new pickup winding machine

[Possum]

You know, I wouldn't want any of those winders in here. This low tech CNC thing I built does everything for me, it'll do a hand wind, a tight machine wind, any kind of wind you can dream up it'll do it. Its hooked up to an Adams Maxwell 1200-2 with auto shut off, reverse wind, built like a freaking tank. If any of the hardware on the traverse breaks, its stupid cheap to find replacements for the board, traverse or any of that. In fact I built a duplicate I have stored in case anything happens, and have bought another Adams Maxwell winder, and built another one out of salvaged parts off Ebay. If you get locked into a vintage winder or an industrial winding machine new or old, you're getting locked into a box in my opinion. The vintage winders are one trick ponies, the modern industrial ones are way overpriced and wind too perfectly. I wind everything I make on this cheapo setup (well the Maxwell winders aren't cheap though). In fact a couple weeks ago I set up one of the AM winders as a dedicated hand guided winder, so I wound two identical Tele bridge pickups, one on my auto winder and the other hand guided. Amazingly the auto wound pickup sounded twice as good ;-) The hard part of this is taking the time to figure out G-code and the software written to guide plasma cutters and CNC routers etc. took about a year to finally get total control over it. Software was $55 ;-) A machine isn't going to make your pickups sound any better. I suppose for mass production getting an industrial winder might be a good idea, personally though, if I went that route the products would suffer.

[David King]

Possum,
What software and hardware did you go with for your traverse? You've talked about it in the past but I don't remember seeing any details of your current set-up. I agree that total automation is probably not the answer for most of us.

[big_teee]

I just wish someone would make a quality inexpensive Hand guided machine.
Everything I've seen is over priced lite duty machines.
Something with a quality motor, speed control, counter, and built to last.
I know, build my own.
T

[David King]

Terry,
By the time you get a fractional 3 phase motor, a VFD, pulleys, shafting, belts and faceplates you could easily hit $500 in expenses before you made a penny of profit for assembling the thing. Used winders are such a bargain by that measure that I suggest giving up on the off the shelf turn-key winder.

[big_teee]

Terry,
By the time you get a fractional 3 phase motor, a VFD, pulleys, shafting, belts and faceplates you could easily hit $500 in expenses before you made a penny of profit for assembling the thing. Used winders are such a bargain by that measure that I suggest giving up on the off the shelf turn-key winder.

Oh well, we can dream can't we?
That's why I'm still using the Junk I have.
This is one of those hobbies, that is hard to Justify Spending Big Bills, when it Only Seems to Generate Small Coins!
I enjoy it, and it keeps me out of Jail.
T

[Possum]

Go look on Ebay for CNC courses that include the stepper motor etc. Once you know how to control a stepper motor the rest is obvious. I use a program called QuickStep, but there are others like Mach I think its called. They are all totally confusing and non-intuitive unless you're a CNC nerd, which I'm not. You just have to play with it until you find something that works. My traverse and winder are not connected at all, and I like it that way. The traverse is independent of the winding motor. Stupid simple, low tech cheap. I recommend the Adams Maxwell winders, but not their auto traverse which is really limited in it what it can do. The winder, the old ones, were for hand winding, built like a tank with shut off counter. You could build something like that, you need a 12 volt DC motor and a controller etc. There's probably a cheap way to accomplish that, I was just lucky early on to have found a guy who traded the winder to me for several sets of pickups. You can find old linear stepper motor drives on Ebay for cheap, learn the course, all you need to know is how to make the motor turn back and forth, pretty simple, then go from there. I don't really want to show my set up and it'd be a pain in the butt to teach someone to do what I'm doing with it, the EBay CNC courses will get you started....

[David King]

Stepper motors require a stepper driver which generates the pulses to the motor windings. Many off-the-shelf drivers come with a built-in oscillator and a frequency pot so you can set them up for manual operation. All you would need is a way to signal the motor to reverse direction at each end of the bobbin. A pair of SPDT limit switches will do that. If you want to mess with varying the turns per layer you can probably use a mechanical means to jog the oscillator pot as the traverse bumps the limit switch. No need to to learn G-code or touch a computer. Total price -well under $100.

[Possum]

The course is under $100 and includes the boards, stepper motor, the thingy that protects the board and computer, a fan, course books, a multimeter, cheap power supply etc. The software writes the code for you but you need to know the code for "repeat program." Its worth learning. Some of the functions in the software can do neat things like slow the traverse pass down at the ends and ramp up the return speed so you get a dead flat coil if you thats what you want. The abilities of this simple setup is really endless, you can write infinite numbers of code lines. You need a PC with serial port, I got 2 old cheapies, one as a backup, I only use it for running the traverse and its not connected to the internet.

