Transformer Winding for Novices.

[Yorkie]

I wonder if this could be made using the gears used in maccanno as it would take me ages to cut the gears.a simalar device was in an eary bulletin using an old battery drill I used to have this article but I am sure there are designs on the Internet.
Robin

In Autumn 2011 Model Engineer Workshop magazine there was a 5-page article on a design for a coil winder using Lego or Meccano which used plastic gears. Quite an interesting article as it used a heart-shaped cam to create the smooth back and forth movement necessary to neatly wind layers of turns side by side on a solenoid coil or transformer, which most people seem to try to do by hand guiding the wire, which only makes a passable job of it. There was also an interesting 5-page article by the same author in the same MEW (issue No 182) on the design and theory of heart-shaped cams, perhaps the most common application of which was to wind cotton onto sewing machine spools, which used a heart-shaped cam attached to a worm drive mechanism to guide the cotton back and forth onto the spool. Clever, but simple and effective.

Obviously I can't copy and the article here due to copyright restrictions, but I dare say that anyone could buy the back issue of the mag from MEW if interested.

(The author of the article designed and made the winder as a prototype for a stepper motor based machine to later wind hundreds - perhaps thousands, of more complex coils).