Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Coil Winding 101

« on: April 01, 2011, 07:57:52 PM »

Thanks again Hood, really helpful.

1 -- Delrin sounds like a good choice for the smaller wire, the mig tip is great, looks like it was meant for the job, but I'll be using too thin of wire for that.  The adjustabilty of the wire guide is a feature I didn't think of, and will have to work into the plans.

2 -- I realize you probably didn't adjust the feed throughout the wind, but that is a feature pretty important to my application.  I was thinking of using an iMach pendant for the z axis, and an iMach spindle tach for the spindle.  Would this work? Would I still need the smooth stepper you mentioned?  I realize I am very new to this all, and I'm sure I'm missing something, so please let me know if I'm not thinking correctly.

3 -- Will copycat or jcode work with a handwheel such as the iMach pendant, or is jog and handwheel not compatible?

4 --  My laptop does not have a parallel port, so will I need the smooth stepper (or simialar) to run off the laptop regardless of whether or not I buy an iMach pendant?

Thanks again,
Jeff

2

General Mach Discussion / Re: Coil Winding 101

« on: March 31, 2011, 10:15:48 PM »

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been out of town for awhile.

Hood, very nice looking winder, close to what I was envisioning.  What did you use for the wire guide?  Looks nice!  Also, being the nature of guitar pickups, I wind to a specific number of turns as well.  What do you recommend for varying the traverse feed rate throughout the coil?  I feel confident writing the code, but would rather have the machine copy my more subtle manual moves.  Also, I'll be using a laptop to run Mach3, so what plugin would you reccomend to control the spindle and traverse.  Last question, are there any reccomendations you could suggest for trying to record the manual movement of the motors?

Thanks,
Jeff

3

General Mach Discussion / Coil Winding 101

« on: March 27, 2011, 08:10:53 PM »

Hello All, new to this forum.  I have taken some CNC Classes from a community college, but I am by all means new to Mach3, and the parts of CNC.  I run a CNC daily using Mastercam, and am familiar with G and M codes.

I want to build my first CNC, a coil winding machine for guitar pickups.  I'm thinkning of using a servo for the spindle, and stepper for the wire guide.  All I need is a variable speed spindle and a small amount of Z axis traverse.  I don't need much torque, I'll be using 40-45 AWG.  My idea is to control the Z feed (wire guide) using a pendant (Vista's iMach?), and the spindle using some sort of foot control to vary the spindle speed. 

1.  Is this plausible?
2.  Could Mach3 duplicate my jogging (not MDI) moves and spindle variations using Teach or Copycat?

Also, any recommendations for parts would be very helpful

Thanks,
Jeff