slowburnaz
Commercial User
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Magnets & Copper Wire: A Pickup Building Thread
- Thread starter Freekmagnet
- Start date
slowburnaz
Commercial User
I am working on a pair of bass pickups for my current build and I thought I'd share here and ask you experts some questions along the way. Not much progress at this point, I just got the magnets today. I'm hoping to get some experimental coils wound up by this weekend to help nail down the recipe, since this is a brand new design for me. I'm making wood covers in a Bartolini BC shape to match the bass I'm working on now.
These will be blade humbuckers. The magnets are C8. The bobbins will be wound directly on the bar magnets (instead of a magnet underneath and steel plates for the blades). The bobbin cores are 2.6875 by .24 and the total flange width is .54". I'm not really sure what to aim for in terms of turn count on a bass humbucker, any pointers? I have 42 and 43 awg on hand. I put my bobbin dimensions in the JD coil estimator and it tells me I have room for what is probably way more winds than I need, even with the 42 awg. Looks like I could fit almost 7,000 turns for 6k ohms with 42 gauge, or 7300-ish turns of 43 gauge for almost 8k ohms. I can't really find any references to comparable blade pickups that give enough detail to determine a guess at a turn count (seems like all the really detailed specs on the web are for Fender style pickups, for soapbar humbuckers you sometimes get a DCR but not often also a turn count and/or wire gauge, and almost never any details about bobbin dimensions or magnet size/type...)
If no one wants to throw a dart at the wall for a starting point I might just wind them full with 43 awg and see how they sound, then strip wire off until they clear up enough. That should give me over 14,000 turns and 15-16k ohms total on each pickup. Sounds like a lot!
These will be blade humbuckers. The magnets are C8. The bobbins will be wound directly on the bar magnets (instead of a magnet underneath and steel plates for the blades). The bobbin cores are 2.6875 by .24 and the total flange width is .54". I'm not really sure what to aim for in terms of turn count on a bass humbucker, any pointers? I have 42 and 43 awg on hand. I put my bobbin dimensions in the JD coil estimator and it tells me I have room for what is probably way more winds than I need, even with the 42 awg. Looks like I could fit almost 7,000 turns for 6k ohms with 42 gauge, or 7300-ish turns of 43 gauge for almost 8k ohms. I can't really find any references to comparable blade pickups that give enough detail to determine a guess at a turn count (seems like all the really detailed specs on the web are for Fender style pickups, for soapbar humbuckers you sometimes get a DCR but not often also a turn count and/or wire gauge, and almost never any details about bobbin dimensions or magnet size/type...)
If no one wants to throw a dart at the wall for a starting point I might just wind them full with 43 awg and see how they sound, then strip wire off until they clear up enough. That should give me over 14,000 turns and 15-16k ohms total on each pickup. Sounds like a lot!
slowburnaz
Commercial User
If it were me, I might start at 10,000 turns of 42awg, see how it sounds, and then adjust accordingly.
7000 turns sounds like a lot to me, but YMMV. Personally, I’d start with maybe 5000-6000 turns, maybe even less with a C8 magnet. It’s hard to really give someone a definite number because there’s so many other factors - like the size and shape of the coil, etc. that will affect that target turn count. Even then, it’s kinda up to your sense of what sounds good to you that is the real-world determining factor.
The 42 is a pretty good middle-of-the-road wire gauge. Given that all the other factors are the same, the 43 wire will give you a pickup that brighter overall, but with a tighter-sounding bottom. The emphasis of your mids will shift slightly (down?) as well. Using the finer wire sounds great on paper, but doing so comes with the sacrifice of a small amount of clarity.
The 42 is a pretty good middle-of-the-road wire gauge. Given that all the other factors are the same, the 43 wire will give you a pickup that brighter overall, but with a tighter-sounding bottom. The emphasis of your mids will shift slightly (down?) as well. Using the finer wire sounds great on paper, but doing so comes with the sacrifice of a small amount of clarity.
