Hello, Im a Guitar Pickup Maker, trying to automate my winding machines- SOS HELP ..

[guitartone]

I'm a Guitar Pickup Maker, trying to automate my winding machines- SOS HELP ..

Im Don Mare of Long Beach CA. <snip>

14 years of 1950's style vintage Coil winding of Fender Guitar 1950s guitar pickup tone.

its time to get with the 2000's

Ive been winding coils by hand for 14 years

I want to develop a automated machine that does what i do by hand.

I'll be asking some question - and hope someone can help me because Im stuck in the mud..

Im not at all a EE -- my main part i seek is a Countdown turn counter - that has 6 digits and when it reachs Zero it cuts the power to two AC motors.
I just cant seem to pin point what to buy?

thanks Don

<Mod edit: Commercial link removed>

 

[guitartone]

looking for a six digit turn counter that runs from my Optical looking wheel and sensor that's already in use.

the new counter needs to count down to zero then cause motors to turn Off.

I just don't know what to buy $- nothing looks like I can handle the hook ups and wiring etc.. as I am a amateur ( GREEN)
at electronics

 

[Pommie]

Welcome to the Forum. Sounds like a very interesting project you have there. Do you have any pictures/video of you actually making the coils?

Mike.

 

[ronsimpson]

i seek is a Countdown turn counter - that has 6 digits and when it reachs Zero it cuts the power to two AC motors.

My winding machines have a three digit counter that cuts off the motor. I can not find a company name. "Japan" is all I see. I will look more. In my business 999 turns is more than I need.

 

[ChrisP58]

6 digits would be more than a hundred thousand turns. Is that a realistic number?

 

[large_ghostman]

6 digits would be more than a hundred thousand turns. Is that a realistic number?

Dosnt it depend on the lengh of what he is winding? But maybe its not complete turns

 

[ChrisP58]

Dosnt it depend on the lengh of what he is winding? But maybe its not complete turns

In the original post it said "Countdown turn counter." I'm assuming that that means the revolutions of the small coil that is the actual pickup element.

Six of those sit next to each other in a row to make a complete guitar pickup, spaced to match the spacing of the guitar strings.

I don't know how wide the coils are, but unless they're pretty wide, or the wire used is very small, it's hard for me to imagine there being enough room for that many turns in each coil.


Don,
I don't mean to sound critical. It's just that I've seen too many projects fail because an unnecessarily over specified parameter, turned a simple task into a complex one.

 

[large_ghostman]

In the original post it said "Countdown turn counter." I'm assuming that that means the revolutions of the small coil that is the actual pickup element.

Six of those sit next to each other in a row to make a complete guitar pickup, spaced to match the spacing of the guitar strings.

I don't know how wide the coils are, but unless they're pretty wide, or the wire used is very small, it's hard for me to imagine there being enough room for that many turns in each coil.


Don,
I don't mean to sound critical. It's just that I've seen too many projects fail because an unnecessarily over specified parameter, turned a simple task into a complex one.

Hmm i didnt know , you mention 6 coils, maybe that is where the mix up is. As written we are taking this to mean 6 digits literally and he is talking 6 digits as in coils... Even thin wire 6 digits is some coil.

 

[unclejed613]

from what i've seen, the number of turns on a pickup rarely exceeds 10,000 turns, and is usually on the neighborhood of 7500-8000 turns. 9000 turns of #42 wire will not fit inside most pre-existing pickup covers.

the best solution here would be 7490 BCD counters in cascade, with BCD thumbwheel switches to select the number to count to (or, if the wheels aren't available, 4 toggle switches per digit, it's not hard to learn to count to 9 in binary). when the count matches the thumbwheels, a pulse is sent to a motor controller to shut it off and brake the spindle. an optical or magnetic sensor could be used to make pulses to count the turns.

if 100,000+ turns are required, add another BCD counter, and some complexity can be reduced by presetting one or two of the least significant digits to 0. so, the number of turns will always be multiples of 10 or 100.

