Projects: Guitar Pickup Winder

Multi-Disciplinary

A Brushless Motor Circuit Every project starts somewhere. I started with finding a good motor that could have high rpm and low wear, like a brushless motor.	Developing a Motor Controller After salvaging a BLDC from an old hard drive, I worked on developing a motor controller circuit using an Arduino, some transistors, and AccelStepper library.	Efficiency I tried increasing the efficiency by using a bipolar circuit, compared to the unipolar one before.
Transistor Heat The transistors heated up a lot because the Arduino wasn't able to fully open them. I used a fan to cool them down, but it didn't work well enough.	A Power Supply Instead of building my own power supply, I re-purposed an old PC power supply. With a little tweaking, it worked great!	Unwanted Wires To tidy the wires, I isolated each wire with heat shrink and taped all of the wires with the same potential together.
Arduino Case Using a set of calipers, too much time on my hands, and a laser printer, I made a nice case for the Arduino.	Clever Design Knowing that I was still going to communicate with the Arduino, I made a hole for the USB cable. This type of hinge is called a "living hinge" and is very useful for making hinges by laser cutting.	Wire Mess Have to keep the wires tidy. There were a lot of them.
Wire Case The wire case I made did a pretty good job of keeping things neat.	Project Board The build begins to take shape.	Metal Lathe Work Guides needed to be created to guide the wire.
Cooling Fan A cooling fan was added for safety.	First Test Run The first time the device was tested was a week before my job finished.	Thin Wire The wire being used is 44 gauge. That's smaller than a human hair!
Nerve Wrecking The first test run was an extremely nervous experience. A week before my job ended and this HAD to work.	Quality Windings It worked! Look at those windings	Finished Product The guitar pickup here has about 9000 windings on it and it took me about 10 minutes to wind.

Guitar Pickup Winder

2015

A guitar pickup has 6 magnetized cylinders wrapped with about 9000 windings of copper wire and is to transduce an audio signal in an electric gutiar from the string vibration.

While I was working for the Engineering Ideas Clinic I was approached by a professor at the University of Waterloo who requested a device to wind guitar pickups for his students to learn about magnetism by making and modelling a guitar pickup. An intern had already constructed one for him preivously but it took 6 hours to make 6000 windings, making it impossible for an entire class to do this.

In this situation I did not have a large budget and so I had to be resourceful.

The challenge was to make something, efficient, and reliable so a class of 60 students could make a guitar pickup in a reasonable amount of time. This was particularly challenging since guitar pickups use 44 gauge wire--that's thinner than a human hair.

Into the e-waste bin I dove. There I found an old PC power supply, an old hard drive, a PC fan, and wiring. To get the desired rpm of the brushless hard drive motor, I used timer interrupts on an Arduino Uno and a custom unipolar circuit. The result was a device which could wind 9000 wraps onto a guitar pickup in 10 minutes.

An affordable solution. An improvement by 54x. An environmentally friend approach.

Chris Gravel | Mechatronics Engineering

Multi-Disciplinary

A Brushless Motor Circuit

Every project starts somewhere. I started with finding a good motor that could have high rpm and low wear, like a brushless motor.

Developing a Motor Controller

After salvaging a BLDC from an old hard drive, I worked on developing a motor controller circuit using an Arduino, some transistors, and AccelStepper library.

Efficiency

I tried increasing the efficiency by using a bipolar circuit, compared to the unipolar one before.

Transistor Heat

The transistors heated up a lot because the Arduino wasn't able to fully open them. I used a fan to cool them down, but it didn't work well enough.

A Power Supply

Instead of building my own power supply, I re-purposed an old PC power supply. With a little tweaking, it worked great!

Unwanted Wires

To tidy the wires, I isolated each wire with heat shrink and taped all of the wires with the same potential together.

Arduino Case

Using a set of calipers, too much time on my hands, and a laser printer, I made a nice case for the Arduino.

Clever Design

Knowing that I was still going to communicate with the Arduino, I made a hole for the USB cable. This type of hinge is called a "living hinge" and is very useful for making hinges by laser cutting.

Wire Mess

Have to keep the wires tidy. There were a lot of them.

Wire Case

The wire case I made did a pretty good job of keeping things neat.

Project Board

The build begins to take shape.

Metal Lathe Work

Guides needed to be created to guide the wire.

Cooling Fan

A cooling fan was added for safety.

First Test Run

The first time the device was tested was a week before my job finished.

Thin Wire

The wire being used is 44 gauge. That's smaller than a human hair!

Nerve Wrecking

The first test run was an extremely nervous experience. A week before my job ended and this HAD to work.

Quality Windings

It worked! Look at those windings

Finished Product

The guitar pickup here has about 9000 windings on it and it took me about 10 minutes to wind.

Guitar Pickup Winder

2015