I have the 43 on hand for high output guitar pickups - wasn't sure I'd ever "need" it on a bass pickup, though your comments make sense. Maybe I should start with the 42, if these bobbins will have more than enough space anyways.
What are you guys usually doing in terms of a bridge vs neck pickup? It seems like some brands have the bridge as much as 25 - 30% more winds than the neck.
What are you guys usually doing in terms of a bridge vs neck pickup? It seems like some brands have the bridge as much as 25 - 30% more winds than the neck.
slowburnaz
Commercial User
I typically shoot for about 10% more on the bridge. Though, most of what I'm winding these days have adjustable poles, so it's less about output differences than the voicing, and so far, I've liked that recipe.
42 is a good place to start.
In my experience, I haven’t been able to come up with a definitive percentage to address that issue. I addition, it seems like those kind of specs in commercial pickups vary widely. That would cause me to speculate that percentage might be better determined on a case-by-case basis.
C8 magnets are tricky, too. I’ve had a difficult time mastering them. If you’re doing your first pickup build, I’ve found A5 to be a lot more forgiving.
I've done a bunch of guitar pickups with A2, A3, A5, A8, and C8 magnets but this is my first "from scratch" bass design. I'm hoping I do OK with the C8's in a bass pickup, but honestly I'm using them mostly because they were the only thing I could find in the exact dimensions I wanted. It's frustrating. Super easy to find all kinds of magnets at all kinds of vendors in either PAF-sized bars or various rods. But there just doesn't seem to be a big selection of magnets in bars big enough for bass humbuckers.
Yup. You’re always limited by what’s available. Thus lies the bass pickup maker’s quandary.
You’ll do fine. Have fun!
To me, 5000 to 6000 turns is a baseline of what you need to get a reasonable output level to go passive into most amps, assuming "normal" level magnetic field strength. Remember that every turn is one more little step of amplification of the signal. The number of turns is the primary thing that determines the output level, along with the magnetic field strength.
The gauge of the wire sets the DC resistance of the coil, for a given number of turns. Smaller gauge is more resistance; larger gauge is less resistance. The resistance affects the characteristics of how the coil reacts to the wiggling magnetic field, mostly in shifting the resonant peak. The wire gauge will also change the dimensional size of the coil, for the same number of turns, which may change how the coil fits into the magnetic field. But the wire gauge by itself doesn't really affect the output level.
Smaller wire gauge is often associated with increased output level, but that's because the smaller gauge is being used to put more turns on a bobbin. It's not the smaller gauge or the increased resistance that increases the output level; it's the extra turns.
Some pickups are wound with 10,000 or more turns. Usually that's because they are using smaller, less powerful magnets. So they add more turns to the coil to boost the level to a better range.
Personally, I like to make my pickups with powerful magnets, and keep the turns in the lower range. A good output level, with a flatter frequency curve. But that's my choice.
The gauge of the wire sets the DC resistance of the coil, for a given number of turns. Smaller gauge is more resistance; larger gauge is less resistance. The resistance affects the characteristics of how the coil reacts to the wiggling magnetic field, mostly in shifting the resonant peak. The wire gauge will also change the dimensional size of the coil, for the same number of turns, which may change how the coil fits into the magnetic field. But the wire gauge by itself doesn't really affect the output level.
Smaller wire gauge is often associated with increased output level, but that's because the smaller gauge is being used to put more turns on a bobbin. It's not the smaller gauge or the increased resistance that increases the output level; it's the extra turns.
Some pickups are wound with 10,000 or more turns. Usually that's because they are using smaller, less powerful magnets. So they add more turns to the coil to boost the level to a better range.
Personally, I like to make my pickups with powerful magnets, and keep the turns in the lower range. A good output level, with a flatter frequency curve. But that's my choice.
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@Bruce Johnson you're describing what I'm after - flat response with good output. I am hoping the C8 magnets will get me there since they're so strong. With one magnet in each coil (so, two per humbucker) I should have a pretty strong magnetic field - so I'm thinking that should lead to me wanting a lower turn count.
