Hand-operated Coil Winding Machine?

[David G4EBT]

I've often wondered whether there is a simple machine which could be home constructed to produce wave wound coils, 'Denco style'. I wonder if anyone on the forum has a copy of the 28-page book by inventor Dave Gingery, published by Lindsay Books in America entitled ‘Build a Universal Coil Winding Machine’, and has any views on whether the book is worth buying? (It can be had in the UK).

Better still, has anyone made the machine, which it is claimed can be easily built, with no special machining. It’s said that it is based on an original design was made by the Morris Register Co. for decades in the US.

A description of the book is at this link:

http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/coil/index.html

An excellent short video on youtube shows the simple hand-turned winder in use, making a wave-wound coil with effortless ease can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIOocMoRsYQ

Neat eh?

There’s a discussion on the device here:

http://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/...9c99d64d550111

Fascinating stuff!

David.

[Mike Phelan]

David

I have quite a few books by the late Dave Gingery, and his son Vince, including this one.

Like all his books, they are excellent in the way he uses commonplace materials to build complex projects at little cost.

Quite a few members here have the Avo-Douglas wave-winder machines and use them.
Might be worth giving Retired (Colin Wood) and Jim Beacon a PM?

[f.cooper]

Hi,
I have the book and a part made machine, was going to fit a small geared motor but the project was not completed due to other commitments. You need an accurate drilling machine and an improvement for smoothnesss may be to use some proper ball bearings.
Good project but some metal working skill is required along with time and patience to make it. The hardest part is to get the holes for drive spindles lined up properly but this can be done by clamping the angle iron sides together and drilling through both at same time. Did wind a few coils with it by hand but the decided that I would like it better with a motor drive. It is not easy to get a supply of the litz wire that is best suited for wavewinding coils and ordinary enammelled wire is not good enough for proper wavewinding.
Will have to look the book out.

Regards

Fred

[Retired]

Hi David,

Fascinating stuff indeed. I've bought many excellent books from Camden over the years and the book you mention can be found at;

http://www.camdenmin.co.uk/engineeri...er-p-1724.html

Many thanks for the link to the video on wave winding it is brilliant and makes wave winding look so easy.

My AVO wave winder is fully rebuilt but I haven't seriously tried it out yet due to the prolonged severe winter and also lack of suitable winding wire.

One area of concern I have with wave winding is how to work out wire gauge; the number of turns and number of waves per turn. I've wound many transformers but wave winding appears to be a totally different technique. Enamelled copper wire is no good as it is too slippy and the silk covered wire I have seen so far is very expensive. Perhaps someone can please enlighten me?

For a beginner to metal work just buying the metal can be very expensive; it doesn't take many feet of bright mild steel to run up a large bill. I find visiting local sheet metal companies keeps the cost down. I only visit the small companies because in my experience the large companies would rather send off cuts to the scrap man than sell them to me.

I've returned home on many occasion with the car headlights plane spotting due to the weight of the steel off cuts; approaching the company I now get my off cuts from I was very generously given a car load free of charge on my first visit but I went back with a box of chocolates. My second visit I was only charged £2 but I handed over a tenner. The off cuts I obtain are usually black metal such as angle and channel iron but they are perfect for basic machine building and as they are so cheap I'm not worried about bankruptcy should I make a mistake. Bright mild steel can then be bought for where accuracy is required.

Most small sheet metal companies have a scrap bin and I always visit in my rags and ask if it is possible to buy some offcuts; the usual reply is "what are you after" I explain that I'm retired and enjoy tinkering around in my workshop and use all sorts of bits of metal and can I please have a look at what they have. It pays to be cheeky but also to be fair and not take advantage because once first contact is made I would like to return and feel welcome rather than be regarded as a pest.

An arc welder can be bought cheaply and is a great asset in joining metal sections quickly; a box of welding electrodes costs around £18 and last a long time. Learning to weld is relatively easy; you will only pick up one lump of welded metal whilst hot and quickly learn to put the welding mask in place before striking an arc if you want to see anything for about ten minutes due to arc eye. Welding is permanent but saves a great deal of time; effort and money compared to drilling holes and using nuts; bolts and washers.

I also visit local scrap yards; its amazing what I return home with for very little money and the bits I obtain keep me happy for many hours in the workshop.

Thanks for adding this thread David as many members have workshops and a lot of useful kit can be made from scrap.

Kind regards, Col.

[G4XWDJim]

This U tube clip looks very interesting and shows that a wave winder can be made very simply and judging by the apparent result looks to be quite effective. This could be a Gingery project.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIOoc...ext=1&index=10

Jim

[David G4EBT]

Originally Posted by Mike Phelan

David

I have quite a few books by the late Dave Gingery, and his son Vince, including this one.

