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unspooling pickup wire

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9/23/2002 1:42 AM

unspooling pickup wire

I've seen several homemade pickup winders even Jasons . What i cant understand is why winders take the wire off the end of the spool? As an electrician having handled wire exstensively, my experience with handling wire like this is , that all, it does is tangle up, doesnt that happen? Wouldnt it be better to put the spool of wire onto a rod horizontally and let the spool unwind naturally as apposed to pulling coils of wire of the spool and then straightening out under tension ?

9/23/2002 3:29 AM

quote:
"I've seen several homemade pickup winders even Jasons . What i cant understand is why winders take the wire off the end of the spool? As an electrician having handled wire exstensively, my experience with handling wire like this is , that all, it does is tangle up, doesnt that happen?"

It does. The wire is wound under low enough tension and is flexible enough that the twist doesn't harm things.

My favorite tangle controller is the Wisker Disk.
<http://www.azonicproducts.com/wisker.html> You slap it on top of the spool and it provides a small controlled drag to keep the wire from pooling and tangling.

quote:
"Wouldnt it be better to put the spool of wire onto a rod horizontally and let the spool unwind naturally as apposed to pulling coils of wire of the spool and then straightening out under tension ?"

A 5 lb. wire spool has enough inertia to snap the wire before unreeling it.

#42 cold-drawn copper stretches at 36 grams tension and snaps at 111 grams. The tension varies a lot when you wind an oblong pickup bobbin instead of a round one.

Manufacturors recommend a winding tension around 50-80% of the stretch tension or 18-28 grams for #42.

-drh
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9/23/2002 1:10 PM
BOB	i suspected that the wire was pretty fragile i see why you cant unspool it i never thought about the different tensions that i would incur with an oblong boobin thanks ill check out the wisker disk do you know the price? what about a 2lb. spool would that be light enough to unwind horizontally?

9/23/2002 1:33 PM

Dr. Strangelove

quote:
"ill check out the wisker disk do you know the price?"

Under $5. That's the other nice thing about it. The most expensive thing Azonics sells is still 50% below the equivalent competition.

quote:
"what about a 2lb. spool would that be light enough to unwind horizontally?"

Don't know. I get 1.5 ft-lbs as the moment of inertia for a 2lb 3" dia. spool, but I don't know how that translates to force needed to get the spool moving.

-drh
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9/23/2002 2:55 PM
BOB	ok its probabaly safer vertically anyway thanks

9/23/2002 2:51 PM

Dr. Strangelove

BOB,

The coil-winding industry doesn't think that twisted wire is always desireable because there are wire tensioner/dereelers made for zero wire twist.

Rebima sells new and used equipment at <http://www.rebima.com/>, among them are horizontal tensioners and "rotating spindle" types.

The Meteor H1 is such a beast, but may no longer be made. The AS-8 (manuf. unknown) is another.

So, the horizontal spooling is workable. Some steel rod stock and a couple of 00 ball bearings from the local hardware store may be all you need.

For the ultimate in low rolling friction, I've heard of folks making cheep air bearings by putting sintered bronze bushings in a 60psi air jacket, but that's kind of extreme.

9/23/2002 3:01 PM
BOB	thats nice looking stuff but a little out of my pocket book

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