Tension!!! the never ending battle continues :confused:

[copperheadroads]

I'm going to try felt tensioners again ......What is the best felt ,I've tried Sham-wow,craft felt & a few other stuff that I have heard mentioned on this forum & the tension gets loose ...Maybe wool ?.......

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

I use wool washers that I got from McMaster, but it isn't responsible for all of the tension of my rig. Using washers lets me put it on a rod and then use stoppers with set screws to set the tension around it. It isn't great for fine adjustment, but I get fine adjustments later in the line so it doesn't matter for me. YMMV.

I imagine craft felt would wear out quickly.

Maybe the stuff hardware stores sell to put on the feet of furniture to protect hardwood flooring?

[Bruce Johnson]

I made my tensioner using soft silicone rubber as the friction pads. They are sections of adhesive-backed strip seal material, from the hardware store, as used to seal up windows and doors. I used that as a quick and dirty solution when I first built my winder in 2005, and the original pieces are still going strong. They seem to give me a consistent drag that's adjustable, and I don't have to readjust them often. The pads have black lines on them from rubbing the wire, but they don't appear to be wearing or cutting grooves. I run my tension at about 20gm.

I think soft silicone rubber is a good material for a tension-drag device. It's basically slippery, but very conformable and very durable. I've thought about making up a better tensioner eventually, which would have two vertical round rods, with slices of silicone rubber tubing over them. The wire would pass between the two pieces of tubing, and the tension would be adjusted by squeezing them together. That arrangement would probably give finer adjustment.

For now, my current rig is working fine.

[copperheadroads]

My latest tensioner uses a piece of silicone (Actually inspired by a previous post by you Bruce about your silicone weather stripping)
My problem is not losing tension ,but it starts to cut a very small notch in the silicone & the tension increases

[David King]

I think good wool felt is pretty long lasting. Dremel makes wool polishing pads you can buy in any hobby shop that work well. You can slice them thinner. Another excellent source of top quality felt is a piano rebuilder or the piano repair storefronts on ebay.

[-Elepro-]

did you experiment with stepper motor?

[copperheadroads]

did you experiment with stepper motor?

Not really, & think I wrecked the stepper motor trying to remove the gear but I do have another old printer around here somewhere
I'm trying Dremel buffing pads & they do look promising ....Thanks Mr King

[jbforrer]

Greetings,

Interesting and useful thread.

I'm still doing it the old-fashioned "slip through the fingers" tension control but seriously contemplating some more mechanical and reproducible way.

Has anyone entertained a means to actually measure tension?

Was thinking about a spring-loaded mechanism installed on the wire path between the felt pads and spindle. The wire passes over a sensing bar/pulley that pulls on the spring thus providing a measurable deflection distance proportional to tension. That way I can adjust the pad pressure and more or less get consistent tension over my winds. At this time I'm not considering a closed-loop servo, maybe a later possibility if its worth it.

Thanks.
-JBF.

[SonnyW]

Greetings,

Interesting and useful thread.

I'm still doing it the old-fashioned "slip through the fingers" tension control but seriously contemplating some more mechanical and reproducible way.

Has anyone entertained a means to actually measure tension?

Was thinking about a spring-loaded mechanism installed on the wire path between the felt pads and spindle. The wire passes over a sensing bar/pulley that pulls on the spring thus providing a measurable deflection distance proportional to tension. That way I can adjust the pad pressure and more or less get consistent tension over my winds. At this time I'm not considering a closed-loop servo, maybe a later possibility if its worth it.

Thanks.
-JBF.

I also use the slip through the fingers method on my handwinds, but on machine winds I use a Jonard gauge. My winder uses a felt and thumbscrew tensioning scheme. I have modified that slightly by inserting a replaceable folded piece of thinner felt in the tensioner in addition to the original felts, so that I can replace the felts every dozen coils or so, or at least move the track on the felt. The felt does build up some residue from the wire. When I change wire or re-thread the machine, I set the tension using the Jonard gauge. Usually I use between 20 - 30 grams of tension. I have found that the tension will remain pretty much constant for several coils after that. After doing this for some time, I have developed a feel for it and I can get it pretty close by hand before final testing with the gauge. Here is a photo of the gauge I use. They are kind of expensive new but if you keep looking on ebay they do come up from time to time. I got this one for $20.