Like all his books, they are excellent in the way he uses commonplace materials to build complex projects at little cost.

Quite a few members here have the Avo-Douglas wave-winder machines and use them.
Might be worth giving Retired (Colin Wood) and Jim Beacon a PM?

Thanks for the speedy and helpful response Mike - I hadn't appreciated that Dave Gingery, the author, had passed on. I've tracked down a UK supplier of the book, (Camden Steam Miniatures), at a reasonable postage cost - postage from the US would cost more than the book itself. They have several of his titles.

I came across the video on youtube when trawling for something else and was impressed by the relative simplicity of the machine, and the assertion that no complex engineeering was involved. I recall a recent interesting article on a major refurbishment of an AVO coilwinder, including cutting new gears, either in RB or the Bull - I can't place my hands on it right now.

Fascinating stuff!

David.

[Retired]

Hi David,

Please try;

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...vo+wave+winder

Yes; I also followed up with an article in the Bulletin and for better pictures try:

http://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=133451

Kind regards, Col.

[dave_n_t]

The design mentioned looks very professional; I'm not sure that my metalworking skills would be up to it.

There's a design for a hand-driven wave-winding machine made out of Meccano in an old issue of Radio Constructor. I've always had a hankering to make it, but I think collecting loads of Meccano in the hope off getting the right parts, as well as old Wireless gear, would be the final straw

If anyone's interested, I'll try to find the exact issue + scan it in.

dave

[David G4EBT]

Thanks for the posts guys and for your interesting comments, and for the links Col, to your incredible refurbishment of the AVO winder - especially the cutting of the change wheels for the gears. What a Herculean achievement. Excellent pics!

Maybe we should all sub-contract our coil winding to you Col!!

As to sourcing metal, I find autojumbles are often a good source ands generally keenly priced. There's one at Rufforth on the outskirts of York on the first Saturday each month which I sometimes go to. Aluminium, mild and stainless steel, brass etc in sheet, tube, flat, rod and bar. There's an enormous autojumble at Newark from time to time, and I guess they're dotted around the country near most major towns.

As to Litz wire for coil winding, the retail arm of the Scientific Wire Co sells it, but as far as I can tell, the smallest amount is 500 gr, but for that amount, surprisingly cheap. EG 10 strand silk covered 0.04mm (48SWG) £43.00 + VAT. See link:

http://www.wires.co.uk/acatalog/litzwire.html

I do wonder whether litz wire really does confer any discernible benefit in performance beyond single strand wire, or whether it was a bit of an overstated gimmick.

Litz was all the rage in my teens, when the advice for cleaning it in preparation for soldering was to dip the end in meths and set light to it. Every time i tried that it disappeared in a ball of flame, so I always carefully scraped it one strand at a time under a magnifying glass, with varying degrees of success!

I've got a reel of single strand 48SWG cotton covered, which suffices for my needs. I've hand wound a few coils for projects which call for obsolete and unobtainable Toko coils.

I might get the Dave Gingery book from Camden, simply for interest, if not to make the hand-wound winder.

Thanks once more guys,

David

[kalee20]

Originally Posted by Retired

One area of concern I have with wave winding is how to work out wire gauge; the number of turns and number of waves per turn. I've wound many transformers but wave winding appears to be a totally different technique. Enamelled copper wire is no good as it is too slippy and the silk covered wire I have seen so far is very expensive.

Enamelled wire is no good for wave winding, it's too smooth and the turns just slip over each other. You do need silk (or cotton or rayon) covered wire, and yes it is expensive!

As for setting-up, I can't help as I've never had to do it, but I seem to remember there is some info in F Langford-Smith's Radio Designer's handbook.

[f.cooper]

Hi,
For anyone that is interested :- A simple tuning coil winder by P.A. Robinson is in Radio Constructor December 1960. (the one using Meccano)
Sorry unable to scan it in.
Also an article on Tuning Coil Calculations(conclusion?) Radio Constructor November 1959,dont have part one of the article.

Regards

Fred

[HG MICKE]

A cost efective Enamelled wire for wave winding is Self Bonding Enamelled Copper Wire, The only drawback with this wire if you are running it through guides on your winding machine it tends to coat everything and you cannot use a friction tensioner.

Colin

[dave_n_t]

Originally Posted by dave_n_t

There's a design for a hand-driven wave-winding machine made out of Meccano in an old issue of Radio Constructor.....
I'll try to find the exact issue + scan it in.

dave

Here it is


dave

[Colin]

Hi David,

I have the book and you're very welcome to borrow it if you like. I made the winder and was very pleased with the result. I've not used it much but it is capable of producing nice 'wave wound' coils.

