The brightness of this IR led was too high. The Rx led did not like so much light. These pics were taken with my G1 cell phone since the human eye cannot see Infra-red light. Video camera with night shooting have the same capability of seeing IR.

This brightness worked well. I might even be able to drop it a bit more, but for now it worked fine.

Here is a winding video from my G1 cell phone. You need Quicktime to play it. I didn’t sit still long enough to show that the transformer is moving up and down via the cnc. It spaces the windings out very nicely. I borrowed the counter from my automated battery load tester.

While debugging the cnc system, the quill suddenly stopped going fully upwards. It was hitting something hard. I called Don and he said the sheetmetal quill cover had broken tabs and was floating around. So tonight I called him and he walked me through how to take the top of the Bridgeport head apart to get the quill cover out. It was just a little work. Don nailed the diagnosis. I’ll get over to his house in the next day or 2 and pick up a new one from him.

Later this year, I will have had the mill for 10 years. Don has a guy that might sell him a real Bridgeport CNC machine. He won’t jump on it unless I give him the ok. It’s not a bad price. I could sell my Bridgeport to get some of the expense back. Those original cnc’s have power oilers, chrome ways and very wide ways at that, along with ball screws on all 3 axis. The tables are not long and skinny. They are a lot deeper. They were made for flowing lots of coolant on them. Don says the drawbar is some kind of quick change set up not the standard BP stuff. I told him we’d have to make it a step pulley setup. But maybe not. As long as it fits in my garage it won’t matter. Besides if I have to sell it, having it original would be more appealing to a potential buyer.

Just as I was firing up the computer to see how to write the g-code for making my mill wind these coils, the hardware started popping fuses, and fets. When I installed the 60 volt 10 amp power supply in my rack cabinet, I must have rotated the knob on the variac to full output. Normally it’s set to about 55 volts ac. After rectification it ends up being about 75 volts. So at 120vac the rectified voltage had to have been much higher. That’s what killed the fets, fet drivers and the diodes.

I used some old 1407 fets to sub for the correct ones just to help me debug the system. The Z and Y channels worked out eventually. At first so did the X channel, but it then decided to smoke again. This time several of the fast recovery diodes were hit too. Now that I don’t have any diodes, I have to wait until I place a major order with Newark before I can get the parts. At least 2 of the 3 channels work.

I still need to figure out what code to find/make to wind the transformer. The idea is to mount the transformer to the vice. Then chuck the spool of wire with some tubing to the collet of the mill. The table will then move the transformer around in a circle to wind itself. It will be a very slow process, but I think simple to construct.

The second idea is to chuck the transformer into a collet and spin it to wind the wire up. Not that difficult as I think about it now. Just have to make the z axis go up and down to evenly distribute the wire onto the transformer. The Z axis is very slow and not too precise. I could move the wire up and down by hand. I’m trying to automate this as much as possible.

Either way I have to wait to get the cnc system restored to operation and installed back in it’s cabinet. That will take getting the parts. For now I can use 2 axis’ to just work on either of the 2 winding concepts.