CNC Guitar Pickup Mini Coil Winding Machine – MK5

About

This model has now been discontinued and replaced with the Mini Coil Winder MK6

The Mini Coil Winder has been designed to mainly do Guitar Bobbins (Pickups) that use thin wire and we will be supplying it with a bobbin wheel mounted directly on the motor shaft.

It has multiple spacing of M4 threaded holes on the Bobbin Plate, to accommodate most Guitar Bobbins out there and also pockets for magnets.
We no longer supply the magnets, but for anyone wanting to fit their own, the pockets are 10mm diameter and 2mm deep.
The magnets are handy if re-winding a pickup that already has the slugs inserted.

It can be used for semi automatic winding of Guitar Bobbins by just using the bobbin motor and guiding the wire by hand or you can use the fully automated feeder arm that has a incremental resolution of 0.0125mm

The new MK5 machines will have the new ARM Controller MKIII installed in them and custom wiring looms that have plugs on them, this will save time on wiring as well as taking away the risk of wires coming loose with vibration over time.

Also another feature on the new MK5 is that they will have a built in Homing/Limit switch fitted as default. This is a must really for setting a repeatable starting point and a lot of existing customers have retro fitted there older machines with their own switches and found it really useful.

We have now we have incorporated a switch on the controller for updating future firmware releases for the processor when they get released.
Before it was fiddly to have to open up the controller and attach a separate programmer to do these updates, where as now you can use the existing USB port and flick a switch!

Also on the feeder arm we now have a PTFE sleeve for when people are doing Manual Winding. This can be replaced with cut sizes depending on what width you wish to guide your wire between. Please check the Software section further down for more information on this.

Specification

The Machine has a small footprint of 210mm x 210mm.

A combination of 6mm and 10mm tough aluminium plates that have oxidisation treatment applied make up a solid frame.

This stops any unwanted vibration or flex.

USB controlled using software written for Windows.

Power supply and all leads needed will also be supplied.

Please note that we dispatch with a UK mains plug on the lead. If outside the UK then you will need to cut this off and put a suitable plug onto the lead.

The controller box is mounted to the base and you simply plug in a 24 Volt DC adapter that is supplied with the machine and connect it to the USB port of the computer via the USB socket on the side of the controller box.

The reason we have gone for two stepper motors this time is because we have managed to design a unique way of driving the motors at high RPM. Typically Stepper motors are good for around 650-700 RPM but with the new control circuit we have designed the stepper max out at about 5000 RPM !!!

But do not get too excited as at those kind of speed the torque is very low, so we have limited the speed to 1500RPM

This is more than enough for winding Guitar Bobbins as many of the guys will tell you.

We recommend running the machine at 800 RPM.

The side panel has two LED’s, the Green shows power and when switched into Manual mode the Red LED will light up.

As you can also see it uses high quality Hiwin style carriages for the feeder arm and also the revolving tailstock.

This allows the tailstock to be slid and secured against the bobbin without any flex or movement.

Extra Options

The Mini Coil Winder comes with felt pads that are used for applying tension to the wire, but if you want constant tension then using a tensioner such as the MTCS is an option.

Please see render image below, that shows the wire path for the tensioner when using it with the Mini.

As you can see the felt pad can be swapped out for a pulley kit that we also can supply.
This comes with Porcelain pulley and custom made spacer.

Software

All of our Coil Winding machines are controlled via the USB port of a PC running Windows, along with our custom software that is supplied FREE.
We have no plans in the future to charge for the software and all updates will remain FREE!

We have been asked why we do not offer a dedicated built in touch screen to run the machine and the simple answer is that we can add more features by developing for a dedicated computer and it is easier for our customers to update new releases as our software is always being updated and kept upto date.
We have customers that have mounted a low cost tablet to their machine that is running Windows OS or loaded the software on a Single Board Computer (SBC) along with a touch screen. Then simply connected a USB lead to our controller.

The software has been written to run on a PC with Windows operating system. It will happily run on low spec systems and will work on windows XP and up to Windows 10.
Minimum Screen Resolution for the software is 1024 x 768 or larger.

When starting the software you’ll select the coil winding profile for your machine. This will change certain parameters within the software to match the machines resolution. Below is a short list of the different settings.

