Pickup winder and counter idea [Pictures] - created 03-23-2007
Cordle, Randy - 03/23/2007.07:17:20
Lap Steels and Banjos is my thang...
Here are a few shots of my pickup winder. It works great and started its life as a really cheap 3/8 variable speed reversible drill. (Yes, winding direction can be changed with the flip of the drills direction switch) A foot control actuates the variable speed drill trigger by way of a bicycle cable arrangement, and I set the drills speed stop to limit the winding speed to about 800 RPM.
One of the stumbling blocks when constructing a winder is an easy way to implement a turns counter. The idea here is to reduce the actual RPM of the winding shaft and count the turns at a lower speed. This totally eliminates the speed limitations of the mechanical reed switch. The actual counter is an inexpensive calculator. The only tricky part is to find the two tiny points inside the calculator that the equal to button actuates and solder two small lead wires on them. Hey, when calculators cost less than a cup of coffee so what if you ruin one learning how to solder those tiny pads? The resulting lead wires are then connected to a mechanical reed switch to count the turns. The actual reduction ratio is not critical, and the number can be deduced easily after you get it built. Mine came out to 6.37 to 1. Now you use the built in constant function of the calculator to give an exact number of turns readout on the display. In my case I enter (ON/C) 6.37 +. Each time the switch closure increments the counter the number is increased by 6.37, which gives me the exact number of turns on the bobbin.
Clever! I never would have considered this.
Thats very cool Randy. I have been trying to figure out some way to use my lathe to wind pickups but I can't get the speed geared down enough. Maybe I should try a dimmer switch...
John - "most probably" not a good idea.
Dimmers are meant for resistive loads although some will run a fan motor. Even so, the fan motors are a light load and I doubt it would run a lathe motor. Also, fan motors are usually a type of universal motor whereas the lathe is likely to be an induction motor.
This is all pre-supposing that the lathe is not a miniature type.
Could I trouble you for some more pics from all angles and maybe a few "in action" shots.
I like the sewing machine idea, but the thrift stores supply is drying up in my area. I think I may like to build something like this instead. Any more bits of info would be cool too. This machine looks fairly compact as an added plus.
Scott,
When I decided I needed a winder I initially got off to a few false starts until I settled on this one. Speed control, tension control, wire travel limiting guides, and SMOOTH operation are what allow you to remove the dowel held between the teeth and actually whistle a little ditty while winding...
What else do you have a dying need to see or know about? I'll try to accomodate ya!
If I make the counter pulley diameter 10X the drive pulley then the increment will be 10+. Is that correct? Do you have any idea how fast the calculator can count?
Scott, Harbor Freight has a mini bench top disc sander that runs off a sewing machine motor that could be turned into a winder that's pretty cheap.
I like some of your ideas in this winder.
Chris that's an excellent idea though I'd want to check the RPM. HF also sells a relatively inexpensive router speed control that might work well with the sander motor.
The problem with caculator counters is that the keypad goes through an electronic "de-bouncer" circuit to eliminate multiple false trips. That de-boucer slows the repeatability way down. Using the counter with a 10-1 drive might be effective but I think you are adding unnecessary complexity to a system that is calling out for an electronic counter. There are dozens of these on ebay .
Randy, one shot straight down from the top of the whole thing and I think I've got it. Your descriptions cleared up a lot of questions. Thanks for your help.
Chris, Yes. That would give you a 10: 1 ratio, but the beauty of the calculator is using the constant feature so theres no need to be precise with the reduction. Make the wheel any size you want and deduce the number needed. I did mine by counting 100 turns of the driving shaft (the wheel actually rides on the smooth portion of the drill chuck) vs. the number of turns of the driven wheel. A little quick math will get you to the number that is needed by the calculator as a constant. As far as how fast the counter will increment, try it yourself with your calculator. Enter a constant as outlined above and press the equal key repeatedly. It will increment reliably about as fast as you can press it. That gives you an idea of how this works, and turns out to be WAY faster than you can wind by hand. It has no trouble at all counting turns at 1000 RPM, and theres no way I can wind that fast! The de-bouncing circuit in the calculator actually works for us in this situation, eliminating false triggers from the magnetic reed switch. Granted, its also the reason why the reduction is needed in the first place, but Ill guarantee that theres no place you can buy an electronic counter for what this one costs!
