Hand Coil Wave-Winder

[Radio Fixer]

Neat ... I like it. Thanks.

Guess you have found this: http://www.wires.co.uk/cgi-bin/ss000001.pl?page=search&SS=litz&PR=-1&TB=A&search.x=17&search.y=9 Some are down in the £20 range ...

Gary

[Yorkie]

Neat ... I like it. Thanks.

Guess you have found this: http://www.wires.co.uk/cgi-bin/ss000001.pl?page=search&SS=litz&PR=-1&TB=A&search.x=17&search.y=9 Some are down in the £20 range ...

Gary

Thanks Gary. Yes, I've looked at wires.co.uk - it's the retail arm of The Scientific Wire Company of old. They do sell Litze wire, but it's £36.00 for 100Grams, so it's out of the question.

http://www.wires.co.uk/cgi-bin/sh000001....ch%2ey%3d9&WD=litz&PN=litzwire%2ehtml%23alz00250081#alz00250081

So it would indeed have to be silk or cotton covered, and I have a large reel of 48SWG solderable cotton covered which I used to make a replica DRR2 coil for the BBC 'Focus' crystal set.

Though I had fun at my little lathe yesterday, turning down the shafts to fit the bevel gear in place of the rather crude friction drive, it's all been to no avail.

A little light has just come on in my head to alert me to refer back to the coil-winder manual about the use of bevel gears, so Ive just checked, and confirmed my suspicions that the bevel gear I've fitted will actually be useless. There's a reason which bevel gears weren't used in the original and it's this:

Quote:

'The ratio of the crank shaft to the main spindle is infinitely variable by movnig the friction wheel to any position along the shaft so that it contacts the friction plate at varying points. This is an important feature because if the ratio was simply 1:1 each successive turn would fall on top of each other and the desired pattern would not evolve. While a gear drive would be more positive, it would not be possible to achieve the very fine adjustment that can be had with this simple friction drive. It requires only a little experimentation to discover the optimum adjustment for each coil job and for very good results to be had'.

End quote.

Oh dear: 'You boy - yes, you at the back - pay attention!'.

I was really rather chuffed with the bevel gear, but I'll now have to revert back to the 'O' ring and friction drive. Numpy is as numpty does!

[Retired]

Hi,

Numpty you certainly are not David.

Your bevel gear idea is excellent and shows you are always thinking about what you are doing and also not taking anything for granted.

You have already highlighted a weakness in the original design; the "O" ring drive and you went about solving it which to a degree you have been highly successful so don't be too hard on yourself.

Having owned an AVO Douglas coil winder with a similar rubber drive wheel I had already spotted that the bevel gears would give a fixed rather than variable drive. I still think it possible that you could be on the right track and with a bit of experimentation could still use fixed gears not necessarily bevel. Plastic gears can be obtained with many teeth choices.

I've wound many coils over the years but on the whole only ever used a few wire gauges. To expand your idea would it be possible to modify the drive to accept change gears similar to an engineering lathe which in many cases uses straight gears for threading if a gearbox is not installed?

I don't wish to steal your thunder because you came up with what I consider a very good alternative to the original drive demonstrating to novices not to simply copy other peoples ideas to the letter but to think for themselves.

Making small spindles to accept gears is easy for you David as you own such a delightful Lorch clock-makers lathe; a die nut would easily run a tread on the spindles and a bit of fabrication would give the necessary adjustment in order to mesh the assorted gears. If you recall I actually did a similar thing when I restored my AVO wave winder cutting 45 cast iron gears.

I like your train of thought David and it is to be fully encouraged; Numpty definitely not; resourceful describes you much better. Keep up the good work and I love reading such unusual posts.

Please give your gear idea deeper thought and take a pat on the back; I'm all for some experimentation; it's much more interesting than simply copying and immensely satisfying to succeed.

Kind regards, Col.

[Andy M0FYA]

Here are a couple of pictures of my Morris Coil Winder, and the instruction leaflet.
It's clearly the basis of the Gingery design.

Maybe there are some features which will help in the design of yours, David, although it is rather crude!

A few observations are -

It doesn't have anything to support the bobbin the wire is coming off.
The wire guide is rather primitive.
The 'bevel gears' are simply flat gearwheels with the teeth meshed at right-angles.

It was obviously intended for winding the crystal-set style of coils described as 'Honey Comb' and 'Spider Web' in the instructions, I'm not sure how it will cope with a more modern wave-wound coil on something like an Alladin former.

Andy

[Yorkie]

Thanks for your kind comments Colin.

It's not really time wasted of course as it's fun to do these things.

I've just had a Poundland calculator to bits, sussed out the PCB pads for '=' key and soldered two wires to the PCB top operate a microswitch. I've made a brass cam to operate the switch with each rotation of the coil former. I'd ordered some 4BA brass slottted grub screws which arrived yesterday, so have tapped a hole in the cam 4BA to fit it to the shaft. It works a treat, and unlike the 'tally counter' I originally fitted, it doesn't place and resistance on the friction drive shaft. I've attached a couple of pics. I now need to decide how best to mount the calculator - probably double sided sticky pads, or maybe a custom-made clip. I'm hoping to get some brass sheet at Rufforth tomorrow to get on with the wire guide. All good clean fun!

Thanks so much for posting the pics of a genuine Morris Coil Winder Andy - what a rare find that must have been! I hadn't realised that it wound honeycomb and 'spider web' coils. The instructions make the differential gearing arrangements clear, and only solenoid coils are wound with a 1:1c ratio. I think it was probably an acquired skill using the winder - I wonder how many were sold? I think they date back to the mid 1930s. There's a very interesting and informative website by a Dutch radio amateur which outlines how to make such coil by hand on winding jigs, and the end results are very impressive: http://www.pa2mrx.nl/UK/coil%20homebrewing_uk.htm

One of the home-brew test gear projects I have in mind is a 'coil coverage meter'. Basically, if you have a tuning capacitor which goes from say 10pF - 365 pF, and want to know what coverage that would give with a particular coil, you set the tuning control on the meter to those settings, connect a coil under test, connect a signal generator and sweep it across the dial till you get a dip on the meter at resonance - first at the maximum capacity, then at the minimum, read off those frequencies on a frequency counter, and that tells you the coverage of the coil. It was in a 'Suggested Circuit' in Radio Constructor mag back in the 70s. Neat idea. Well I think so.

Thanks for your interest guys.

[Retired]

Hi David,

The website is fascinating; there are some very clever people around and the coils produced by hand are simply beautiful.

Well done with the calculator as well; no one can accuse you of being tight buying from Poundland.

Your brass cam is also a nice job well done; how much lift did you give it and I assume you drilled an off center hole in a bit of round bar stock? Small but very rewarding jobs.

Since you introduced me to the joys of Rufforth Auto Jumble I'm now drawn to it as a moth is to a flame the first Saturday of every month; good job its not every week or I would end up broke.

I'm sure you won't have a problem in obtaining the desired brass sheet from the usual indoor stalls. The plastic materials are also excellent value and cheap enough to buy to have a few in stock.

Kind regards, Col.

[Yorkie]

Hi David,

Well done with the calculator as well; no one can accuse you of being tight buying from Poundland.

Your brass cam is also a nice job well done; how much lift did you give it and I assume you drilled an off center hole in a bit of round bar stock? Small but very rewarding jobs.

Kind regards, Col.

Yes, I spashed out on the calculator at Poundland - the Tesco 86p ones were a bit too large, but blow the expense!

Yes - I had some 1.5" round bar Colin, so I cut a slice, trued it up on the lathe, then drilled if off centre and shaped it. It only has about .25" lift - just enough to operate the microswitch.

The original 'Morris' winder that Andy has is fascinating. Quite a complicated casting and a cast handle too. Neat little turns counter on a worm drive. I dare say that in its day, it was quite an expensive item. If only it could speak - it would no doubt have quite a tale to tell!

[Retired]

Hi,

What a delightful small coil winder. David very kindly brought it along to Rufforth this morning and it was a pleasure to look at it in detail whilst David gave a demonstration of the counter (calculator) in action. A lovely piece of work David so elegantly done and finished with a nice paint job.

David also showed me his home brew radio that he would use such a winder for to make the tuning coil; most impressive but I'm now used to seeing David's attention to detail.

Boy it was perishing at Rufforth; there was a notice displayed at the pay kiosk warning of black ice danger and it wasn't kidding. I arrived at 7.40 but by the time we met up I was frozen so unfortunately returned home early which is a pity because our friends Mike and Joyce Phelan also attended the meeting whom I briefly spoke to. The chill factor of the wind was something else. I'll be there again next March to spend some more brass.

Kind regards, Col.

[AlanBeckett]

I arrived at 7.40 but by the time we met up I was frozen so unfortunately returned home early ....

Have you considered installing a Heater in the car

Alan

[Andy M0FYA]

I spotted the Morris coil winder advertised as a 'buy-it-now' on the US ebay site, and decided I had to have it!
Fortunately as it isn't overly heavy the postage was manageable.
It also came with a bag of bits and pieces such as the 'cast forms' and the wooden dowels referred to in the instructions for winding spider web coils.
The 'list price' shown on the instruction leaflet is $7.50, I wonder what that equates to now? What was an average weekly wage in the US in the mid-30's?
I don't think it has ever seen much use, if any at all, so sadly it probably doesn't have much of a tale to tell, just patiently waiting its day to be used!

Andy