Trying this out...

[kenrhodes]

I think the $25 tester is the cheapest way to go and would let me get the job done without breaking the bank. I will get one of those and a few speakers on order and hopefully use them both on my next project (hivi sd1.1 and silverflute w14).

[Gowa]

That's just crazy cool.

[Wolf]

Thanks, Ling!
Wolf

[stephenkatz9]

Wolf--
What you are doing is crazy cool, but wouldn't it be easier to buy commercial coils and unwind them to your custom value? Are you planning to custom make resistors and caps too? Why not go for broke and try a Frankenstein monster?
By the way, how's your little one doing?

[Wolf]

Wolf--
What you are doing is crazy cool, but wouldn't it be easier to buy commercial coils and unwind them to your custom value? Are you planning to custom make resistors and caps too? Why not go for broke and try a Frankenstein monster?
By the way, how's your little one doing?

I've already a stock-pile of coils that I'm still going through when necessary, and I will likely buy laminate or P-cores for lesser DCR when needed, but the cost of the remnant spools is much less costly than buying new. More often than not, the coils have been over-value of what is on the label. I believe I waste less wire winding my own.
Later,
Wolf

[Wolf]

Found link to good magnet wire prices...
http://www.magnet4less.com/index.php?cPath=9_20

Wolf

[Wolf]

Followup-

If it matters to any of you:

Sorry...No colored magnet wire.
Also...We do not accept personal checks.
You can, however, select Money order as payment method during checkout.


Jon at Applied Magnets - Windmax
http://www.magnet4less.com
http://www.appliedmagnets.com

Applied Magnets - Windmax
1111 Summit Avenue Suite #8
Plano, TX 75074
USA

Office Hours: Monday - Friday (9am to 5pm Central Time)
Closed for Lunch from 12:30 to 1:00 pm Central Time.

Telephone: 972-432-6509
Fax 972-992-3998

Unfortunately, I have to use some kind of colored enamel so I can see where I scraped to measure value. The methods I use require this.
I'll keep looking...
Wolf

[Wolf]

I ordered the wire from Amazon just after Christmas. A company called Temco has it in 7.5# spools for most any gauge you'd want. I ordered 7.5# spools of 14/16/18 gauges. They also have 12awg, but it's not even 500' of wire in that case, ie, not practical to get a number of coils out of the spool.
http://www.amazon.com/TEMCo-AWG-Copper- ... ire+14+awg
http://www.amazon.com/TEMCo-AWG-Copper- ... 8592319697
http://www.amazon.com/TEMCo-AWG-Copper- ... 7.5+pounds

Took about a week to get here, with free shipping!

Report- good stuff! I've wound several already, and this is as good as the remnants I had before.
Later,
Wolf

[Wolf]

I know this thread is older, but this post is of the same origin, and I'm furthering the capabilities of the jig and other ways of doing this.

I went out and saw a piece of ABS pipe from a Precision Port on the garage table, and since it was a single- I had no real use for it. I then went and sliced 2 equal lengths from it, and inserted that into my jig. Due to the possibility for it to slide around more than when using the bobbinless hub, I will likely cut a recess for 2" pipe stock in the faces of the jig plates to accommodate the usage of ABS, PVC, and the cheap black Polyethylene pipe (~$3 for 5', IIRC, at Menards). This allows scaling of length for my jig so I have more sizing options. In my neck of the woods, PVC reigns supreme for plumbing pipe, and ABS is actually harder to find. The Polyethylene is nice, cheap, black, and suits my needs well enough even if it is not as shiny as the ABS. The 3 below are two of 0.9mH/14 and a single 1.5mH/14. FWIW, from a 14AWG 7.5# spool (~$103), I was able to achieve 8 coils; 2 each of 1.5/0.9/0.35/0.485mH. The 1.5mH/14 from Solen go for about $30 at Madisound, so I did spend less doing it this way.



I use black TyWraps with the steel barb in the locking-tip from Thomas & Betts, available from your local HD. When it appeared that they were no longer stocking it, I bought up some GB equivalents that had slightly smaller heads in the same style. However- I recently tried using them in this construction technique, and the ties actually snapped when tightening them down. I guess I'll use them for less stress applications.
Come to find out, the attendant at HD was mistaken when he said they were NLA, and his HD search-fu is apparently lacking. They are still stocking the T&B, and I bought some more there recently.

After I get them tightened up, and the jig is disassembled, I use a label-zip tie and the Brother label-maker with the electrical symbols in its program, and print off the value to attach it to the tag. Then they are dipped in a gallon can of high-build polyurethane, and let air-dry. The three above are not yet dunked. They are below.

Now- this next picture shows one of the reasons I started doing this about 3 years ago- Multitapped coils.

(The 2 smaller are a 0.1mH/18 I wrapped around the 5.6 capacitor to save space in my Synchaeta project, and the 1.2mH steel bushing-core I also intended to use in them until the value required possible adjustment. We'll have to see if the 1.2mH or the 0.9mH yet to be made will suffice.) The multi is a 1.0mH/18 with 14 taps at values; 0.1/0.15/0.2/0.25/0.3/0.35/0.4/0.47/0.6/0.6/0.7/0.8/0.9/1.0; and I will have 4 similar 2 per board.
I have long wanted to wind my own multitappers to build a xover prototyping rig capable of 3-ways on the fly. The idea for this came from Keither Kidder's old "Box Of Doom" project, but I've gone further than that making a board with 6 coils to do my bidding. They take considerably longer to wind, figure 1-2 hrs depending on maximum value, and I just scrape, measure, and twist off an eyelet. There is more than one way to do it. You can twist off an eyelet, fold it and keep winding overtop the link to get them all on one side, or let the eyelet stick out radially from the center, and wind/weave around it as the diameter increases.

Here's where I am currently at on one board:




This will be used in conjunction with the 6x 100W L-pads I have for resistors, the remaining bunch of 10uF/2.2uF/2.5uF/0.33uF caps, and the xover proto-jig I made a few years ago to mock up xovers easily on the fly.


This way I won't be winding to see if the value works, and can actually try it before I wind it, and waste/wind less copper.
The largest is a 5.0mH/16, followed by a 1.7mH/16, 0.25mH/16, 0.75mH/16, and a pair of 1.0mH/18 as seen above.

Later,
Wolf

[jrhollander]

Just wound some small inductors last night. I like using the plastic bobbins from ebay but so far I've only found small ones. I'd like to find some larger bobbins.

I've also bought from Temco.

[Wolf]

You can always cut your own from dowel and a hole-saw for the endcaps and glue them together like I did initially. Could be a use for your scrap wood....

Later,
Wolf

[jrhollander]

I've got a muti tap wooden one, but as you know they get a bit bulky. The plastic ones look better.