Winding toroidal coils...

[Externet]

By hand is veeeery akward. Thinking on how to implement a jig to help doing it, is a mind twister.

If you have been in the same situation trying to come up with a better method to do it by hand, you know the feeling.
Well, here is how it is done in the real world :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lvm3FGTHSI

Enjoy,
Miguel

[Bob Scott]

Thanks Miguel. Now I know how it is done professionally. I looked up "toroid winding machine" at ebay and saw a couple of those winders for sale for $2,999. Too much. Building on of those would be like trying to make your own sewing machine without access to a machine shop. Sigh...

[MrAl]

Hi,

We had one of those at a place where i worked a long time ago. It would take about 30 seconds to wind a particular design. We had to design transformers for a lot of things so we had a lot of different types of winding machines there. The transformer sizes where of varied types the toroid just one of them, and the size range was from around an ounce or two up to maybe 150 pounds in weight, so some of the winding machines were heavy duty and the wire gauge went up to about #6.

There's another method too, called the "shuttle" method. That is where you wind a predetermined amount of wire onto a small bobbin that can fit inside the toroid window. Then you simply push the bobbin (the shuttle) through the window repeatedly unwinding wire off of the bobbin and onto the toroid. You have to determine the required length of wire beforehand, but that is quite typical anyway when creating the design because you want to know how much wire will be used for the construction for inventory purposes.