Tensioners (again)

[jack briggs]

Scored one of these recently from Remington for half retail!! Upon checking their page today it seems they have sold out - lucky me.







Cheers,

[kayakerca]

Excellent, I'll keep looking into it. Seems if I'm just doing a traverse then Arduino would be simple enough to set up with hardware control. PC control would be ideal for doing the winder part too but I'm not sure I'd go that far just yet as my winder works fine. On the other hand it might be best to keep the current winder as is and make something entirely new without needing to get it working quickly.

I have 2 winders. My CNC winder and a mechanical sync'd traverse winder based on the Jason Lollar book. I added a mechanical tachometer to the mechanical winder so I could lay down the desired tpl based on predetermined speed ratios of the winder and the traverser motors. It worked very well, but the speeds on the a/c motors vary a bit (which probably gives you s minor random tpl change if that's something you look for). I did find myself constantly monitoring the speeds of both motors so they would produce reasonably consistent results from wind to wind for a desired recipe.

I did like you are thinking, kept the first and built a second. I definitely believe that you get more out of the CNC winder if you have it do both wind and traverse and sync those functions through the software so they operate 100% in unison based on turn speed and tpl. When you are done, you have all bases cover. Hand winding on the original mechanical winder, snyc'd auto traverse winding on the original mechanical winder and fully synced on the CNC with the potential only being limited by the ability to code. By far, the feature I like the most between the auto traverse mechanical winder and the CNC winder is the ease with which you can wind bobbins with different heights. You just enter the bobbin in the software interface. No testing to see the travel distance is correct. No bobbins to fabricate. Just one simple alignment to one of the inside edges and away you go. But, syncing is never an issue with hand guided winding.

I like the dance tensioners, but I haven't experienced any negative consequences of the straight felt tensioner setup. I'm sure they exist, just my ear can't detect them in the tone of the end product.

[David Schwab]

Man, I'm only in my 30's

Thinking about cymbal felts for this btw

I'll be 56 this year. Except for my eyesight I'm doing great!

Was recently dating a 20 year old lol

[jack briggs]

I'll be 56 this year. Except for my eyesight I'm doing great!

Was recently dating a 20 year old lol

55 in a couple months for me, David. except for the 20 yr. old bit..... right on!

cheers,

[David Schwab]

Kind of more trouble than it was worth... all women are crazy, but 20 year olds are crazier lol

[kayakerca]

Kind of more trouble than it was worth... all women are crazy, but 20 year olds are crazier lol

Absolutely David, but most of us old guys figured that out LONG before we were in our 50's!

Well, except for the ones we stayed married to for 35 plus years. They're keepers!

[copperheadroads]

Kind of more trouble than it was worth... all women are crazy, but 20 year olds are crazier lol

& we wish we 20 again ,Crazy women & at is acceptable,

[ReWind]

Scored one of these recently from Remington for half retail!! Upon checking their page today it seems they have sold out - lucky me.


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Cheers,

Those are made by Azonic. Azonic supplies them for other companies, but you can also buy direct. I've seen them sold under Remington, Bachi, George Stevens, Acme, etc. I have two from Azonic at the moment (one a prototype that I'm evaluating/reporting on for them) and I also have 12 of the same exact design, probably 10+ years old and labeled as Azonic and Bachi both.

Very cool devices. There are a number of mods you can do to them to make them work better with high speed pickup bobbins. Having start/stop ramping on your machine is a big help. Most of their problems are with hard starts and stops. I've just ordered some high speed double sealed bearings and brass bushings for my lot of 12, as well as some round nylon 6/6 stock. I'm going to make new pulleys all around for them on my lathe as soon as I have a moment to work on something that already works. ha! Reducing the moving mass on these makes them more accurate and able to run faster/higher tensions as well as reducing the resonant peaks in their operating range.

[jack briggs]

Those are made by Azonic. Azonic supplies them for other companies, but you can also buy direct. I've seen them sold under Remington, Bachi, George Stevens, Acme, etc. I have two from Azonic at the moment (one a prototype that I'm evaluating/reporting on for them) and I also have 12 of the same exact design, probably 10+ years old and labeled as Azonic and Bachi both.

Very cool devices. There are a number of mods you can do to them to make them work better with high speed pickup bobbins. Having start/stop ramping on your machine is a big help. Most of their problems are with hard starts and stops. I've just ordered some high speed double sealed bearings and brass bushings for my lot of 12, as well as some round nylon 6/6 stock. I'm going to make new pulleys all around for them on my lathe as soon as I have a moment to work on something that already works. ha! Reducing the moving mass on these makes them more accurate and able to run faster/higher tensions as well as reducing the resonant peaks in their operating range.

Yes - I know. Price one from Azonic and it's $539. Remington sold me this one for $265, NIB! It has the Azonic label on it. Seems to work pretty well, but I added a simple felt-lined alligator clip between the outfeed roller of the Azonic and the guide of the traverse mech. My spindle speed is only about 700-800 RPM as anything over that causes the optical sensor of the traverse system to freak out and mis-pulse. Since I'm not winding for the aftermarket but only for my guitars, time is less of a concern.