I'll stick with the 42 awg since it seems more and more like I'll easily be able to fit enough turns on these bobbins even though they're pretty small. I like the 43 for stuffing a lot of turns in a PAF style guitar humbucker for higher output but I don't think that's going to apply here...
I'll stick with the 42 awg since it seems more and more like I'll easily be able to fit enough turns on these bobbins even though they're pretty small. I like the 43 for stuffing a lot of turns in a PAF style guitar humbucker for higher output but I don't think that's going to apply here...
I decided to pause actual coil winding activities for a few weeks and build a new winder. I've made enough coils on my current arrangement that I can work around it's weaknesses, but it's really a hack job and a little nerve wracking to use. I want this to be fun, not mildly frustrating. I'll share the old setup and my plans for the new one here in case other beginners need a starting point. I feel like a lot of the "here's the winder I built" info on the web is written from the perspective of someone who already understands pickup winding and can figure out the details, so I'll try to write this from a more newbie-ish perspective. Which should be easy because I'm much newer at this than most of you regulars in this thread!
Here's my current rig. It's built around one of the budget coil winders you can get on eBay or Amazon for $35 or so.
Ahhh yes, I'm sure some of you are saying right now, the venerable old NZ-1. Everyone's favorite Hand Shake Electric Wind Thread Machine! Guaranteed to produce perfectly hand shook electric winds on all of your thread projects! Everyone knows hand shook pickups sounds better than machine shook, after all. But I don't know what the warp specification on the nameplate is supposed to mean. Isn't warp 0.02 basically just full impulse speed?
These winders are basically just a few shafts through a big block of pot metal. The shafts are geared so there's a 1:1 and an 1:8 drive option on the right hand side, with the intention that you can put a handle on the 1:8 and crank away by hand, or use a motor on the 1:1 shaft. There's even a tiny pulley on the 1:1 shaft. I have the sewing machine motor on the 1:1 shaft with pulleys that probably work out to about a 2:1 reduction. I don't really know what RPM I end up with because I don't really know how fast a sewing machine motor spins. I have a sewing machine foot pedal on the motor for a crude speed control, and I'd guess it is ultimately spinning the bobbin around 2,000 rpms. I tried winding one by hand with the 1:8 crank and it was honestly not as awful as you'd think.
The advantage of these winders is that they're cheap and more or less ready to go with the shafts all set up for you, and they have a mechanical turn counter built right in. So you can be up and running very quickly. The big disadvantage is that they're very sloppy. There's a lot of play in the shafts, they're just run through bores in the pot metal, no bearing or bushing so there's play in pretty much every direction. This manifests as a lot of "wiggle" at the bobbin when you're trying to wind, which makes it really hard to wind an even coil. Even if you're trying for a scatterwind (whatever that's officially supposed to mean) it's hard to get a consistent stopping point side to side.
Besides the slop, the other big disadvantage to my current setup is that the stupid foot pedal control for the sewing machine motor is very frustrating to use. It's very touchy - just a small difference in pressure makes a huge difference in speed. Which, as anyone who's wound pickups can tell you, means that it's easy to end up with very inconsistent coils and/or broken wire. Plus, after only a few dozen coils wound on this machine, the little arm inside the foot switch that completes the circuit against the big carbon electrode had bent to the point that it actually stopped working. This ended up being a good thing because it forced me to take the pedal apart and fix it, at which point I bent the arm and adjusted the electrode in a way that gave me a more reliable operation for the controller. Also worth noting - I just set the foot pedal on the workbench and use my hand to control it. I couldn't get a consistent speed trying to do this with my foot.
