hand winders or cnc winder

[RedHouse]

Holy crap, I just made that up and it would fit right into a Kung Fu script!

Ok someone check J's forearms, I bet he's got some dragon's scalded-in there!

Wait a second, let me just pop this into my secret decoder ring, oh yep, just as I suspected: J=Qui Gun=Chang Dry=Cain

[copperheadroads]

J=Qui Gun=Chang Dry=Cain

Take your winder n run
The MIB has been dispatched

[David Schwab]

Well here's one thing you can't do with a computer, pen and ink drawings. They've tried and tried, pressure sensitive digital pens and sophisticated tablets.

I've seen some amazing pen and ink drawings done in Illustrator. It's not easy, but lots of people do it everyday. Some stuff that you think is pen and ink is vector. You see examples of these in the Illustrator books on the market.

This is vector art:



Looks like pen and ink to me.

It's good to know how to do both. My son is in the other room using a fountain pen and ink well.

[David Schwab]

You can tell your laywyer, I have "prior art" rights, several years prior..... ;-)

Multiple bobbins at once-I haven't actually tried to do it and I think the quality would suffer, coils are done too fast to watch more than one and get it right in my opinion. I'm always futzing with tension and adjustments to make sure I don't wind lop sided coils. I'd rather do one good set of pickups than six that are just OK, but thats me.

Dave, if you have an auto winder and you have to babysit it while it's winding, it's not very auto is it? How would you get lop sided coils on a CNC winder?

I think this is your particular setup and not true of all CNC winders.

[RedHouse]

Dave, if you have an auto winder and you have to babysit it while it's winding, it's not very auto is it? How would you get lop sided coils on a CNC winder?

I think this is your particular setup and not true of all CNC winders.

I was thinking the same thing, lop-sided coils with an autowinder? WTF?.

[the great waldo]

It's dead easy to get lop-sided coils on an autowinder. Cnc winders work great but you still have to set them up. If I had a play of Erics Blackie would I sound like him, Fat chance.
Cheers

Andrew

I was thinking the same thing, lop-sided coils with an autowinder? WTF?.

[JGundry]

Lopsided coils end to end is a run out issue and top or bottom heavy coils is a traverse travel issue. They apply to mechanical auto traverse or CNC winders. Paying to have fixtures made by a machinist out of aluminum will address the run out usually. Then it is just a matter of dialing in the traverse for the coil shape you want.

[RedHouse]

It's dead easy to get lop-sided coils on an autowinder. Cnc winders work great but you still have to set them up. If I had a play of Erics Blackie would I sound like him, Fat chance.
Cheers

Andrew

Actually, quite the opposite, it's hard to get lop-sided coils on an autowinder. Setting up an auto-wind is much the same as setting up your traverse limit/stops on a manual winder.

I do believe you though about Eric's blackie.

[the great waldo]

Hi Brad
Gundry gave you the right way to make lop sided winds !!
Cheers

Andrew

Actually, quite the opposite, it's hard to get lop-sided coils on an autowinder. Setting up an auto-wind is much the same as setting up your traverse limit/stops on a manual winder.

I do believe you though about Eric's blackie.

[Possum]

Lop sided coils are just an issue of end stops. Not every bobbin is identical and they vary from batch to batch, plus my rig can slip or get changed from previous winding of Fender or other type coils, which means moving the end stops as a unit measurement over to the side or back. A tiny difference where the end stop is and it'll pile up on that end or taper down on one end. Doesn't matter what kind of winder it is, if the stops aren't perfectly set it'll pile up on one end. My setup is so simple its just a matter of a manual slide action to recenter for tiny adjustments. End stops also determine whether you get a flatter coil or a rounder coil. You might want to buy Lollar's book before you get into auto winding, he describes all the defects of improper setup etc. his winder after all IS an auto winder if you build it straight from the book.

Damn right I watch my coils start to finish, no matter how they're wound. My coils have to be perfect or they get cut off and done over. And by perfect I don't mean perfect ;-) My traverse is all CNC run, but no I don't have it linked to the actual winder motor or scynch'd and don't want it too. To do that you have to add stuff that makes it more complex to build and run, more shit to go wrong, more cost and time lost if it dies. I have a complete backup winder and a complete back up PC, the stuff is dirt cheap and will do anything I want it to, almost infinitely adjustable, infinitely programmable so easy anyone can do it, the software writes the code and you only need know one line of code at all.

