Coils are integral to a vast array of electrical components and circuits. Transformers, electromagnets, antennas, motors, inductive heaters, and so much more all rely on coils. And many of those need thousands of wraps to work as intended. That would be a massive amount of work to complete by hand and the results would be sloppy anyway, so Pisces Printing designed this coil winder machine.
This is exactly what it says on the tin: a machine that winds coils so you don’t have to. The user can input the number of wraps and the length of the coil, then the machine will take care of the rest. And the machine uses a lathe-style chuck to hold the core, so it can accommodate a wide range of sizes and materials. All the mechanical parts are either 3D-printable or available off-the-shelf, like fasteners and aluminum extrusion.
The machine works using a pair of stepper motors. One rotates the chuck to wind the coil and the other drives a lead screw that pulls the guide parallel along the axis of the core, ensuring a clean and uniform wrap. An Arduino Nano board controls the stepper motors through a custom PCB populated with drivers. It also displays the simple user interface on a 16×2 character LCD, with a few tactile buttons for inputting coil parameters.
If you need to wind coils with any kind of regularity, then you can take inspiration from this design to build your own time-saving machine.