For a wire guide, I screwed an extra humbucker bobbin to a plywood bracket. I can adjust the bracket side to side to center the wire vs the bobbin, and tilt it to control the "width." This worked much better than I expected, to be honest. The only real disadvantage is that it's a touchy setup given the slop in the winder, and if you want to switch bobbin sizes you're starting totally from scratch with no reference point. It takes me two or three bobbins of failure to get things adjusted when I switch. For wire tension, I put the soft side of a piece of velcro tape on two small pieces of plywood and then clamped them with a spring clamp, velcro sides in. The wire runs through the velcro and it provides drag to keep the tension up. Quick and dirty but also much more effective than I had originally hoped.
So that's the old setup in all it's gory details. It did it's job, and it was cheap. If you have $100 and you want to wind pickups, you can duplicate that setup and have enough money left over for wire, magnets, bobbins, and other parts. But you'll probably throw away your first half pound of wire dealing with the slop in the mechanism and the difficulty of controlling the speed and the traverse limits. I think I got good at cutting wire off bobbins just about as fast as I got good at winding it on them.
Okay, deep breath...
For my new setup, I'm pretty much starting over. I put together a wish list:
1) Small direct drive DC motor for spinning the bobbin, since that's the best option to keep it simple and give me easy control over speed.
2) Accurate digital counter that can handle at least 4,000 rpm. Don't plan on going that fast but I want a good cushion.
3) Automatic traverse, with adjustable speed and adjustable limits. Must be idiot proof.
4) Manual electronic controls (switches and knobs) for the bobbin motor and traverse speed and direction, for now, but put together in a way that would let me "upgrade" to a microcontroller in the future.
5) Run it all off a single DC power supply that's built in to the unit so there's just one plug to the wall.
6) No slop! Reliable, easy, repeatable adjustments!
I've got a theoretical design and I've bought the components:
1) 12v 4,000 rpm DC motor RS555 DC Hobby Motor - 12 V - 4000 RPM - High Torque - RS-555 Project Motor | eBay
2) Hall effect sensor for the turn counter: NJK-5002C Hall Effect Sensor Proximity Switch NPN w/magnet & LED Arduino USA | eBay
3) A Red Lion CUB3 turn counter. This is discontinued but they're all over the place used, or you could get one of their current models: Red Lion CUB3 Digital Counter, Used | eBay
4) 12v 5A DC power supply 12V 24V - 2A to 30A Amp Switching Power Supply Adapter for LED Strip | eBay
5) A bag of mini limit switches, to be used in the traverse (I only need two but they came in a ten pack) 10PCS Limit Micro Switch V-156-1C25 Long Straight Hinge Roller Momentary SPDT | eBay
6) A pair of DC motor controllers with reverse switches and speed controls already built in 6V 12V 24V PWM DC Motor Speed Controller Reversible Switch Adjustable Governor | eBay
7) A DPDT 12v relay to be used in the traverse: Coil Power Relay With Base LY2NJ LY2N-J 8pin 2NO/2NC Led lamp DC12V/10A DPDT US | eBay
8) A tiny DC gear motor to be used in the traverse: 3pc DC 3V-12V 18RPM Slow Speed Mini Worm Electric Gear Box Motor Speed Reduction | eBay
9) A bunch of 1N400x diodes from my parts box for the traverse
10) A piece of 1/4" steel rod I had on hand for the traverse, with a few shaft collars
11) some PVC sheet, plywood, screws, etc I had on hand for the enclosure, brackets, bobbin platen, etc
I did some simple mockups and tests last night and confirmed that the hall effect sensor works with the counter. I started laying the components out on a piece of paper to get an idea of size and shape for the enclosure. I don't yet have the little gear motor for the traverse, and I need to figure out exactly how the mechanism will work - my theory is that the gear motor will have an arm that will move the steel rod back and forth, and the rod will have a guide for the wire on it. The rod will hit the limit switches at each end of it's travel with adjustable stops (the shaft collars) and the switches will trigger the relay to reverse the motor direction.
I'm hoping I can start assembling this over the next few days, for real, and see how it works!
Here's my current rig. It's built around one of the budget coil winders you can get on eBay or Amazon for $35 or so.
