Toroidal winding machine build

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#43
Here is a try with my camera.

YouTube

I started to video another toroid being wound, figures the camera batteries would die.

I feel like that video guy in True Lies when his camcorder battery died..

sigh.
funny, the scotch tape I used to hold the wire end kept hitting the brake foot and making that funny noise.
Thankfully, videography is not my day job..

jn
 
#46
keantoken said:
Very cool. It makes sense to me to wind coils on non-metal models so that the test coils can still be useful.
Click to expand...

I would love to take credit for having that much sense. However, the end use application uses two very high mu toroids that are very expensive. I made a brass duplicate ring, then two aluminum, then said to myself...lathing the metal just for a form is a PITA, I had plenty of 1.5 inch dia acrylic floating around, it's so much faster to machine. I made the metal ones so when I visited the vendor they had something to demonstrate on. I'll be honest, their ability to do a perfect lay single layer was not good. That was when I decided to build my own.

But yah, I like your thinking a whole lot better...makes me look smart...

Now I'm working the code to modulate the wind algorithms. I'll freeze the core rotation at ID and OD, with all the rotation on top and bottom. Thinking is to get subsequent layers to drop into the interstitials ID/OD, and it doubles the crossing angle top/bottom to help turn to turn transitions. Too shallow an angle, and the wire will follow the lower wire like a bicycle wheel on railroad tracks. The bottom is more susceptible to that as the guiding pulley is furthest away from the core at that time, about 3 inches. I'm working to get a perfect lay on multiple layers. Another option is to quickly turn the core more during top/bottom plant, and back off to correct position during ID/OD. A programmed fractional overturn. Not sure how quickly the Arduino can do this, as it breaks the code into four conditionals for every turn. I suspect it can easily handle it as long as I try to maintain integer math and raise the LCD comms to 38.4k. I'd like to keep at least one turn per second.
The drive is 8 microstep 4330 pulses per rotation, the program has to loop every 200 microseconds to do that rate. I could drop to 4 microsteps to double the time, we'll see how it plays. I may end up offloading the pulse drive to a second Arduino..

Also, I have to jog the core 1/2 wire space every time the direction switches.

It's a fun learning curve, this is the first time I've ever used an Arduino, and I've never used C before.

Final goal is to convert it to even layer count coils. the primaries are 50 turn, and if I go 26/24 the leads exit in the same location. The 500 turn, 4 layers as well at 127, 126, 124, 123.. Even layer counts allow start and end lead to be the same location, lowering of loop trap area for EMF problems.

Eventually we will be off lockdown and I will turn it over to the engineer. I've already started acquiring the parts to make a much better winder, using a 4 inch diameter spool reel. That, I'll keep.

jn
 
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#47
Slightly better videos, I found some batteries for the camera.
This shows how the spool ring speeds up and slows down as the pully advances and retreats from the core. ps..annoying that a guy started using a leaf lower next door for this video..sigh maybe I should substitute the top gun theme song for an audio track..

YouTube

This is a good closeup of the wire laying onto the core.

YouTube

John
 
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