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Step 3Winding tool details
A major problem with trying to wind too fast, such as with a power drill, is that it's very hard to guide the wire by hand. The difficulty comes from the fact that you're trying to keep the new wire right next to the existing wire coil, without getting gaps in the windings, or overlapping the already-wound coil. To facilitate high-speed wrapping, we created a tool that greatly reduces the error rate when winding at high speeds.
We started with a piece of 1" diameter brass barstock laying around the scrap pile. We first drilled a hole just slightly larger than 3/8". Remember that 3/8" is the diameter of our winding rod. The extra size is to allow the finished coil, which is slightly larger than the winding rod, to fit inside the winding tool. We also drilled a small hole perpendicular to the main hole, which is for the wire to feed into the tool from the spool.
See the attached images for a diagram of the two drill holes in the tool, and also a rotating 3D animation of the bar, to fully illustrate the construction. As shown in the bottom image of the diagram image, you feed the raw wire in from the top, which is then wound around the winding rod. The finished coil will grow out the side of the winder tool.
This winding tool solves the main hand-wrapping issues of gaps and overlapping quite nicely. It allows you to put solid pressure towards the washers and the completed coil, which eliminates gaps in the coil. Since the winding tool is tight around the finished coil, it's not possible for the wire to overlap the finished coil, as there is no room inside the winding tool.
Using this tool, we are able to easily wind a complete 12" coil with the electric drill in under a minute, without worrying about the quality of the finished coil.
We started with a piece of 1" diameter brass barstock laying around the scrap pile. We first drilled a hole just slightly larger than 3/8". Remember that 3/8" is the diameter of our winding rod. The extra size is to allow the finished coil, which is slightly larger than the winding rod, to fit inside the winding tool. We also drilled a small hole perpendicular to the main hole, which is for the wire to feed into the tool from the spool.
See the attached images for a diagram of the two drill holes in the tool, and also a rotating 3D animation of the bar, to fully illustrate the construction. As shown in the bottom image of the diagram image, you feed the raw wire in from the top, which is then wound around the winding rod. The finished coil will grow out the side of the winder tool.
This winding tool solves the main hand-wrapping issues of gaps and overlapping quite nicely. It allows you to put solid pressure towards the washers and the completed coil, which eliminates gaps in the coil. Since the winding tool is tight around the finished coil, it's not possible for the wire to overlap the finished coil, as there is no room inside the winding tool.
Using this tool, we are able to easily wind a complete 12" coil with the electric drill in under a minute, without worrying about the quality of the finished coil.
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Feb 5, 2010. 12:12 PMGhalko
says:
This is awesome. Partly why I stopped doing chain-maille is that it is so tough to get a consistent spring. Now to get my brother to machine something like this... Even if I just use it for hand-powered it will be that much better.
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