There are two coil winders described on the following pages.

For one-off coils with a limited number of turns, and for relatively thick wire you probably can’t beat hand winding.  While this is tedious and it is difficult to maintain tension and keep an accurate turns count, you should end up with a reasonable coil.  If you need a bunch of similar coils with a large number of turns with relatively fine wire diameter, or a complex winding pattern then you’ll be needing a coil winding machine.

The toroidal coil winder ended up being a disaster.  Although the design is basically sound there were a few insurmountable issues with the shuttle and spider for the small toroidal cores that I was hoping to make.  This particular project is on hold for now.  I’ve resorted to hand winding these coils using a simple shuttle which takes about 20 minutes per coil.  In due course I’ll need to revisit the design or invest in a suitable commercial unit.

You can read about my trials and tribulations by clicking here.

My second coil winder is a somewhat more conventional cylindrical coil machine and it actually works.  It can produce coils up to 120 mm long with a minimum ID of about 10 mm and an OD of up to 50 mm.  It has been tested with wire diameters up to 0.6 mm.

The winder incorporates an LCD and controller board which makes setting up and turns counting  straight forward.  The design is being developed to incorporate an orthocyclic winding pattern to keep layers neat and optimally packed.

To read more about the design and development click here.