Scott, Here's your pic. Hope this clears up any questions you may have.
I love it! Could you please give us a close up of where the bobbin would reside during the winding procedure as well as the tensioning and wire guide system. Thanks!
Keith, Here tis.
Tip off fishing pole serves as wire guide from floor to bobbin face plate. Picked this up last time we took the dog out to the lake, so no cost involved in this high tech graphite wire guide. Wire proceeds to tensioning device, which is really nothing more than a felt lined thin plywood discs held with a #10X24 bolt through a spring. Get fancy and add a knob if you wish. Bobbin face plate made from old plastic cutting board. Its easy to convince the missus that those knife cuts in the surface harbor germs and the board really needs to be replaced. There, that takes care of that. The bobbin is attached with two tiny stainless steel screws. These happen to be the ones made for holding accordion reeds to their base, but I think we can all improvise here. Before anyone asks, No...you can't put the braided lead wire on before winding! The completed 8 string lap steel pickup resides on the bobbin face plate only for demonstration purposes. I promised him I would not turn the winder on. Completed pickups are like me on the teacup ride at Disneyland. We get a little ill at the thought of spinning that fast...
Thanks for the extra pictures and info, you'll find me in the drill and fishing sections, shopping this week. Very cool and practical ideas here!
As a PS edit; I was shopping thrifts this weekend and still no good sewing machines at a give out price, so this is the ticket for me.
Thanks for the extra photo! I appreciate it. It looks like I iwll perform some modifications to my winder using some of your ideas. thanks again!
Cool winder!
>ts easy to convince the missus that those knife cuts in the surface harbor germs and the board really needs to be replaced. There, that takes care of that.
Actually they do! Wood cutting boards retail the least amount of germs. I would have thought the polyethylene ones would be better, but there you go!
Ours is glass so I'll never be able to use it for fixtures...
Now you have to make her a nice maple cutting board! See how Karma works!
Is it possible to have a too strong of a magnet for the reed switch? Sorry for the late post but I'm in the middle of building a winder now.
Scott, I doubt it but timers usually have a limit of how short the switching period is (either on or off). My timer seems to want 5-10 ms. If your magnet is going past the reed switch too quickly you might need to put two or three magnets in a row to get a long enough "on" time to register at higher speeds.
Or move the magnet closer to the axle of the wheel.
Randy, can you give the make, model and source of your calculator? My first try, a "dollar store" calc had a graphite impregnated paper circuit board, no soldering there... The next upgrade was a "Walgreens" special that has copper and graphite. I'm trying to find copper runs off the back to tap from, but having no luck so far. The pads under the buttons won't take solder, because of a coating.
Please help, before I deplete my coffee fund?
I got it working. (This idea is so slick, thanks for sharing it.) Disregard my last question, unless someone else needs the info. Very cool project, thanks again for the ideas.
I was able to get a couple of Red Lion counters from an on-line electronics place. They're DC and I plan to use a reed switch with them. I also acquired a motor speed control used for home power tools and a 1/20th hp motor. I hope it'll come out to be as nice as yours when I finally get the time to build it!
Is your winder hand wound (tracked by hand) or is there a mechanical guide that I'm not seeing in the pics?
There's also a website that shows you how to use your computer as the counter. May help those of us who have a hard time figuring out the calculator method!
The counter I used on my first winder was an Orion that I bought off Ebay for cheap.
I like the calculator just for the cool factor though.
Boy! I go away for a few days and look what you guys have been up to...
FYI, even though you've been resourceful and figured things out, my calculator is a TI-1726, but I've played with a few others just for fun and they all had contact points on the back of the keypad board. But if you thought soldering that #43 was pulse-rate increasing, wait til you try not to vaporize those little pads. Not really that bad, but low heat, a steady hand, and short dwell times are in order here.
A note about motors, I really like the universal motors (the kind with brushes and an armature) as found in drills and some other small appliances because they exibit a very nice low speed torque curve, which means the winder is very controllable when starting to wind your bobbin. That's a nice feature, as you don't want any jerkiness when starting up or slowing down.
I hand feed the wire so I can control the coil build accurately. I take a couple of breaks (not wire breaks OR coffee breaks) while winding and walk around a bit, as you do tend to tense up a bit when winding your first few coils. It takes a few to get your confidence up as you develop a feel for how to wind. If you set your wire guides properly and get your tension set, the guiding is the fun part, and becomes quite mantra-like. Ommmmmm....Ommmmmmm.......