 

[large_ghostman]

Its just a guess, but i am pretty sure he wants to wind 6 coils at once and have a counter for each, like everyone else has said a 6 digit counter is unlikely.

 

[JimB]

4 toggle switches per digit, it's not hard to learn to count to 9 in binary).

Or, BCD thumbwheel switches. Are they still available?

JimB

 

[unclejed613]

Its just a guess, but i am pretty sure he wants to wind 6 coils at once and have a counter for each, like everyone else has said a 6 digit counter is unlikely.

that can be done too with BCD counters. the other method would be to time the operation. for example, the machine runs at 60rpm (one per second) and you set a timer for however long it will take to wind "x" number of turns..

Or, BCD thumbwheel switches. Are they still available?

JimB

that's why i mentioned the toggle switches, i'm not sure BCD wheels are available anymore.

or if the OP really wants to modernize, a Raspberry Pi computer with a motor controller "hat", and he could have 6 or more machines running independently.

 

[ronsimpson]

9000 turns of #42

Have you tried to wind #42 wire. It brakes too easy.

 

[alec_t]

#42 should be a doddle. I recall winding a coil of ~2000 turns of #47 by hand .

 

[unclejed613]

#42 should be a doddle. I recall winding a coil of ~2000 turns of #47 by hand .

i once wound a 30 inch tesla coil with #40 wire by hand. i would sit down while watching tv and turn the coil form with my thumb over where the point the wire was laid down, which made sure the wire was laid down correctly. if i felt a "bump" in the wire, i knew i had got turns crossed over each other, and i could fix the problem. it took me a couple of weeks to wind that coil. i probably could have wound it in less than an hour with a machine.

one thing that looked like a possible source of coils the right size to make a pickup using one coil per string (or 2 coils for a humbucker) was a large 24-pin dot matrix printhead. i think i still have it out in storage. i was thinking that using individual coils, there were a lot of possibilities for getting creative with phase switching, etc...

 

[tomizett]

Although it's not terribly difficult to build a counter/magnitude comaprator combo for a fully automated system, the OP might also like to consider buying a second-hand counter/timer/frequency meter with a manually-resettable "count" function. That would at least give an easy readout of the number of turns, for "machine assisted" manual winding. Possibly, such a device might provide a basis to be modified to give the desired stop signal.

I think the mechanical aspect could also be quite challenging. As people have said, it's likely to be very fine wire, and starting/stopping the former and spools without breaking it might be a problem. Ideally, I suspect, you'd want to slow the winding down as it approached the desired number of turns - but that would be a *lot* more complicated!

 

[tomizett]

Hmmm.... possibly this kind of stuff already exists in the industrial automation sphere.
This looks like it's in the right area:
https://www.industrialcontroles.com.ar/downloads/FXS_eng_110822.pdf
Although I'm not sure it will do exactly what you want. The problem with manuals for industrial gear is that they assume a lot of prior knowledge!

 

[dougy83]

You can have an automated winder, with controllable acceleration and deceleration profile, and spot-on turn count: just use a stepper motor, driver and arduino with grbl. You can then send the command to jog the stepper from a PC. The hardware cost of arduino and stepper driver < $20, the stepper and power supply won't be too pricey either, and there's no software development required.

 

[ronsimpson]

and there's no software development required.

How do you do that. or How do you not do code?

Next. When winding 1000 turns there is no problem with +/- 1. My high power transformers have numbers line 10 and there can not be any error. My counters count tenths of a turn. That way some slippage in the shaft encoder is not as much of a problem. (some times I need to back up a little and fix a bump in the winding and then go on) A home made shaft encoder struggles with that.

 

[atferrari]

Some time ago I tried to build one. Used for that the main board of an Epson printer. I even replaced the micro with one from 18F family to do my own stunts.

I implemented the winding action leaving the back and forth displacement of the fitting guiding the wire, unimplemented for the lack of a stepper with better resolution.

Tested it for maybe 3 hours. A disaster trying to guide the wire manually through hundred of turns each time. An aching back was enough.