? Use a different tensioner.

I have a few tools too , but luckily I didn't have to replace much. I only replaced a couple of springs and some felt brake pads.

My main issue was using the unit with a five pound spool, the wire coming off the spool was whipping around too much and getting caught where the wire enters the unit. I went to a sporting goods store and bought the biggest ultralight fishing spinning rod line guides I could find and some 3/32" brass music wire to make a wire guide. I used a carboloy? guide so the guide wouldn't ever wear out or catch and break the wire. This way the wire feeds much neater off the spool and doesn't get caught going into the tensioner.

The tensioner is very simple really... the big black wheel has the wire going around it and rotates, the lever arm is very short so it isn't very sensitive (this can be a help with very fine wire) and the tires on the wheels are just rubber O rings. This thing was designed to basically last forever. I wound a round coil using 44 gauge wire to test it, and if it's set up juuuust right will wind Tele rhythm pickup bobbins with 43PE all day.





ken

[Joe Gwinn]

Here is the back of the unit, 'upside down' so you can see manufacturer's markings and also right side up with the adjusting knob at the top.
You can click on the photos to make them bigger.

The attachments came up as invalid links, so something didn't work.

A few edge-on photos would also help.

I did some research, and found out this is part of a 'gang tensioner' used with a winder that can wind many small coils at once. Think little bitty TV or radio tuner oscillator coils. The winder has a long arbor (mandrel) and the coil forms all mount on it in a long row like shish kebab does on its stick when you're barbecuing. I made a long arbor for it so I can use the machine to wind humbucker coils the same way - four at a time.

This unit is bolted to a rod through the hole in its middle, and the rod is then mounted in a rack with a spool of wire dedicated to it. Each tensioner would be set up to deal with a specific gauge of wire. Want to change wire gauges? Use a different tensioner.

The tensioner cannot be adjusted? What wire guage and tension are these units made to provide?

I have a few tools too , but luckily I didn't have to replace much. I only replaced a couple of springs and some felt brake pads.

My tools weigh more than your tools? I have a lathe and a vertical mill, so I could make just about everything I see in the picture. But no need for springs and felt pads. I thought something major was broken. But one can wind music-wire springs on a lathe. Or make a winding jig.

My main issue was using the unit with a five pound spool, the wire coming off the spool was whipping around too much and getting caught where the wire enters the unit.

Sounds like a whisker disk would be helpful.

I went to a sporting goods store and bought the biggest ultralight fishing spinning rod line guides I could find and some 3/32" brass music wire to make a wire guide. I used a carboloy? guide so the guide wouldn't ever wear out or catch and break the wire. This way the wire feeds much neater off the spool and doesn't get caught going into the tensioner.

That works, and I've seen exactly that approach on textile machinery. I think. I'm not really visualizing this part.

The tensioner is very simple really... the big black wheel has the wire going around it and rotates, the lever arm is very short so it isn't very sensitive (this can be a help with very fine wire) and the tires on the wheels are just rubber O rings. This thing was designed to basically last forever.

What is the diameter of the big wheel? That will give me the scale. The parts seem to be injection-molded of a black plastic of some kind, and so should be fairly light. Can you tell what it's made of?

What is the lever arm made of? How thick is it?

The issue with the short arm and fine wire is not the sensitivity per se, it's the inertia of the mechanism, chiefly the arm and the roller at the end, which appears to be made of brass. When winding oblong bobbins such as for a pickup, the wire speed varies cyclically with two pulses per rotation. If the tensioner mechanism inertia is too high the force required to abruptly accelerate the parts of the mechanism exceeds the strength of the wire, which breaks. Even if it doesn't break, the insulating film may be disrupted, causing increased propensity to short between turns.

This, plus mechanical resonance I suspect, is what did the Azonic tensioner in when Possum tried it.

I wound a round coil using 44 gauge wire to test it, and if it's set up juuuust right will wind Tele rhythm pickup bobbins with 43PE all day.

How many turns in how many minutes? I'm trying to estimate the max rpm the tensioner can handle. This plus the inertia governs the stress on the wire, and the pulses per second sets the resonance limit.