• Mini Coil Winder MK4/5 – Belt system pitch is 0.0125mm resolution steps with a minimum pitch of 0.0250mm recommended.
• Mini Coil Winder MK6 ballscrew model resolution of 0.0025mm with a minimum pitch of 0.0050mm recommended.
• 200mm Coil Winder – 0.0003125mm resolution steps with a recommended minimum pitch of 0.005mm recommended.
• Quad Coil Winder – Belt system pitch is 0.0005mm resolution steps with a minimum pitch of 0.005mm recommended.
• 600mm Coil Winder & Custom – The resolution will be set within the required specification. Contact us for more information.

Automated Coil Winding Tab

As you can see above it has a dedicated database and GUI for Bobbins/Pickups where you can load and save your own. You simply enter the width, number of windings and wire size.

The software will then calculate the nearest layer count based on the pitch you choose so you can see how close you are to the original.






For the Guitar Pickups section the software comes with a populate button that will load the built in database with a default set of common guitar pickup bobbins.

For Scatter Winding, please Click Here

Standard Scripting Tab

The Scripting Engine allows us to have more control over the coil winding process by allowing you to create a series of commands to control bobbin windings and feeder movement.

These commands can be built up and saved as a script for later use.

Creating the commands is very simple by using the GUI interface to choose the options you want for each new command and press the Add Command button

Absolute Scripting Tab

The Absolute Scripting Engine takes advantage of the Flash Memory that comes with the Coil Winder ARM Controller MKII/MKIII board and can be used for buffering loads of small commands.

This removes any small delays that can be caused by the USB communications latency.

Unlike the Standard Scripting Engine which is Incremental positioning for each command, this is absolute positioning on each command.

It can be used for doing variable pitches not only down to turn level but down to degree level.

Please Click here for more information on the Absolute Scripting

3D Coil Winding Simulator

We have also added a 3D Coil Winding Simulator to the software.

Sorry to say this simulator will only run on Windows 10 but the rest of the software will work fine on Windows XP and upwards.

The simulator allows you to check your coil shape before winding.

Manual Winding

Here you can use the dial on the controller box and manually control the speed of the bobbin motor while guiding the wire by hand. This allows the machine to be used as a traditional winding machine.

But also you can now manually control the speed of both the bobbin motor and the feeder motor by using the Automated Coil Winding tab controls.

If using the Manual Controller from the Automated Coil Winding Tab then it is not recommended to run the machine full time with the manual speed controller. This is just to be used as a calibration tool, which will let you determine the best speed for winding the particular bobbin with wire you are using.

Once you have found a speed that suits the bobbin and wire combination then you should switch to automatic mode for full winding.

Below are some more screenshots of different areas of the software and the standard scripting engine. There is a video further down showing the capabilities of scripting with a variable pitch being wound.

You are welcome to download the software and install from our website in the download section

Windows 10/IoT UWP Application

This UWP application is currently in BETA and as so is limited to only the automated winding for the time being.

But the beauty of this software is it can be deployed to a SBC Board running windows 10 Core such as the Raspberry pi, this completely removes the necessity of having a full computer rig to communicate with your coil winder.

All information regarding the UWP Application can be found here – UWP Software

Coil Winder ARM Controller MKIII

We have developed a new controller board that uses a fast Arm Cortex M4 processor and brings many enhanced features to the machine.

All machines dispatched from September 2022 onwards will be supplied with the new Arm Controller MKIII.

The new ARM Controller MKIII controller still has all the features of the original MKI/MKII controllers but with the following enhancement’s:

• Manual controller dial now built in on PCB.
• Support for 3rd Axis
• 8 Inputs with 3 of them dedicated for Limit/Homing and Emergency Stop.
• Higher speed pulse trains.
• Opto Isolated inputs can be switched to use 5/12 Volts.
• On board Flash memory that can be used to buffer upto 130000 commands. This allows for very small movements to be sent to the  controller with no delay between them from the software’s new Absolute Scripting Engine and build up some fancy windings.
• Fram memory also on board for Flash memory optimization algorithm.
• Firmware now upgraded by flicking a switch and existing USB port. No more JTAG programmer needed. 
• JST sockets for each dedicated wiring loom to plug into that makes for better contact and keeps things tidier.

Examples

Here are some pictures of a wound pickup the machine done.

And some pickups wound by our customers: