Show & Tell: Motorized Bobbin Winder

[Uwe]

I've been working on this stand-alone motorized bobbin winder for shuttle hook style bobbins for a little while. The project is far enough advanced to do a little show-and-tell.

Control box and geared motor runs on harmless 24V DC, has a speed control knob and a forward/reverse switch. For the thread spool stand, I used the approach that Adler uses for the newer models, running the thread through the center and out the bottom - it works quite nicely.

The bobbin holder has rubber rings (from my garden hose, haha!) to hold the bobbin and the thread while it's winding.

Here's the little video that shows how it works.

Edited September 25, 2015 by Uwe

[Hockeymender]

I have a stand alone, motorized bobbin winder and it's one of the most valuable tools in my shop, wouldn't want to be without it. I can wind bobbins for all my machines on it in very short order. Once you have one of these, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it!

[dikman]

I like it, got me thinking (I have a spare motor from a garage roller door, although it might be a bit of overkill!).

I watched it a couple of times, just so that I could listen to the music - beautiful.

[dirtclod]

Uwe doesn't your machine have a built in bobbin winder ? I do wind some bobbins off of my machine when i do i use a cordless drill with a piece of dowel rod to stick the bobbin on. Not theirs anything wrong with your winder.

[veedub3]

I have one also and it is something that has been super helpful in my shop. When I looked into buying one, they were over $100, and me being the crafty DIY'er that I am, I ordered an industrial table bobbin winder for $9 off Ebay, took the motor and belt from one of the old Singer 15's I had on the shelf, set it up on a board and done.

That is one tool that will always be in my shop.

Karina

[Uwe]

I do have the original Adler bobbin winder that came with the machine that runs off the machine's belt. It does an okay job but not great, despite the fancy cam driven thread guide mechanism. With the large bobbins and 415 thread its hard to get a perfectly wound bobbin on the standard winder and with the thick thread, every winding layer counts.

People use stand-alone bobbin winders for various reasons. The build-in ones that wind as you sew never quite appealed to me. I'd rather have a little stash of wound bobbins sitting ready when I start a sewing project. With the thick 415 thread, you end up changing bobbins fairly often. I also have OCD and a perfectly wound bobbin gives me pleasure, lol!

I had used a hand drill and made little bobbin hooks to wind bobbins. That worked quite nicely to make perfectly wound bobbins, but it was a pain to hold the drill steady and reverse it if the thread reversed direction before it reached the edge of the bobbin. I had seen commercial motorized bobbin winders for the small bobbins and thin thread, but never one for the big shuttle hook style bobbin. So I decided to make one just because, well, SEWING!

Here are some pictures of my little bobbin hook that I used with my hand drill for a while:

Edited September 25, 2015 by Uwe

[dikman]

That closeup makes it look like you're winding rope!

Still waiting for you to say what the music is.

[Constabulary]

Tinkering Uwe - cool idea again! Now everybody is waiting for the parts list / shopping list.

I´m not an electronic buff but maybe with the Version 2.0 you can add a filler tab that pops back when the bobbin is full and a micro switch to stop the motor Just an idea I have no clue if and how it could work but since you are doing a lot of tinkering why not.

[Uwe]

Here's some sourcing info:

I bought the video's background music loop at http://melodyloops.com. This particular piece is called Red Book of Nature by Alex Grey. Youtube keeps flagging me for copyright violations if I use "real" music that is copyrighted (e.g. that "Time" piece by Hans Zimmer.) If you like this kind of piano and strings music, check out Ludovico Einaudi, which is the style of music I was looking for.

The main parts for this project were sourced on Ebay/Amazon:

Buehler 315 RPM Heavy Duty 25 V DC Right Angle Gearhead Motor - 5500 g-cm Torque ($39)

FWD/REV momentary switch ($5)

Aluminum enclosure box ($13) (a little too small, actually)

24V Power supply ($12)

Speed Control unit ($9)

Spool stand (handrail mount) ($12)

Various bits and pieces came from my local hardware, electronics, and hobby stores.

The two-part bobbin holder itself is a combination of a long M4 screw, fender washers, garden hose rubber gaskets, and two pieces of nesting brass tubing (model airplane supply). The tubes slide over the M4 screw and perfectly fill the space between the M4 screw and the inner diameter of the bobbin spool. The drive shaft of the geared motor already has an M4 female thread.

So all together about $100 of materials and countless hours of parts research and tinkering. Not exactly cheap but functional and priceless to me. I can't buy an industrial strength motorized large bobbin winder like this anywhere at any price, as far as I know.

Edited September 26, 2015 by Uwe

[Cascabel]

Well done, Suh !!! My Cowboy sits beside my Singer 42-5, so I just wind the Cowboy bobbins on the 42-5 winder. Like you, I dislike the ones that wind as you sew.

[dikman]

While rummaging around in my garage I came across a motor that was used for a height-adjustable table. It has a gearbox on the end and runs off 24v. In fact, when I checked this thread it looks very similar to Uwe's. Hmmm, thinks I, this looks promising. I had the transformer that powered it, but of course nothing was connected or labelled. After connecting the power to the wrong windings the first time (50/50 chance, and Murphy's Law says I'll get it wrong!) and tripping the cct breaker I re-connected it and got 28v AC. A 10 amp rectifier bridge gave me 25v DC. When I connected the power, however, I found it runs a bit slower than Uwe's (the gearing is obviously different).

Guess I won't be needing a speed control.

Tomorrow I'll rewire it properly and use a reversing switch, as well as make up suitable bobbin holders. And a box to put it in. And a spool holder. And a thread tension device.

[TinkerTailor]

I've been keeping it secret, I may have also solved this problem. Variable speed and 11 seconds per bobbin. More to come...But i will blow my horn in my own thread. For now, 1 crappy iphone3 photo is all you get. Fully aware it will not work set up as it is in the photo.

Edited November 6, 2015 by TinkerTailor

[dikman]

That's what's known as a teaser, TT. I, for one, look forward to some details?

In the meantime this is the initial device that I cobbled together (it lacks the finish of Uwe's, mainly because I wanted to see if it would work first). Which it does, but it's slower than Uwe's. To speed it up would require using a pulley converter on the output shaft, which seems to defeat the purpose of gearing the motor down in the first place, or removing the gearbox completely, which then creates more problems as the gearbox housing is the actual mounting point for the motor assembly.

While it winds ok, if using #69 thread it would take a while to wind, which means I'll need to fit a cut-off switch so that it stops when wound (then it would be a "set and forget" device). I reckon a micro-switch, set so that the arm trips when the bobbin is full (like the mechanical arm on a normal winder) should work.

I do have some smaller 24v motors, but they are high speed and may not have the torque when running slow. More experimenting, I suppose. But at the moment I now have a slow speed, high torque winder.