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Re: secondary winding
Hi Ian,
> Original Poster: "Ian S" <ian115-at-hotmail-dot-com>
> Hi all -
> I was woundering if any of you had any tricks for winding secandaries?
> Thanks in advance!
> Ian
Secondary's are usually wound by hand. Some of us have rigged together
motor drives to turn the inner form. Either way, it's a good idea to add
end caps with center bearings to each end of the form, placing it
horizontal to do the winding. A couple of old wire spools work well as end
caps and they have a center hole to place in a bearing.
If you do this by hand (no motor drive) you will only have 2 hands to work
with (usually) so while one hand turns the inner form, the other will be
used as a wire guide. Therefore, you will need to mount the wire spool
horizontal. What I've done in the past to accomodate a winding tension, is
run the wire through a soft nylon tube (1/4") and mount the tube as a wire
guide putting a small ty-wrap around the nylon tube tightening it down
just so it allows a slight drag on the wire. This makes it easy to add a
slight amount of tension so that my hands can concentrate more on the
turning and placement of the wire onto the inner form.
You will also probably be counting turns. Again, a more elaborate method
is to hook in a click counter, but with hand winding, just counting the
turns is generally the method used. It will be easy to lose count. I like
to place a small (1" x 1/4") piece of paper at each 50th turn, then I
always know what turn I'm on incase I stop for some reason. They are
easily slipped out later.
It is advantageous to hook up a motor drive if possible as it does a lot
of the work for you and will speed up the process greatly. Also, it's nice
when applying final coatings over the windings to have the coil turning to
prevent huge sags and runs of the coating.
Everyone probably has their own unique method of doing this. If bearings
and end caps are hard to come by, you could always just create a "V" guide
out of wood (a notch or something) and put a pole through the inner form
laying it in the notch. This method will work too. Remember your form will
eventually have the weight of the winding and coating on it when finished,
so make your mounting sturdy enough (depends much on coil size too).
Good luck,
Bart