[Possum]

Just because its vector art doesn't mean it was created that way. Remember Adobe Streamline? That was a fun program that would trace line art and you could get various different cool looks by changing the parameters on it. I don't do graphics anymore so am not up on what PS and Illustrator's current versions can do, probably auto tracing in those now I bet. Fountain pens are freaking cool. My famous humorous illustrator friend is Elwood Smith of Pushpin Graphics fame. He is known for doing his art with a Pelikan fountain on watercolor Arches handmade paper with FW ink. I met him when trying to find FW ink again after 20 years of not doing cartoons and found out on his site that Steig Products no longer exists. FW was the only water proof india ink that works in fountain pens without killing them and is fully waterproof and jet black. The Japanese have an ink thats waterproof but its grey and clogs pens. Anyway, I found some vintage bottles of FW on Ebay that are over 30 years old and still function as new, it was one of the most amazing inks ever made; I tried to interest some American ink makers to try recreating it and ran up an unbelievable brick wall, no one had any interest in it, despite the fact that just about every fountain pen artist would buy it and when it was being made it sold in every art store on the planet, think of the profit potential. Nope, American ink makers had no interest and were insulted that their crappy attempts at waterproof fountain pen ink never even got close to Steig's inks. The Steig brothers included William Steig a world famous cartoonist and book illustrator; they also made the only opaque white ink that would work in a Rapidograph that no one has equalled either. Anyway, Steig sold out to Daler Rowney in the UK (as they were too old to work anymore), and they altered the formula and pissed off every artist that used to use it, it killed any fountain pen you put it into. I managed to contact them and interested them in making it again, long story, but the final result is that it can't be made again, they claim, because of some US regulation about carbon particle size, which I think was a cover story for it being too expensive to make a big profit on. They made an initial batch from old stock that was perfect, then the production batch clogged my pens, total failure. There is a big fountain pen forum I visit sometimes, and I have various vintage artist fountain pens and writing pens I use for my experiment documentation notes with archival ink (not waterproof). For drawing though there's nothing like dip pens for cartooning. Some guys use markers, but they aren't light fast, the points wear down fast, total crap......

[the great waldo]

Hi Brad
Gundry gave you the right way to make lop sided winds !!
Cheers

Andrew

Actually, quite the opposite, it's hard to get lop-sided coils on an autowinder. Setting up an auto-wind is much the same as setting up your traverse limit/stops on a manual winder.

I do believe you though about Eric's blackie.

[David Schwab]

Just because its vector art doesn't mean it was created that way. Remember Adobe Streamline? That was a fun program that would trace line art and you could get various different cool looks by changing the parameters on it. I don't do graphics anymore so am not up on what PS and Illustrator's current versions can do, probably auto tracing in those now I bet.

Oh yeah, I used to use Streamline. You can trace right in Illustrator now.

I agree about hand drawing, but some people do some great work. Here's an example I found:

Make Watercolor and Marker Style Portraits with Illustrator

[RedHouse]

... A tiny difference where the end stop is and it'll pile up on that end or taper down on one end. Doesn't matter what kind of winder it is, if the stops aren't perfectly set it'll pile up on one end. My setup is so simple its just a matter of a manual slide action to recenter for tiny adjustments....

Must be something you're doing (or not doing right) as I certainly don't experience that problem at all, never have.

In fact I'd go one step further and say that I'd have to try pretty darn hard to get a lop-sided coil on my machines, but maybe that's due to your simple setup giving you problems with lop-sided coils and having to constantly tweak things.

...My traverse is all CNC run, but no I don't have it linked to the actual winder motor or scynch'd and don't want it too. To do that you have to add stuff that makes it more complex to build and run, more shit to go wrong, more cost and time lost if it dies...

If it's not linked-n-sync'd you're not really getting consistant coils, but yeah, with a setup like that you're quite right to avoid attempting multiple coils at once.

[Possum]

Its all by intent, RedHouse ;-) It'd be easy for me to buy a linked Adams Maxwell traverse but then I'd be getting too much "machine" in my coils ;-) If anything breaks, its just a $20 or $30 fix from any CNC supply place. I don't want anything "better." Even a vintage winder with some supposed qualities is a limitation, or an industrial CNC winder would be too, you're stuck with its limitations. Because nothing is locked-in on my set up I can change anything real easily for different effects. If someone sent me a fancy expensive auto winder as a gift I'd just sell it on Ebay, or a Leesona, or anything else, have no use for 'em. I love my winder and for me there's nothing better...