Regards
Colin

[David G4EBT]

Thanks for going the trouble to find and scan that Dave - most interesting!

A machine costing no more than £1 5s at the time to make, and which - so the artlicle colourfully exclaims - 'can be built by anyone sitting up in bed convalescing from an attack of influenza, provided they have enough strength to wield a screwdriver, a spanner, and a pair of scissors'!

It shows what appears to be an already wave-wound IFT, with a couple of formers waiting to be wound, but doesn't tell us whether this was achived by someone sat up in bed convalescing from a bout of 'flu Helpfully, the article advises that it's as well to get the parts together before the influenza sets in!

It goes on to say that 'a disc should be cut to near enough a circular shape from the stoutest tinplate that can be found, using scissors', and that 'this can be accomplished by anyone not the worst for drink'.

Ah, happy days - Radio Constructor, Dick and Smithy...I'll study the article with interest, and will enjoy a trip dowm memory lane. I've ordered the Dave Gingery coil winder machine book from Camden Miniatures too.

Thanks once more Dave.

David.

[OErjan_S]

wow, interesting postings here.
as for if litz is so much better, uhm, the breaking point seem to be at about 3MHz, below that "3MHz limit" you benefit and certainly below 2MHz, main reason for starting to loose above 2MHz is that we start encountering weird phenomenons like eddy currents and proximity effect and others to greater and greater extent, with carefull layout of the coil it can be managed up to rougly 3MHz sadly at 80M we are back at solid wire for the most part.

to give some idea as to how beneficial litz can be, for one common frequency range, 520-1700kHz best solid wire coils are around Q of 500-600, with high strand count litz I have personally made coils (together with a good capacitor) that are better than Q1200 across that span.
that is a significant (to say least) improvement to tuning sharpness, actually it is so sharp that it would cut sidebands away of not the antenna, ground, detector... load it down some.

now you may ask why make it so sharp to begin with, uhm, the higher the Q the sharper it tunes (more or less) and this is good, but it also becommes more sensitive. the more the antenna and ground are coupled the lower the Q of the tuned circuit will be but also the more signal will be transfered, so if i start with a resonant cirtcuit Q twice that of another i can couple A/G to it much tighter before i start loosing selectivity, win in one end loose in other.
to me that compete with crystal radio DX this is important as I have ONLY the signal in the antenna to work with, no preamp no audio amplification, actually not even a battery.
to most others it is merely theory and not much use (except in transmitters I guess where losses=heat)

[David G4EBT]

Originally Posted by Colin

Hi David,

I have the book and you're very welcome to borrow it if you like. I made the winder and was very pleased with the result. I've not used it much but it is capable of producing nice 'wave wound' coils.

Regards
Colin

Hi Colin,

Thanks for reading my posting and for your most helpful reply and kind offer of the loan of the book. The pics of your nicely made winder are most descriptive, and make it clear how the cam operates. I don't think I'd make much use of one, but I thought it was an intriguing machine, and would be a nice project to tackle. (I've only had to wind one coil in recent months, due to a Toko coil being unobtainable for the VFO of a MW modulator I made. I scramble wound the coil and it worked fine).

The only item that could be problematical to source for the winder would, I think be the turns counter - I've probably got enough metal offcuts for all the other bits. I saw an example of a turns counter on internet made from one of the step counters that clip on your belt when exercising to count how many steps you've walked. Apparently they have a little tilt switch to trigger the count on the digital display. A microswitch can be substituted for the tilt switch.

As you'll have noted from my earlier post, which crossed with yours Colin, I've already ordered the book, so won't need to take up your kind offer.

Regards,

David

[Retired]

Hi,

Thanks kalee20 I'll have a look at my Radio Designers Handbook; with 1.500 pages it's a book I seldom pick up.

Many thanks for your kind comments David; I think if everyone sent me their coils to wave wind I would be living in the workshop full time. I do intend to experiment with the wave winder once the workshop warms up a bit more; I've got a bobbin of silk covered wire to play with but I have a lot to learn as wave winding is new to me. I recently bought a 6KG bobbin of 0.25mm Litz wire; again this is new to me but the bobbin is brand new and boxed and at the price I paid I would have been a fool not to grab it.

The self bonding enamelled copper wire sounds interesting Colin; thanks for mentioning it.

Before I bought my coil winders I used a home made one and the counter was a £7 9V digital counter triggered by a magnet and reed switch; this worked very well but the main problem was it only added turns whichever rotation was selected but it was cheap and easy to rig up.

A friend sent me the following link to a useful website that I would like to pass on.

http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Workshop/advice/coils/

Kind regards, Col.