Ahhh yes, I'm sure some of you are saying right now, the venerable old NZ-1. Everyone's favorite Hand Shake Electric Wind Thread Machine! Guaranteed to produce perfectly hand shook electric winds on all of your thread projects! Everyone knows hand shook pickups sounds better than machine shook, after all. But I don't know what the warp specification on the nameplate is supposed to mean. Isn't warp 0.02 basically just full impulse speed?
These winders are basically just a few shafts through a big block of pot metal. The shafts are geared so there's a 1:1 and an 1:8 drive option on the right hand side, with the intention that you can put a handle on the 1:8 and crank away by hand, or use a motor on the 1:1 shaft. There's even a tiny pulley on the 1:1 shaft. I have the sewing machine motor on the 1:1 shaft with pulleys that probably work out to about a 2:1 reduction. I don't really know what RPM I end up with because I don't really know how fast a sewing machine motor spins. I have a sewing machine foot pedal on the motor for a crude speed control, and I'd guess it is ultimately spinning the bobbin around 2,000 rpms. I tried winding one by hand with the 1:8 crank and it was honestly not as awful as you'd think.
The advantage of these winders is that they're cheap and more or less ready to go with the shafts all set up for you, and they have a mechanical turn counter built right in. So you can be up and running very quickly. The big disadvantage is that they're very sloppy. There's a lot of play in the shafts, they're just run through bores in the pot metal, no bearing or bushing so there's play in pretty much every direction. This manifests as a lot of "wiggle" at the bobbin when you're trying to wind, which makes it really hard to wind an even coil. Even if you're trying for a scatterwind (whatever that's officially supposed to mean) it's hard to get a consistent stopping point side to side.
Besides the slop, the other big disadvantage to my current setup is that the stupid foot pedal control for the sewing machine motor is very frustrating to use. It's very touchy - just a small difference in pressure makes a huge difference in speed. Which, as anyone who's wound pickups can tell you, means that it's easy to end up with very inconsistent coils and/or broken wire. Plus, after only a few dozen coils wound on this machine, the little arm inside the foot switch that completes the circuit against the big carbon electrode had bent to the point that it actually stopped working. This ended up being a good thing because it forced me to take the pedal apart and fix it, at which point I bent the arm and adjusted the electrode in a way that gave me a more reliable operation for the controller. Also worth noting - I just set the foot pedal on the workbench and use my hand to control it. I couldn't get a consistent speed trying to do this with my foot.
For a wire guide, I screwed an extra humbucker bobbin to a plywood bracket. I can adjust the bracket side to side to center the wire vs the bobbin, and tilt it to control the "width." This worked much better than I expected, to be honest. The only real disadvantage is that it's a touchy setup given the slop in the winder, and if you want to switch bobbin sizes you're starting totally from scratch with no reference point. It takes me two or three bobbins of failure to get things adjusted when I switch. For wire tension, I put the soft side of a piece of velcro tape on two small pieces of plywood and then clamped them with a spring clamp, velcro sides in. The wire runs through the velcro and it provides drag to keep the tension up. Quick and dirty but also much more effective than I had originally hoped.
So that's the old setup in all it's gory details. It did it's job, and it was cheap. If you have $100 and you want to wind pickups, you can duplicate that setup and have enough money left over for wire, magnets, bobbins, and other parts. But you'll probably throw away your first half pound of wire dealing with the slop in the mechanism and the difficulty of controlling the speed and the traverse limits. I think I got good at cutting wire off bobbins just about as fast as I got good at winding it on them.
Okay, deep breath...
For my new setup, I'm pretty much starting over. I put together a wish list:
1) Small direct drive DC motor for spinning the bobbin, since that's the best option to keep it simple and give me easy control over speed.
2) Accurate digital counter that can handle at least 4,000 rpm. Don't plan on going that fast but I want a good cushion.
3) Automatic traverse, with adjustable speed and adjustable limits. Must be idiot proof.
