Wind Toroidal Cores - Tips for 20 Gauge Magnet Wire

[Jdo300]

No Problem, take your time; and again, thank you for all your help and effort .

 

[Danger]

Okay, Jason... here's the hoop loading sequence for the first turn-and-a-bit. Of course, it continues similarly until you shut it off or run out of wire. (Well, there's another scenario where you put in too much and the slider comes out of the hoop, but we don't want to go there.) You can see from the events why it's necessary that the slider be very springy and slippery. The hoop is essentially rotating the entire mass of accumulated wire around it, while it's forcing the wire to the outer perimeter of the hoop.
As you can see, I grossly distorted the scale for the sake of clarity. For the same reason, I'm posting each step as a large picture instead of trying to fit them all on one page.
http://img479.imageshack.us/img479/3746/hooploading1fx7.jpg
http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/9316/hooploading2mp2.jpg
http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/2508/hooploading3jg5.jpg
http://img473.imageshack.us/img473/6858/hooploading4mi5.jpg
http://img473.imageshack.us/img473/9738/hooploading5jc2.jpg

 

[Danger]

And now for the winding phase. Same deal with the pictures. There are a couple of complications that aren't shown, and I'll deal with them tomorrow. For now, you can see that the slider rotates with the hoop to maintain tension (that's where there's one little glitch), but lags behind in order to let the wire unspool properly.
http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/3903/toroidwinding1nf4.jpg
http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/7404/toroidwinding2fy8.jpg
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4668/toroidwinding3sg1.jpg
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/5300/toroidwinding4ls6.jpg
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6960/toroidwinding5bo2.jpg

 

[Danger]

So here's the glitch. Well, not really a glitch; more of a necessary complication. I'll draw the fix tonight when I get home. The essentials are thus:
From the beginning of winding up to the Step 4 point, the slider lags behind the rotation of the hoop in order to play out extra wire to span the diameter of the hoop. Between Step 4 and Step 5, and on until it gets back to the starting point, it has to travel faster than the hoop to reel the excess wire back in. Otherwise there'll be a big loop of loose wire trailing it, which won't go around the toroid in a controlled manner. My solution is that the slider anchor ring is connected to a section of the hoop ahead of it by one or more light springs. The tension of the wire that retards the slider will stretch them. When the tension is removed, they'll pull the slider ahead to it's original relationship with the hoop.

 

[Danger]

Hi, honey... I'm home. Did you miss me?
The slider retard/advance mechanism ended up taking an embarrassingly long time for me to figure out. (Well, it was about 10 minutes over a beer, but getting around to it in the first place was difficult due to extraneous circumstances.) I have the basics down, but not the finer details. It involves magnetic coupling of a guide rail system to the hoop. I'll draw it up for you as soon as I can. It'll be a while, though. Things are kind of loopy around the house right now.

 

[Jdo300]

Hi Danger,

Once again, thanks for all the hard work and effort in this project. After seeing those stills of the machine in operation, I'm just now beginning to get a good idea of how it is working. Though I'm still absolutely lost about the glitch you were talking about. By the way, when the coil is being threaded back onto the toroid, is the entire loop of wire sliding off of the spinning hoop or is it just pulling the wire off of the top of the coil?

Thanks,
Jason O

 

[Danger]

Jason, I'm so sorry that I haven't gotten back to you. I did not realize that you'd posted since my last.
I've been very busy with a bunch of other stuff, so haven't really worked on it. Essentially, though, it uses magnetic coupling between the slider spring anchor and the hoop. That's to provide a friction-slip mechanism. The spring can't be solidly anchored to the hoop, but it also can't be free-wheeling. I'm pretty drunk right now, and am about to become far more so due to a good Celtic band starting at our favourite bar in a couple of hours. This is still something that I'm very interested in.
As for the unreeling, it is pretty much the opposite of the reel on a winch. If your were to invert that winch, so the cable would be peeling off of the inside instead of the outside, then it would be about the same.

 

[RN.Smith2]

Danger and Jason,
Thanks for the exercise that you when through on the toroid winding. Since I too am planning to wind a few Toroidal coil cores for a project of my own. Following this thread was educational in my understanding how the wire is unwound onto the core.

In thinking of a method to build the core winder, I keep thinking of household and or industrial items to use for the parts. I am thinking the metal bands that are on some buckets and small drums could be reshaped for the ring. Since the are already split and have latches, they should be somewhat easy to convert.

Thanks for your thread,
RN.Smith2

 

[Jdo300]

Hello RN.Smith2,

Your most welcome! I still have yet to build my toroidal coil winder but I have definitely not forgotten about the idea! It would be very cool if we could come up with a open-source project that people can build to make them from scratch. I was even thinking about designing one and selling kits for people but I simply haven't had the time to focus on it lately.

It's great to hear that you are intereted in constructing one! I would be very interested to see what you come up with. Also, I found another neat video showing a giant toroidal winding machine. This one also helps me understand the mechanism that makes it work:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-660662384802328397

- Jason O

 

[Yves]

Hi there !

Just landing here bouncing from links to links contemplating to build my own toroïd winder.
Thanks for all that valuable information.
Things start to be less obscure in my head ! !

Just in case you not already know:
http://waterfuelcell.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1034&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

I've nothing to publish by now, just sucking as much information as I can ;)

Yves.

 

[Proton Soup]

Hi there !

Just landing here bouncing from links to links contemplating to build my own toroïd winder.
Thanks for all that valuable information.
Things start to be less obscure in my head ! !

Just in case you not already know:
http://waterfuelcell.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1034&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=0

I've nothing to publish by now, just sucking as much information as I can ;)

Yves.

this stuff doesn't work, you know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Meyer

 

[greybird57]

Hi Danger,

WOW, those drawings look awesome! I've been following the thread and would have replied sooner but I was getting stuck on a couple of the construction details and haven't had the time to explain what I am confused about.

When you were describing the construction of the hoop, I was a little lost about the construction of the different components. There are also a couple of other details that I may need some clarification on. I have a 3D CAD modeling program, Autodesk Inventor6, which I would like to use to render your design. Doing so will help me to better understand what this is actually doing. Plus, if it works well, I could publish a set of DIY plans so that others can build this also. But as soon as I get a chance, I am going to start drawing up the hoop and other parts of the setup to get a better idea of how it works. Unfortunately, despite some of the detailed diagrams, I am still having a bit of trouble seeing how the wire gets from the hoop to the toroid without getting wrapped up on the hoop. But I definitely like the relative simplicity of this. If I can, I may even make a simple controller to run some stepper motors to turn the hoop and toroid :-). Again, thank you very much for your help and I will be keeping a close eye on this thread.

- Jason O

Did you ever get the stepper control system worked out?

 

[yuliang622434]

Hello Danger,
I really want to know how is the toroid coil winder work. I'm looking for the informantion found you may the gay who know that very well .Could you send some diagran to my email ? (147495715@qq.com).
Thanks

 

[Mike_In_Plano]

Winding with the shuttle machine is the luxury method. There are still applications that call for hook winders. These are essentially a gas driven hook that pokes up through the work table and toroid. The worker then offers the next winding into the hook. The hook then pulls the winding through the hole in the center. Mind your fingers, the hook is indescreminate.