Re-Spooling?

[ReWind]

Anyone doing this themselves?

I've got two winders running now that both can feed four bobbins at a time. Based on the quotes I've gotten, it's MUCH cheaper to buy a couple of large spools of magnet wire and re-spool them down to smaller spools myself than to pay for the re-spooling and shipping of several small spools from a manufacturer/seller. I'm talking about several hundred dollars difference over about 20lbs of wire.

I don't see why I couldn't do it. I've got the coil winding machinery, obviously, and even the spools from previous buys. I can clear up to a 6.5" spool on one winder and all the way up to a 9" clearance two others.

Tension and TPL though? No idea. I would assume that a "perfect" TPL would be ideal, based on nominal wire size, including insulation. …or do I want to go with the maximum wire size, including insulation, to be safe?

What about tension? Moderately low, I assume. Under 10g, maybe?

For the sake of this discussion, assume we are talking about 42/PE.

Thanks for any input.

[David King]

Don't do it, just buy 4 spools. You use them up eventually if you are winding 4 at a time. Re-spooling just guarantees that you'll mess up perfectly good wire and waste a lot of time. I'm not saying it can't be done but why risk it? What are you saving?

[ReWind]

Ok, warning heeded. …but assuming I'm willing to risk loosing a few hundred dollars of wire to potentially save thousands upon thousands over time, if I can make it work, let's discuss the topic anyway.

The quotes I got were about a $20/lb difference VS just buying 12lb spools and having a run at it. I need at least 8 spools to feed these two machines. Eight 12lb spools of PE is a bit out of my reach at the moment. …and just a great deal of wire. It's the time of year to buy, I know, but I have already played those cards with my budget recently.

I have pretty precise tensioning equipment and I can take all felt out of the wire path and add a wire lubricant if needed. So common… help me shoot myself in the foot and learn a lesson the hard way. I'm a gluten for punishment.

[David King]

Oops, I'm gluten intolerant...

Who's selling you 12 pound spools of 42PE for $20 bucks less a pound? That's pretty good. Meanwhile I'm all ears on how to re-spool.

[kayakerca]

Ok, warning heeded. …but assuming I'm willing to risk loosing a few hundred dollars of wire to potentially save thousands upon thousands over time, if I can make it work, let's discuss the topic anyway.

The quotes I got were about a $20/lb difference VS just buying 12lb spools and having a run at it. I need at least 8 spools to feed these two machines. Eight 12lb spools of PE is a bit out of my reach at the moment. …and just a great deal of wire. It's the time of year to buy, I know, but I have already played those cards with my budget recently.

I have pretty precise tensioning equipment and I can take all felt out of the wire path and add a wire lubricant if needed. So common… help me shoot myself in the foot and learn a lesson the hard way. I'm a gluten for punishment.

I bought ~ 6 lbs from BAE (Teena Ridicoloso) a while back. She sold it to me in 4 spools of ~ 1.5 lbs each, but at the price as if it were one spool, because they didn't have it in larger spool sizes. Maybe they would do that on request. Worth a try.

[ReWind]

Oops, I'm gluten intolerant...

Who's selling you 12 pound spools of 42PE for $20 bucks less a pound? That's pretty good. Meanwhile I'm all ears on how to re-spool.

Hehe, it's more like about $20 more for the respooling onto smaller spools, than $20 less for the 12lb spools. I'm paying about $33/lb otherwise.

[David Schwab]

Don't do it, just buy 4 spools. You use them up eventually if you are winding 4 at a time. Re-spooling just guarantees that you'll mess up perfectly good wire and waste a lot of time. I'm not saying it can't be done but why risk it? What are you saving?

I agree. Plus I find the wire unspools off the smaller spools better.

I have a couple of large spools and don't like them too much. it was a little cheaper, but I get more snags when winding.

And I'm not talking about little 1/2 pound spools, I mean like the 2 pound spools.

[Joe Gwinn]

I would spend the money and time on a setup that can wind reliably from the larger spools. These setups do exist, and are widely used.

[ReWind]

I've never had trouble unwinding off of large spools. I just don't by them 8 at a time, plus spares.

I always thought that, if anything, putting the wire onto smaller spools would stress the insulation more as the wire lays down at a tighter radius.

[Bill M]

Hey James,
The way the wire manufacturers do it is by using reelers and dereelers,( dereeler for the big spool, and the reeler for the smaller spools to be filled) which is quite different than using our winding machines

[ReWind]

Hey James,
The way the wire manufacturers do it is by using reelers and dereelers,( dereeler for the big spool, and the reeler for the smaller spools to be filled) which is quite different than using our winding machines

Avoids the twist, huh? That was one of my concerns. Thanks, Bill!

[ReWind]

I had to really talk myself out of looking into buying re-spooling equipment or making a CNC rig to do it last night, even after re-reading this all.
I get stuck on a thing sometimes and it feels like failing my mission if I don't see it through, when I see a promising end result.

I realize that the complexity of turning two different sized spools simultaneously while maintaining a constant tension between them and constant TLP is outside of my ability and budget at the moment, though. This year, I keep buying 6 & 12 lb spools and cough up the extra dough to the wire houses. Bigger fish to fry.

Not OFF my list, just pushed to an appropriate slot on it.

Thanks, fellas!

[jason lollar]

Even the commercial guys screw up spooling- too much wax lubricant skips in the wire layer so they keep breaking in spots- it would indeed be a tough thing to do

[Bruce Johnson]

I've thought about making a despooling/respooling rig too, but mostly for the purpose of salvaging jammed or broken spools.

Here's how I picture that it needs to be set up:

The large spool and the small spool need to be mounted horizontally, with their center axes aligned, but some distance between them. The spools would be stationary, not spinning. The despooling side, the large spool, would be passive. It would have a follower/wire guide that spins around the outside of the spool with low friction and low inertia, and be balanced. The follower doesn't need to traverse along the length of the spool, but it needs to be out at a radius some distance from the wraps, so that the wire will tend to be pulled off radially. This will help to unjam crushed spools.

The other end, the spooling side, is more complicated. The small spool is also stationary. Its follower is powered, spinning around the outside of the spool, and it has to traverse back and forth along the length of the spool. The spooling follower stays fairly close to the surface, to lay down reasonably accurate layers. The small spool is mounted to a stationary shaft, and then the follower mechanism has to spin on bearings around that shaft, and be pushed and pulled along that shaft by some kind of a traverse mechanism, such as a cam drive or a leadscrew. If you were going to always use the same size small spools, the spooler could be built all mechanical; no servo drives or CNC needed.

My guess is that you'd do the spooling onto the small spools with very low tension, probably not using any friction drag device between the despooler and the spooler.

I haven't had the need to build one so far, but that's how I would approach it.