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Re: Coil coating: (was Re: Fiat PVC, Fiat Lux)



In a message dated 7/6/99 4:33:46 PM Central Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes:

<< Total agreement. I would NEVER wind a coil on my lathe. Esp. not
 if I would be coating it with epoxy, etc (running the lathe to prevent
 sags and runs). A lathe is an (expensive) piece of high tech
 equipment and should not be abused for such purposes. It only
 took me about 2 1/2 hrs to build a electrical winding rig out of
 scrap parts, I had laying around. It was a most beneficial aid in
 secondary construction. Another problem with winding a coil on
 a lathe: This is EXTREMELY difficult to do, if you wind the coil
 alone. You will never be able to stop the lathe in time (mine
 goes down to 60 rpm), if the wire tangles, etc. If the wire gets
 caught or tangles somehow, it WILL snap before you can stop
 the lathe. My lathe spins down slowly. It doesn´t have a quick
 stop. (I´m not sure if any lathe has a quick stop, because you
 have high inertial energy "stored in the lathe" esp at low (high
 gear ratios) turning speed). >>

Hi Reinhard and All,

What, NEVER? The winding jig is fine unless you are lucky enuff to have a 
wood lathe.
It is easy to take a length of threaded rod and pass it thru the headstock 
and the tailstock.
I start out by using a fly cutter to cut two washers out of 3/8 or 1/2 inch 
plywood. I set the cutting tool on the fly cutter so the washer has the 
inside diameter of the bevel slightly smaller than the inside diameter of the 
pvc. You want the washers, not the hole, and you want the small diameter of 
the washer to fit inside the pvc while the bevel can be used to sandwich 
against the pvc. The threaded rod then passes thru the washers and the length 
of pvc. You then thread and tighten nuts to clamp the entire assembly. The 
bevel works to center the length of pvc just as well as a hunk of wood can be 
centered between the lathe centers. Sometimes the pvc is too long for one 
threaded rod plus the length of the lathe bed, and I'll use coupling nuts to 
join two lengths of rod. With one end of the rod sticking out of the left 
side of the headstock, and the other end coming out of the right hand side of 
the tailstock, it is easy to stick some sort of crank on the end of the rod 
and you're in the coilwinding business. I have not felt a need for electric 
turning power. With one hand turning the crank and the other hand guiding the 
wire, the wire seems to slide into place as it tensions against the previous 
turn. I can even clamp a magnifying reading glass into the tool post. I need 
it. 

I suspect much of this is redundant from what you guys do on a winding jig.
I have never used the winding jig arrangement as winding on a wood lathe 
works so well.

It's a great summer.  :-))
Ralph Zekelman