4) Manual electronic controls (switches and knobs) for the bobbin motor and traverse speed and direction, for now, but put together in a way that would let me "upgrade" to a microcontroller in the future.
5) Run it all off a single DC power supply that's built in to the unit so there's just one plug to the wall.
6) No slop! Reliable, easy, repeatable adjustments!
I've got a theoretical design and I've bought the components:
1) 12v 4,000 rpm DC motor RS555 DC Hobby Motor - 12 V - 4000 RPM - High Torque - RS-555 Project Motor | eBay
2) Hall effect sensor for the turn counter: NJK-5002C Hall Effect Sensor Proximity Switch NPN w/magnet & LED Arduino USA | eBay
3) A Red Lion CUB3 turn counter. This is discontinued but they're all over the place used, or you could get one of their current models: Red Lion CUB3 Digital Counter, Used | eBay
4) 12v 5A DC power supply 12V 24V - 2A to 30A Amp Switching Power Supply Adapter for LED Strip | eBay
5) A bag of mini limit switches, to be used in the traverse (I only need two but they came in a ten pack) 10PCS Limit Micro Switch V-156-1C25 Long Straight Hinge Roller Momentary SPDT | eBay
6) A pair of DC motor controllers with reverse switches and speed controls already built in 6V 12V 24V PWM DC Motor Speed Controller Reversible Switch Adjustable Governor | eBay
7) A DPDT 12v relay to be used in the traverse: Coil Power Relay With Base LY2NJ LY2N-J 8pin 2NO/2NC Led lamp DC12V/10A DPDT US | eBay
8) A tiny DC gear motor to be used in the traverse: 3pc DC 3V-12V 18RPM Slow Speed Mini Worm Electric Gear Box Motor Speed Reduction | eBay
9) A bunch of 1N400x diodes from my parts box for the traverse
10) A piece of 1/4" steel rod I had on hand for the traverse, with a few shaft collars
11) some PVC sheet, plywood, screws, etc I had on hand for the enclosure, brackets, bobbin platen, etc
I did some simple mockups and tests last night and confirmed that the hall effect sensor works with the counter. I started laying the components out on a piece of paper to get an idea of size and shape for the enclosure. I don't yet have the little gear motor for the traverse, and I need to figure out exactly how the mechanism will work - my theory is that the gear motor will have an arm that will move the steel rod back and forth, and the rod will have a guide for the wire on it. The rod will hit the limit switches at each end of it's travel with adjustable stops (the shaft collars) and the switches will trigger the relay to reverse the motor direction.
I'm hoping I can start assembling this over the next few days, for real, and see how it works!
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"The warp is the set of yarns or other elements stretched in place on a loom before the weft is introduced during the weaving process. It is regarded as the longitudinal set in a finished fabric with two or more sets of elements.
The term is also used for a set of yarns established before the interworking of weft yarns by some other method, such as finger manipulation, yielding wrapped or twined structures. Very simple looms use a spiral warp, in which the warp is made up of a single, very long yarn wound in a spiral pattern around a pair of sticks or beams.
The warp must be strong to be held under high tension during the weaving process, unlike the weft which carries almost no tension."
Warp and weft - Wikipedia
The term is also used for a set of yarns established before the interworking of weft yarns by some other method, such as finger manipulation, yielding wrapped or twined structures. Very simple looms use a spiral warp, in which the warp is made up of a single, very long yarn wound in a spiral pattern around a pair of sticks or beams.
The warp must be strong to be held under high tension during the weaving process, unlike the weft which carries almost no tension."
Warp and weft - Wikipedia
@wraub - thanks for sharing. 
I like my Star Trek joke more than the real answer though. And I'm still confused on how that relates to a coil winder, but that's fine. It's pretty clear that this nameplate is typical roughly translated gobbleygook.
