I have been thinking about this for a while, and with all the significant evolution of the Arduino and the platforms ready availability its time I put some effort into a project I would like to do. I am a novice with this and am looking for any and all help I can get.
What I don’t really know is what add-on boards and parts, etc. I will need to make the project work.
I want to make a guitar pickup winder that is automated. What I envision is a setup that has two stepper motors, a way to measure resistance, a way to input the desired guitar pickup coil resistance, and LED display to show desired information (desired resistance, actual measured resistance, count the number of revolutions, plus a few others).
Stepper one will control the copper wire moving back and forth to evenly distribute the copper wire around the shell of the pickup as the second stepper rotates the pickup shell to accept the copper wire. Many pickup winders spin incredibly fast and base the amount of revolutions on an approximate calculation of resistance based on the number of windings of copper. My intention is to have the resistance measured on the fly as having the pickup being wound as quickly or slowly as needed to get a fairly accurate resistance measured and auto stop when the desired resistance is met.
42 AWG wire (.003 inch diameter) Spool Copper Wire
Rollers Spaced to keep tension on the wire
Stepper 1 oscillates the last roller to evenly distribute the wire across the pickup
Stepper 2 spins the pickup that pulls the wire
The tricky part will be measuring the resistance of the coil as it spins between stepper 1 and at the end of the wire attached to the pickup. I was thinking of using copper braid that is in contact with the copper wire at stepper 1 as a measuring point and then at the end of the wire on the pickup. (I am sure there will be some resistance in the initial setup that will have to be “zeroed” out prior to starting the coiling process).
Attached is a diagram of what I envision: