Since the associated original thread hasn't been appended to for over a yar & a half, the forum prompted me to start a new topic.

I've just spent the guts of 2-3 minths messing about with my own coil winder program (it works but it's clunky, uses a program hard coded into a PIC, the user interface is a text line in a VT window & it's not very user firendly - in short it sucks).

Well, I've just spent a hour or so trying to get to grips with the coil winder sceen on here...I'm *really* impressed it looks fantastic & would appear to have been well thought out.

The thing is, it's kind of an incomplete project...but still has a lot of functionailty that seems to work

The immediate issues, that 'hit me, that I'm puzzled about...

1. There's an offset of 1.17mm - so let's say my coil width is 10mm...the DRO starts ar 1.17mm traverses to 11.17mm before reversing down towards 1.17mm again.


***Revisit 'Edit': still not sure what the original author put that in for...I don't know how to take it out, so have all but tuned it out by making it a 0.1mm offset.


Now I'm just wondering why?!!! (presumably the author needed it for his/her own situation?


Next, whilst the traversal DRO seems to read out fine, the 'spool count'  doesn't budge from '0' ?


***Revisit 'Edit' ok, got this working. I've now used the Y DRO redout (as opposed to the A DRO)...don't know why, but the A DRO doesn't work...I've tweaked the VB program accordingly. (you'd just need to know to use the Y axis for the main motor & the X axis for the traversal motor.)

So now, I've got the coil winder screen pretty much with all the bits that an operator would need, ie these bits...

width of spool
wire gauge
Number of turns.

Once entered, the program calculates the number of windings that can traverse sideways across the spool before changing direction etc & you can see the Axis movement on the DRO

So, all in all I'm pretty happy!

The Max RPM still doesn't work (I've sort kludged it by using the Use 'number input' as the direct feed rate)
Nor does the accelerate/decelerate aspects.

Hi PeskyWinNet,
I also just review the Wire Winder screen you are talking about.  I have built a small wire winder with a Z axis to move the wire on the spool.  The spool will be driven by a 260 oz. stepper and using the spindle controls.  I found the wire winder screen which you are talking about to be more complex than I need.  I am using Mach3 and screen4.  I will be winding small coils up to 8" in diameter and 6" long.  Will be programming so that the spindle speed can be increased and decreased on the fly.  Will need to automatically change the X axis wire mover to coordinate with the spindle speed.  I am a new comer to CNC, Mach3, screen4, and all of the hardware.  This is my second CNC project first built a 3 axis router.  I am designing a VB6 application to get the coil parameters in and to generate the G-Code.

Have a couple of questions.  Where can you find documents on the DRO format strings and the different functions built in them?  Having some difficulty on using the spindle. I can get it to spin in both directions but not able to controll the speed with out stopping the spindle first.  Any one have any ideas here?
Thanks all

I think the 1.17mm offset is because of the the "backlash" in the wire-moving mechanism in the machine it was written for.

What I want to know is, how do I zero my machine? Does the screen do this for me? If so, when?

I think this would have worked really well as a Wizard" in the regular screenset, but I am wishing for so many things that are not on the coilwinder screen, it is not useful as it is. I

msholden, have you looked into the Mach Wiki? accessible from the machsupport.com page