Hand Coil Wave-Winder

[Yorkie]

I've made a bit more progress on the project, which is all but finished, though I've yet to see if it will take off and land! I do have some fairly fine cotton covered wire (the winder won't work with enamelled wire as the turns will slip off), so hope to give it a spin before too long.

I've modified the original design somewhat.

I'd mentioned earlier that initally I'd turned a 'drive pulley' out of plastic and had fitted an 'O' ring as the tyre, but it was pretty hopeless as it didn't have enough grip and kept stalling. I then replaced it with a plastic bevel gear I posted about recently, overlooking the fact that this would be quite hopeless for wave winding as the ratio of the gear was of course 1:1 so each turn would fall on top of the preceding one.

I was able to source a sewing machine 'cotton bobbin tyre' used for winding the bobins of sewing machines, which is a much thicker section than an 'O' ring. I turned a brass pulley onto which I fitted the tyre, and I also fitted a spring on the winder shaft to keep the friction drive wheel pressed against the tyre in the event of wear. It now works fine and by moving it inwards or outwards on the friction disc, alters the turns ratio and hence, the wave winding, but I won't know how finicky that adjustment is till I try it.

As stated in an earlier post, I'd already dispensed with the turns counter (a 'tally counter' clicker) as featured in the construction book, and replaced it with a Poundland pocket calculator. This operated by using a brass cam on the coil shaft to operate a microswitch which shorts out the = button on the calculator. If you press any number on a calculator then press + twice, it becomes a constant, so each time you press the = button, the number you entered as a constant will increment. In this case, the number to enter is 1 + +. Then as the microswitch shorts out the = button with each turn of the winder shaft will count upwards.

I've made the brass wire guide mechanism, which guides the wire from the back wire feed-reel shaft around the guide on the cam shaft at the front, which moves the guide back and forth with each turn of the handle, and the wire goes through the front wire guide to lay turns onto the coil former.

I've attached a few pics which make things a bit clearer.

Hope that's of interest.