Hi Tim.
Sounds like fun. I was looking at the pan for a CD/DVD player. It moves the laser head in place, and it's powered by a stepper motor. I think you've probably seen it multiple times. If your coil demands don't exceed the length of that shaft, I find it to be a worthy candidate for a CNC winder. The sides can be printed at the lab, so I imagine the tolerances would be sufficient, and the driver, easy to hack.
Each rotation of the coiling motor would correspond to a step(s) of the stepper unit, placing the wire to be wound correctly and then with either optics or a hall effect switch, send it back.
I would imagine something like this would already be online though, but I haven't looked yet. hmm
Oh, yes I know this wouldn't suffice for a tesla coil to impress the Teslak people :) In that case, I would use some parts from an inkjet plotter. Somehow, I remember we had one parked just outside the lab like a year ago or more? Regardless, they get retired from time to time.
If you can't get that precise for a large-scale motion control, I'd hack it with a shallow steel/aluminum I-beam and a belt.
We just had that copy machine cannibalized. It was tasty! Some very nice and powerful stepper motors in there. I took one for a lock. I've fallen in love with copy machines now--loaded with electromechanical parts!
On 17 Jun 15, at 20:52, timothyhobbs@seznam.cz timothyhobbs@seznam.cz wrote:
Hey,
I am looking at buying or building a coil winder and putting it in brmlab. It would be for normal round coils and not for toroids or anything fancy like that. I am going to use it for developing my braille prototypes, so I will be getting one of the ones for the thin wire sizes. I haven't decided if it will be a hand winder or a CNC winder. Do you tesla people/radio people have any requests for specific features/parameters?
Tim
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