I'm building a coil winder to duplicate some special coils Stan Meyer used to produce hydrogen.  The winder is just about complete and since this is the first time I've attempted to go CNC with Mach 3 I've got questions.  I've incorporated Smoothstepper (sounded like a good idea), added a MPG in case I decide to manually jog the spindle or carriage but I don't have a clue about a coil winder screen.  I did notice that Hood had what appeared to be a nice looking screen for winding.  If anyone has something that is up and running with no problems I'd like to hear from you.  I'm attaching some photos of the winder to date.

Thanks,

Gary

The other pictures

Gary

I don't have any info regarding a screen, but the least I can do is compliment your work. Looks like a quality job you've done there! This certainly doesn't appear to be your first machine project. Thanks for the pictures!

Machine looks great :-) Looking forward to see it in action.
I have attached my screenset and bitmaps if you want it, the X axis is what I have called the spindle and Z is the travelling axis.
Place the coilwindercarbon.set in the main mach3 folder  and unxip the HoodButtons folder to the Bitmaps folder and you should be fine. The buttons folder contains a lot more images than you actually need for the screenset as its for all of the screens I use but I just posted the lot as it saves me seperating them out as I am lazy
Hood

Hi Gary,

Machine looks fantastic! Thanks for sharing the pictures.

And I would also like to see it in action

Dan

At Dan13 & Sam, thanks for the complements.  I hope it works as well as it looks.  Yes,  I have built a few machines in the past.  I've got a plasma cutter that has been running for 10 years using Flashcut CNC.  I've got a Bridgeport Apollo CNC Mill that I'm planning on rebuilding as time permits.

Hood, thanks for providing the screenset, I'm sure there will be many more questions.  After breakfast I'll be heading for the man cave.

Machine looks great :-) Looking forward to see it in action.
I have attached my screenset and bitmaps if you want it, the X axis is what I have called the spindle and Z is the travelling axis.
Place the coilwindercarbon.set in the main mach3 folder  and unxip the HoodButtons folder to the Bitmaps folder and you should be fine. The buttons folder contains a lot more images than you actually need for the screenset as its for all of the screens I use but I just posted the lot as it saves me seperating them out as I am lazy
Hood

Hood, I must say you have a fine collection of buttons in that folder.  I installed the screen, how do I edit the screen layout with your buttons?  Could you give me a brief description of the screen layout, units - inches or metric, how it functions or the procedure you go through to wind a coil?

Thanks,

Gary

There are no units as such or rather they are just units and it will depend on whether your machine is set in metric or imperial native units, mine is metric so that is why there are only two decimal places in the  length and wire size DROs, if you are Imperial then likely you would want to change that to 3 decimals.
 The length is obviously the length of coil you are doing, so you just type that into the DRO then press enter. Wire size is the same. The Feed is the whatever feed you want and number of turns is as it says, the amount of turns you want on your coil.
Once you have these values entered just press the Load Code button and it will write the code for you.

If you wish to edit the layout etc then you need to use one of the screen editors, my preference is Screen4 but others prefer MachScreen.
Hood

Thanks Hood.  I'm working out of the area for the next 4 days and I've got a few things ordered to finish up the winder.  Maybe next weekend I'll be ready for a test run.

Question for Hood,

I've loaded you're coilwindercarbon.set screen but most of the buttons are missing.  Do I need to use a screen editor to install the buttons?  If that is the case then do I also need to redefine the button functions?

Thanks,

Gary