I had a few minutes this morning before work and got most of the plastic parts cut and drilled, and I put the controls in the face plate. The brackets for mounting the motor and the bobbin platen are 1/4" PVC sheet, and the control plate is 1/16" acrylic. PVC sheet is so nice to work with, it cuts and drills like butter. The acrylic I had on hand is a dark smoke tint which almost looks way too cool and modern for a gizmo that is otherwise made from plywood and mdf scraps....
I like my Star Trek joke more than the real answer though. And I'm still confused on how that relates to a coil winder, but that's fine. It's pretty clear that this nameplate is typical roughly translated gobbleygook.I had a few minutes this morning before work and got most of the plastic parts cut and drilled, and I put the controls in the face plate. The brackets for mounting the motor and the bobbin platen are 1/4" PVC sheet, and the control plate is 1/16" acrylic. PVC sheet is so nice to work with, it cuts and drills like butter. The acrylic I had on hand is a dark smoke tint which almost looks way too cool and modern for a gizmo that is otherwise made from plywood and mdf scraps....
@wraub - thanks for sharing.
I had a few minutes this morning before work and got most of the plastic parts cut and drilled, and I put the controls in the face plate. The brackets for mounting the motor and the bobbin platen are 1/4" PVC sheet, and the control plate is 1/16" acrylic. PVC sheet is so nice to work with, it cuts and drills like butter. The acrylic I had on hand is a dark smoke tint which almost looks way too cool and modern for a gizmo that is otherwise made from plywood and mdf scraps....
View attachment 4128826
View attachment 4128823
Niiiice control panel!
Brackets for the motors and the traverse went on this morning. The steel rod for the traverse will get collars on it that will line up with limit switches in the little notches cut into the brackets, and a guide of some kind in the middle to guide the wire back and forth. I need to figure out a mechanism to connect that rod with the arm on the traverse gear motor, probably a short pushrod or something. Otherwise just need to wire it all up and it's pretty much done.
A couple of mechanical suggestions:
Your spindle speed should be 0-1200 rpm. Pickup bobbin winding is most comfortable in the range of 700-1000 rpm. Faster than that brings all kinds of problems with centrifugal force, loose winding, higher tension, breaking wire, etc.
You need to make a better face plate. That looks like it's going to wobble on the shaft, especially with the bobbin hanging off the front. And the corners of the rectangular plate will catch the wire and ruin the wind. The face plate needs to be a round disc that spins true on a solid hub, and won't wobble or vibrate. Its outer edge needs to be radiused and polished, so that if the feeding wire touches it, it won't catch and snag. Invest the effort in a good face plate, and save yourself a lot of frustration.
The feed nozzle (or eyelet or whatever) needs to be as close to the bobbin as you can get it. If there's 2" of wire between the feed nozzle and the bobbin, you aren't going to have much control over how the wire lays down. It will weave side to side as it pleases, regardless of what your feed controller is telling it.
Go for wire tension of around 25 grams. That's good for nice tight coils, but low enough to reduce wire breakage. Most magnet wire will break at 35-50 grams.
Your spindle speed should be 0-1200 rpm. Pickup bobbin winding is most comfortable in the range of 700-1000 rpm. Faster than that brings all kinds of problems with centrifugal force, loose winding, higher tension, breaking wire, etc.
You need to make a better face plate. That looks like it's going to wobble on the shaft, especially with the bobbin hanging off the front. And the corners of the rectangular plate will catch the wire and ruin the wind. The face plate needs to be a round disc that spins true on a solid hub, and won't wobble or vibrate. Its outer edge needs to be radiused and polished, so that if the feeding wire touches it, it won't catch and snag. Invest the effort in a good face plate, and save yourself a lot of frustration.
The feed nozzle (or eyelet or whatever) needs to be as close to the bobbin as you can get it. If there's 2" of wire between the feed nozzle and the bobbin, you aren't going to have much control over how the wire lays down. It will weave side to side as it pleases, regardless of what your feed controller is telling it.
Go for wire tension of around 25 grams. That's good for nice tight coils, but low enough to reduce wire breakage. Most magnet wire will break at 35-50 grams.
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