[JGundry]

I made two CNC winders from scratch. Personally I found making them an neat exercise but for what I make, which is vintage reproduction pickups, I find them of little use. If you can get your hands on a real vintage mechanical winder there is no point in trying to guess at programming the vintage winder travel into CNC. And even if you are trying to duplicate the winder travel from an unwound vintage pickup there is a very large guess factor in the mix. There is really no substitution for knowing what the real travel of a vintage winder is without having the specific vintage machine in hand. There are more variables to old mechanical auto winders from make to make than you would suspect. It is the main reason I have vintage winders of 7 different makes. The traverse action is different in all of them. But if you want to automate a hand winding routine then I think a CNC winder is in interesting option.

[Possum]

Actually you made servo winders, not stepper motor winders. There's a huge difference there, especially in the software, CNC software gives you huge number of variables to control the motion in very minute details. My motor moves in .9 degree movements, thats 400 steps in one rotation; not that you need that much detail. I would never recommend anyone learn how to make pickups by buying an auto winder right of the bat, you need to learn everything about hand winding before you get into auto winding, and before you do that you need to unwind alot of vintage pickups and watch the patterns. All those coils are easily copied if you do what I did and keep your CNC traverse as low tech as you can. And frankly, to do what I'm doing you need to build your own winders and keep perfecting them to do what you want, but keep it stupid low tech. Synching the winding motor with the traverse is something I didn't do and don't want in my machine for instance, its too perfect. Building your own winder is the only way to figure out whats going to work for you personally, its like designing pickups, you try a bunch of different things until you get something that really works, its a good exercise in improving your craft. I would even recommend beginners buy Jason's book and build his auto-winder, its how I started out.

Vintage winders are very cool, I just don't want or need one, anything they do can be done with my machine. BUT, if you buy an industrial all-in-one coil winder thats CNC controlled it WON'T do what vintage winders do, they are too perfect and meant to wind perfect coils. That is why I didn't buy the Adams Maxwell auto traverse, it would be terrible for winding pickups, though I do know of one bass pickup maker who uses them. The bottom line is knowledge, not the machine, set up is everything, knowing how old coils were wound is key.

[JGundry]

I think there is a hope that there is a one size fits all machine out there that can either be purchased or made for the pickup winder. If you are talking about reproduction pickups it is more complicated than one size fits all. You have to have some on hand working knowledge of the machines that wound vintage pickups. Simply knowing that a cam was or was not used for the traverse is not even close to enough info. The rest of that knowledge must get gleaned from on hand use or inspection of the vintage machines.

Personally I would suggest anyone wanting to make a DIY winder to buy a cheap Grizzly mini lathe that has a single cast housing. It will have a DC motor that can easily be wired to a switch to reverse winder rotation. And the cast housing is a rock solid base to mount any kind of traverse and counter you have in mind. I bought the Lollar book years ago and it took about one minute for me to decide that although probably functional, the Lollar winder looked to me like a craft project disguised as a winder. No offense Jason, I know it served you well, I just could not help but bail on the design almost immediately. I will say that the book is well worth having even if there were no plans for a winder in it.

[big_teee]

I think there is a hope that there is a one size fits all machine out there that can either be purchased or made for the pickup winder. If you are talking about reproduction pickups it is more complicated than one size fits all. You have to have some on hand working knowledge of the machines that wound vintage pickups. Simply knowing that a cam was or was not used for the traverse is not even close to enough info. The rest of that knowledge must get gleaned from on hand use or inspection of the vintage machines.

Personally I would suggest anyone wanting to make a DIY winder to buy a cheap Grizzly mini lathe that has a single cast housing. It will have a DC motor that can easily be wired to a switch to reverse winder rotation. And the cast housing is a rock solid base to mount any kind of traverse and counter you have in mind. I bought the Lollar book years ago and it took about one minute for me to decide that although probably functional, the Lollar winder looked to me like a craft project disguised as a winder. No offense Jason, I know it served you well, I just could not help but bail on the design almost immediately. I will say that the book is well worth having even if there were no plans for a winder in it.

Which lathe at grizzly do you have in mind?
Give us a starting place.
Thanks,
Terry

[JGundry]

It looks like they don't have the one I bought years ago but I think GO657 would work. You want one that has a variable speed dial not one that changes speed with pulleys. You might find a cheaper one at Harbor Freight?

[big_teee]

It looks like they don't have the one I bought years ago but I think GO657 would work. You want one that has a variable speed dial not one that changes speed with pulleys. You might find a cheaper one at Harbor Freight?

Here's one at Harbor.
Benchtop Wood Lathe - 8" x 12"
How do you know if the motor is DC, and if you can reverse the motor?
T

[JGundry]

Here's one at Harbor.
Benchtop Wood Lathe - 8" x 12"
How do you know if the motor is DC, and if you can reverse the motor?
T

If it is variable speed it is almost certainly a DC motor. But you have to know enough to find the correct leads within the electronics to switch the direction of the motor rotation.