OK so motor 1 controls the number of turns of wire on the bobbin? How will you determine when and how to stop winding?

If I read right, motor two moves the feed point back and forth? If not synced to the bobbin rotation you're going for random fill rather than side-by-side winding . Are you sure thats what you want? I assume therefore you never fill the bobbin completely. (never done guitar pickups but many years back built a coil winder for amateur radio equipment, transformers, etc. so principle is similar)

I guess the wire feed spool is lightly braked to maintain tension in the (fine gauge?) wire.


Quote Originally Posted by timellis View Post
Thanks so much for the response - I really do appreciate it.

Basically the pickup winder will have 2 motors - 1 will run the fixed position spinning pickup bobbin, the 2nd motor will run the feed for the pickup wire (think of a sewing machine winding a bobbin with cotton thread) this 2nd motor / mechanism needs to move from side to side as it feeds the pickup wire onto the spinning bobbin. The problem is that each pickup bobbin style has different widths so the feed mechanism needs to be adjustable to accommodate the various sizes - from about 10mm wide to a maximum of about 20mm wide. The motors don't need to be in synch with each other.

The control I need for motor 1 is just speed (from 0 to a max of about 1500 rpm) and direction (so I can wind clockwise and counter clockwise) - I was going to use a basic 12v Dc motor with a max rpm within my range, controlled via a PWM and reverse wiring to change spin direction via a switch.

Motor 2 is the tricky one as I need control of the speed - max of about 250 rpm and obviously control of the distance it actually moves the feed. The start position of the feed will be the same for each pickup, it's the distance of travel that will vary.

I have been looking at various stepper / DC motor controllers but they all seem to need a Pc to run them. Another option is the raspberry pi / micro pc route with attached controller and lcd display which I think would provide the options I need but am not sure about the ease of use in an everyday situation. If needs be, I ,ay have to add a Pc for functionality but it seems a bit overkill for my needs.