Make Your Own Machine To Wind Cotton On A Bare Copper Wire for STUBBLEFIELD COIL

[electricme]

HOW TO MAKE THE SPECIAL WIRE REQUIRED FOR THE
STUBBLEFIELD COIL by MAKING YOUR OWN MACHINE

which uses COUNTER ROTATING WHEELS.

If you cannot acquire Cotton Covered Wire from rare or cost-a-lot sources, then you could still make the wire by building your own machine to do the same thing that was done over 50 years ago.

Anyway, the machine I built works up to a fashion and still needs fine tuning, but I can wind cotton over a Bare Copper wire or Iron wire or  Stainless steel wire.



Before anyone asks, NO, I don't wind cotton insulated wire for others, the cost of materials and shipping would be far too much for me, hence the reason for this page describing how I made my own Cotton Insulated Wire Winding Machine.

Enjoy

electricme

[electricme]

This afternoon I managed to wind 6 separate cotton threads around a copper wire about 26 feet long, in a cross hatch pattern.

I achieved this by having 6 spools of cotton thread, mounting 3 spools equidistant on one rotating disk, and the other three spools on the other rotating disk in the same manner.

The disks spin in opposite directions to each other, called counter rotation, as the disks spin round, a bare copper wire is then fed through the hub or middle of these disks, the wire does not rotate, only the cotton reels.

Each cotton thread has it's own special steel eyelet which keeps the thread in the exact position required.

jim

[Pirate88179]

Jim:

Well done my friend!  That photo of your completed wire says it all.  It looks really good.  Great idea on the counter rotating reels for the cross-hatch pattern.  I see this as a huge improvement over the regular winding in order to prevent some shifting of the insulation.  This will prevent shorts.

If you get a chance, you should link you videos of it running over here.  That was an amazing thing to see.  Even though you had described it to us in great detail, I just did not "get it" until I saw it in action.

Again, very well done sir.

Bill

[electricme]

Thanks Bill for your kind remarks.

I agree with you about the layering, it will prevent shorts as it won't matter which way the bare wire bends, there will always be either the lower or upper layers to stop shorts occuring.

Then again, if someone went and dropped a stubblefield coil on a sharp object, then I would expect differently.

OK, I will post up here the working machine so anyone can look at it, and when they are ready to proceed they can build their own machine to make their own cotton covered wire which they can use to make their own nathan stubblefield coil.

Mine is made from metal parts, I can see no problems if anyone who was skilled in using plastic or nylon to make their machine from that, in fact it would cut the noise down quite a bit.

The drive belt is not a proper fan belt, there was so much resistance I had to use a length of clear plastic 1/4 inch hose, I joined the ends by hacksawing a 1/4 inch threaded bolt, shuved half into the end of one end, and the bit left over I shuved into the other end. It is very strong, the regilar noise id the bump of the joined ends flying around the pullies.
 
If you are a newbie here to OU, you may not know you can access photos or videos (tiny) from here.
Under the bottom line, you will see a green paperclip, just double click on this and it will take you to the tiny video, exch one runs for about 8-10 seconds as this is the full length my mobile phone can record video, I am planning to upgrade it soon.
The full file length alowed by Stefan is 1100kb so it won't run for to long, but as Bill mentioned above, now he understands how it works

Enjoy 

jim


0512.3gp = This shows you the cotton winding maching, there are no cotton reels attatched, we start it up for the first time.
0516.3gp = On this one I take you on a walk, to look right around the cotton winding machine so you can see the mechanical operation.

[electricme]

Here I have provided 2 more tiny videos, they follow on from the last top 2 from above.

This time I have loaded the cotton winding machine with 6 rolls of white polyester cotton, each reel contains 1,000 meters or about 3,000 feet of cotton, the bobbin is marked 40/2 whatever this means, I haven't a clue.

OK, I have fed in (for this first time test) right through the center iron axle shaft, a single strand of IRON wire.
I am pulling slightly on this wire as you will see, as there is no geared motor to do this, (I need to make it) the idea is, as the bare iron wire proceeds through the center of this machine, the mounted cotton reels which are mounted on each spinning vertical disk, rotating clockwise and counter clockwise direction, will lay onto the outside of the iron wire 6 endless strands of cotton thread.

The iron wire entering the machine has a layer put down 1/8" inch before it enters the machine axle, then the other opposite layer is layed down 1/8" inch as it exits the axle.

The timing of the iron wire being drawn through the axle is critical, if I pull the iron wire too slow, the cotton tends to bunch up, if I pull the wire too fast, there are ring gaps between the cotton layers and the iron wire can be seen, so it is tricky to get a happy medium.

enjoy 

jim