Does anyone have or has anyone seen a DIY toroid winder using an Arduino? I have seen 1 on the web but it is for much larger toroids than I want to wind. I am looking for something that winds small T37, T50, T67 size toroids but I do not see anything for something that small. The one I saw is mostly wood and passes the wire spool through the center of the toroid to wind it where that will not work for small toroids.
Thank you.
Why did you post in the Emergency Response to Covid 19 category of the forum ?
Your topic has been move to the Project Guidance category
Hello Southerner
You might start with the mechanical design first:
Have a nice day and enjoy coding in C++.
Using arduino specifically, no, but that doesn't matter. The complexity is in the mechanism. I don't see the problem, though. You should only need a thinner spool for smaller toroids.
There is another style more like a sewing machine with a plunger that goes through the middle of the toroid and grabs the wire and pulls it through, but I've only seen those manually operated. It would be pretty complex to do that type automatically.
It would have to be the sewing machine type. The toroids I am going to be using are only 10mm or so diameter with only about a 5mm diameter hole and a couple slightly larger sizes but nothing large enough go pass any spool of wire through. I was surprised not to see more of them posted on the web. I only saw one and it used mostly wooden parts but was for large toroids that were 50mm diameter and larger.
Thank you.
If you think about it, as you put each turn on the toroid you have to pass through the entire length of wire which will eventually be needed for all the turns. The type that passes a spool through the toroid does this but the spool will get very small as the hole gets smaller. For the sewing machine type your "sewing needle" would have to pass the wire to a grabber below, then some mechanism will have to pull through all the wire, somehow store it, and pass it back up to the "needle". I'm sure that's possible but it sounds very tricky and needs some precision mechanics. How many turns do you need to put on? Unless you relish the challenge it may be easier to wind them manually.
The small size of the toroids I will be winding demands that it be the sewing machine/bobbin style so yes that means grabbing the wire end and dragging/passing it through the toroid and then let go and have another needle grab that same wire and pull it around the toroid for the next turn.
I was asked how many turns I will be winding. The number is not relevant as it is how ever many turns the particular circuit calls for. A T37 toroid can only take about 30 turns max (for a single layer) but the number could be 1 turn or 30 turns.
It was stated that I should just wind them by hand. That is not practical when I might be winding 50 or even 100 toroids for a project. The other thing that complicates this is that each toroid could have more than 1 winding (as in a transformer) but not likely more than 2 windings.
If we were talking about large diameter toroids this would be a non issue but we are not.
I thought I used to see a few DIY toroid winders that used PIC, or STM32, or Arduino, or even RPi but again I am after the mechanics to build one and the cpu is not that important as what it does.
As I said, I have seen one DIY toroid winder project and it did not include assembly info but more an overview and used plywood parts. That is fine if the toroids are T200 (2 inch or 50mm) or larger but 10mm can not be wound using plywood parts (at least not for very long before the plywood breaks).
Thank you.
Do you just have one project needing toroids or do you want a general capability? If the first it would be as quick to wind by hand or even quicker than building a machine. A machine would be really tricky, not just the mechanics but the control also. Are you sure you need toroids? Why not just ordinary bobbins on 2-part ferrite cores?
The reliability is a major issue. I have a friend who used to sell toroid winders. Most of his service calls were around getting the machines set up properly.
If I was not sure that it has to be toroids I would not have asked the question. I know how to wind them by hand but I did not ask that.
The lack or actual hits on the web for a DIY toroid winder was the first clue that it was not a simple task. I did not think it would be a simple task but I was surprised that apparently no one has done it. The one I keep finding on the web is very crude and requires the toroid to be large. I will not be winding large toroids I will be winding small toroids.
Thank you.
Well you have an opportunity for innovation.
I don't see any reason why you couldn't use the standard design with the "spool" going through the center of the toroid. 5mm ID just means that the spool with wire has to be no wider than that which doesn't seem like a problem. For long wire lengths you would use larger diameter spools.
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