Well, my pick-up winder is ready to test. Randy, I modified your design a bit. I used a scooter wheel with a magnet attached to trigger the reed switch. It's driven directly from the 3/8" shaft for an eleven to one reduction. The wheel floats vertically in slots under spring tension to get traction on the shaft.
The wrap-around throttle cable works off the "Jethro Pedal" for a smooth speed control. The wire tensioner is a felt lined modified clothes pin with the mini fish pole guide. I took a few cues from the winder in Chris P's tutorial on the wire space stops. Between your two threads, I'm armed with the tools and confidence to give winding a try. Thanks to all for the help.
By jove, I think you've got it, Scott. Lots like you won the race, too. Good mods, whatever works and gets the job done with what you can find in the surplus pile leaves more money available for that nice piece of birdseye maple you've had your eye on...
Please let us know how it works out for you. I've got doubts about the wrap-around cable. Possibly too much friction to allow smooth control via the Jethro pedal, but something tells me you've already had this fired up before posting the pic. Hey, come on and level with us... 11 to 1 perfect reduction ratio with a stock scooter wheel and 3/8" shaft? What's the chances of that? You got to come up with a combination to make use of the decimal point in the counter entry, or all my brainstorming will have been for naught.
My horizontal drill orientation was done as a way to keep the winder shaft as close to the base as possible and also so the cover screw in the handle could be removed and a longer screw used to fasten the drill handle to the base. Winders benefit from being as rigid as possible. You want to slant the luck in your direction from the start when working with that delicate wire!
Nice job, Scott.
Why no Randy, the project all went so perfectly, what ever could you mean??? So you want the juicy dirt? (Thinking of all the implications, as he rubs his unshaven face and drinks his morning coffee...) OK.?,!
The juicy dirt is:
1. I look at the final product of my work and the dumb thing looks like that sewing machine I couldn't find cheap. I was looking for compactness due to storage constraints. The vertical orientation and 12" long four eyelet mini fishing pole came about because my workbench is about 40" tall and I wonder how well I can feed wire from a roll on the floor. I am trying to make it as straight a line as possible.
2. Your winder looks like fine cabinetry and mine looks like the "Old Farmer" method of construction. Just good enough to maybe do the job.
3. I may re-work the main shaft and use ground drill rod. The hardware store round stock made it a chore to true things up and get rid of the wobbles. I also don't think it will wear well on the bronze bushings. I had to true the whole face plate assembly to the shaft, in my lathe to get it passable.
4. The only trick to getting the cable to work smoothly was fabricating and positioning the aluminum cable mounting block. It had to anchor the inner cable end and the outer cable jacket at a point about 2/3s up the trigger to simulate a finger pull correctly. The floating outer cable that wraps around the trigger works well to keep the cable from binding and prematurely wearing on the trigger. There was a lot of "fiddle factor" perfecting that.
5. Had the calculator remained on all weekend, the grand total on the counter would probably be about 40,000 revolutions. 1/2 involved in construction and perfecting, 1/4 to show friends and family your really cool idea, then 1/4 just watching it run and dreaming of winding my own pick-ups. So this one has plenty of mileage already and it has shown me that if I take a break, I need to put the count in memory, or I may un-wind a few due to lost numbers.
6. I did have some difficulty with the reed switch mounting. I got a trouble free action by mounting the reed parallel to the rare earth magnet rotation. At 90 deg to the rotation, the magnet didn't have enough dwell time of trigger well at speed. The down side was trying to index the rotation to get the count ratio accurately because the switch stays on a ways when turning by hand. I indexed from different points away from the switch a few times to get my eleven to one. I was so amazed it came out on an even number. (Now the juice gets really muddy.)
7. I hurried and proudly posted my Picture to the forum. Ta Da! Then while doing the clean-up, I found the instruction sheet to the calculator. Not wanting to loose it I grabbed the Mod-Podge jar and affixed the sheet to the bottom of the base. As the stuff dried and turned clear I noticed that while dismantling the calc, to make the mods, I had inadvertently activated the rounding function. Doeh!
No, I probably don't have an even eleven to one ratio. I think I won't know for the exact true conversion number until I start to wind a bit of wire and check it through. Yes, I am a bit embarrassed, but still very proud of my little winder.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it!