[SonnyW]

+1 to that. On a related note I recently ran across an interesting video interview with Abigail Ybarra. She has been winding pickups at Fender since 1956. The video is available at The Queen of Tone.. (Abigail Ybarra) - YouTube
Tom

Thanks Tom for posting that video link. I hadn't seen it before. Notice the bright light from above and the white card behind the bobbin, so she can see the shape of the coil as it fills, and also how she steadies her hand on the table. Also I think it matters about the distance from her fingers up to the bobbin. These are all the same things that I have ended up doing before I saw this and I think all of them help controlling scatter and coil shape while winding. I was also watching the counter and she wasn't winding what I would call terribly fast. I was impressed that she could keep her concentration and do the interview, but then again she started winding when I was 8 years old. I have unwound several of her pickups and her winding is very consistently done.

[ken]

I'm going to try to answer all Joe's questions. I have already reposted the broken photo links, just click on them to make them bigger.

I think the tensioner was designed for winding 28 gauge or smaller TV coils, many thousands of them of one kind before resetting. The knob at the top of the tensioner with the spring and the brake shoe mounting screws are the only real adjusters.

The black plastic ring is 3" diameter and 1/4" thick. It does seem to be injection molded or even turned on a lathe since all the corners are sharp. It isn't made of styrene or butyrate, after all these years it is still perfectly flat and hasn't warped or deformed. It's a dense plastic, it's relatively heavy.

The Geo. Stevens winder runs at an average speed of 300 RPM at the mainshaft for round coils, I have my winder at 1/3 full speed or a little more to do humbucker coils.

My problem was that the tensioner is only about 16" above the top of a five pound spool of wire, so when the wire comes off the top of the spool it still is in relatively big loops. I use the guide to neck the wire down before it enters the tensioner so it doesn't get caught where the wire enters the tensioner.
I have the winder in storage right now, so I'll have to go there to take another photo.

ken

[Joe Gwinn]

I'm going to try to answer all Joe's questions. I have already reposted the broken photo links, just click on them to make them bigger.

They work; thanks.

I think the tensioner was designed for winding 28 gauge or smaller TV coils, many thousands of them of one kind before resetting. The knob at the top of the tensioner with the spring and the brake shoe mounting screws are the only real adjusters.

From 28 AWG (0.0137" dia single build) to 43 AWG (0.0025" dia) is a big jump, 5.5 to 1, and yet it can be teased into working.

What do the adjustments change?

The black plastic ring is 3" diameter and 1/4" thick. It does seem to be injection molded or even turned on a lathe since all the corners are sharp. It isn't made of styrene or butyrate, after all these years it is still perfectly flat and hasn't warped or deformed. It's a dense plastic, it's relatively heavy.

I'd guess Bakelite, given the age and your description. And Bakelite easily does sharp edges. Modern winders seem to use nylon or delrin.

You mentioned that the tire in the pulley was some rubber O-rings. I'm guessing that it is a pair of rings side-by-side in a tight-fitting rectangular groove.

The Geo. Stevens winder runs at an average speed of 300 RPM at the mainshaft for round coils, I have my winder at 1/3 full speed or a little more to do humbucker coils.

So, you are winding pickups at 100 rpm?

My problem was that the tensioner is only about 16" above the top of a five pound spool of wire, so when the wire comes off the top of the spool it still is in relatively big loops. I use the guide to neck the wire down before it enters the tensioner so it doesn't get caught where the wire enters the tensioner.

People also use funnels for this. I've used pieces of teflon tubing.

I have the winder in storage right now, so I'll have to go there to take another photo.

I gather you've had the unit apart. A useful photo would have all the pieces spread out on a blue background, with a steel ruler in the picture, for scale.

[JGundry]

Try two felts of lower tension. One near the spool and one near the wire guide.

[David Schwab]

It's a mystery to me how anyone can wind pickup coils at high speed at all, let alone control the scatter consistently.

It's not hard at all once you get the hang of it. I go really fast, and you just guide the wire back and forth.

As to the question, currently my fingers.