Scatterwinding & Turns-per-layer...

[belwar]

So im starting to mess around now with scatter winding. So far I've been working with laying the wire directly beside it's self. My current method is *about* 100 TPL on a 1/4" tall bobbin. (0.25" bobbin width / 0.0025 Diamter Wire = 100 TPL for a flat layer).

People here talk a fair bit about scatter winding, and im trying to set in my mind an "acceptable" range for scatter in relation to turns per layer. One of my old winders has a rapid traverse and a TPL of 34 (The Bobbin spins 16.6.. RPS, and the Traverse Cam spins and 0.48617 RPS). This in my mind is WAY to scattered.

What are peoples thoughts on how much scatter, and what do you feel more scatter or less scatter accomplishes tonally?

Belwar

[David Schwab]

I think the idea is it's random, so I'm not sure if anyone here counts turns-per-layers, or if it's just by feel. I certainly can't count TPL.. I've tried it. It goes by to fast. So I gave up on that and just try to be neat as possible.

Of course hand winding will always be scattered/random.

[kevinT]

I think the folks that are replicating PAF-type pickups are using TPL...Maybe Jon, Spence, or Dave will chime in and tell us if they're using TPL in their designs.

There are some winders that do...and a TPL of 12 turns per layer is not unheard of. I've even done some myself in that range and they don't sound half bad.

IMO, i think it has more to do with how much "air" is in the coil rather than how the wire was laid on the bobbin.

[David Schwab]

Right, and the people doing PAF's aren't scattering either... TPL seems like something you need a machine winder to get accurate.

[JGundry]

If you are machine ten you can count the TPL. If you are doing it by hand you really have to develop a routing that time the traverse to appraximate the TPL you are after. But you just cannot do by hand what a machine traverse will do. The scatter withthe machine traverse is there but it is driven by the shape of the coil which is determined by how the travese is set up.

It seems counter intuitive but a lower TPL count will lay more wire on the bobbin for the same number of turns than a higher TPL count bobbin. The reason is the pitch of the wire is steeper with a lower TPL so you get just a little bit more wire on the bobbin with each turn with a lower TPL. By the end of the wind it will add up. A 5000 turn bobbin with a very low TPL will be fatter and have a little higher resistance than a 5000 turn bobbin with a very high TPL.