Cheers,

[ReWind]

You're right about the out outfeed idler needing something to keep the wire in place. They have a little felt bumper on some of their units, not sure why it didn't make it to all of them? It's really handy, but I'm sure the clip works as good, or better. This is the only photo they have up where I could find it. I wouldn't mind having something like that on the spring gauge idler, too. At the moment, I've got some oversized outfeed pulleys and I wrap the wire around them a full revolution, like the main tensioner pulley, but without the o-ring, as only one of my tension heads has that bumper.



They also have something of a dancer arm attachment on some that you don't see often. It's useful for pulling up any slack before/after winding a coil. I have



If you ever need parts or anything from Azonic, give a fella named Wes there a ring and let him know your a pickup winder colleague of mine. I'm sure he'll take care of you, he's a great guy to work with. I didn't pay MAP for any of my stuff. They probably put that up to give resellers some margin room. Most of those parts can be found at McMaster, also.

[ReWind]

Here's a little video of my modest and simple tensioning system at my repair and reproduction station.

[the great waldo]

Hello Hello

I think I recognize that machine, it's dad is sitting in my back room. Definitely looks like a Sean special.

Cheers

Andrew

Here's a little video of my modest and simple tensioning system at my repair and reproduction station.

[ReWind]

Yep. Sean and I worked together on the design of that one. I'm still working on it, now that it's here in the US. I'm adding support for 2 more bobbins, so 6 at once. I've changed a number of other things too, including putting some limit switches on the traverse for easier "homing" after shutting down before homing the shuttle. Probably the best thing I did for it was remove the feeder nozzle section. Winding oblong bobbins so close to nozzles kinks the wire up and down at the nozzle tip twice per revolution. I initially removed them because of that, but then found that feeding directly from the post tensioners in the shuttle at a further distance back from the bobbin, made the wire move about during the winding. It's just like it does on my Geo. Stevens, which is fed by a copper arm with a slot and a couple pulleys on the feeder head, from about the same distance and similar to what I see on many repair jobs on older pickups. The coils coming off it now are indistinguishable from the Stevens if I set the CNC machine to the same specs. That bit of free play the wire has is definitely a massive improvement to me. Massive improvement. I'm not sure if yours is set up the same, but I was feeding the wire from a nozzle only a few inches from the bobbin. The wire would lay down exactly where it was put, and get jerked around in the process. I like the "free play factor" in it now. If you can remove the entire nozzle off the front, try it. If you can feed backwards through the felt, then through the pulleys (like on the factory version of the winder) even better. I'm going to put an out feed idler pulley on each of the 6 feeds soon. The wire coming off the pulley wouldn't be jerked around as much as with the nozzles because the feedoff area is sloped. Then I can move the final feeder idlers closer or further from the bobbins to dial in the amount of "slop" verses the program data.

[the great waldo]

Hi Rewind

I removed the rollers and just use the felt to tension and those little plastic nozzles to feed the wire a couple of inches back. I found the important thing for getting the coil shape right was to not use the actual coil size in the software parameters. I've got a tanac mt100 lying around here somewhere and will give it a go, and when i've got a spare minute (LOL) i'll have to sort out some way of having fast change bobbin holders and probably get a stiffer form of feed nozzle. I was thinking of updating the original feed nozzle holder with a spring loaded one which allows up and down movement of the nozzle to go with the oblong bobbin shape. At the moment I just have the nozzle frame screws set a wee bit loose to stop any snaging but am aiming for a sightly fancier version. Oh well back to the floods outside the house. I live by the Danube and the waters up 11 meters because of the rain.

Cheers

Andrew

Yep. Sean and I worked together on the design of that one. I'm still working on it, now that it's here in the US. I'm adding support for 2 more bobbins, so 6 at once. I've changed a number of other things too, including putting some limit switches on the traverse for easier "homing" after shutting down before homing the shuttle. Probably the best thing I did for it was remove the feeder nozzle section. Winding oblong bobbins so close to nozzles kinks the wire up and down at the nozzle tip twice per revolution. I initially removed them because of that, but then found that feeding directly from the post tensioners in the shuttle at a further distance back from the bobbin, made the wire move about during the winding. It's just like it does on my Geo. Stevens, which is fed by a copper arm with a slot and a couple pulleys on the feeder head, from about the same distance and similar to what I see on many repair jobs on older pickups. The coils coming off it now are indistinguishable from the Stevens if I set the CNC machine to the same specs. That bit of free play the wire has is definitely a massive improvement to me. Massive improvement. I'm not sure if yours is set up the same, but I was feeding the wire from a nozzle only a few inches from the bobbin. The wire would lay down exactly where it was put, and get jerked around in the process. I like the "free play factor" in it now. If you can remove the entire nozzle off the front, try it. If you can feed backwards through the felt, then through the pulleys (like on the factory version of the winder) even better. I'm going to put an out feed idler pulley on each of the 6 feeds soon. The wire coming off the pulley wouldn't be jerked around as much as with the nozzles because the feedoff area is sloped. Then I can move the final feeder idlers closer or further from the bobbins to dial in the amount of "slop" verses the program data.

[David Schwab]

Absolutely David, but most of us old guys figured that out LONG before we were in our 50's!

Well, except for the ones we stayed married to for 35 plus years. They're keepers!

I was married for nine years, until last year. She's only 19 years younger. lol still crazy, but we are still good friends, so that counts for something.

And yeah, I figured that out a long time ago too.