How to Count Chuck Turns

[oskar]

I’m building a wooden clock as a hobby and it requires to make two coils from 0.25mm diameter copper magnet wire. If you want to see more details of a similar build:

The guy in the video is using his lathe to make the coil and he has a gadget attached which shows how many turns the chuck turns. I have a mini manual Taig lathe with a KBIC VS DC motor controller and I wonder if there is a way to count the turns of my chuck.

The job basically is to wrap the 0.25mm wire on a 2” long 10d nail roughly 200 time per coil.

Thanks

 

[RJSakowski]

One way to do it is with a digital counter. a cat whisker wire would contact the chuck jaws as the lathe turns and each contact would advance the counter one count.

1PCS 24VDC 1.2W 6 Digit Electromagnetic Cumulative Counter E660 Electric 10CPS | eBay

The electromagnetic accumulative counter is DC24V, its red line is connected to the positive pole, the black line is connected to the negative pole, and the positive and negative poles are not reversed.

www.ebay.com

 

[oskar]

Thanks for your time, it looks a good tool for my needs

 

[homebrewed]

I know that switch contact bounce can be a problem when interfacing to digital circuits. Is the incremental counter slow enough to not be sensitive to contact bounce?

 

[mchasal]

It looks like what he's using there is an inductive sensor. These are commonly used in 3D printers for sensing the location of the bed. They basically trigger when metal is within a certain small distance from the sensor. Looks like he has a metal stud on the spindle or chuck that gets close enough to the sensor to trigger it. Here's an example of the sensor:

Amazon.com: URBEST 8mm Detecting Distance Approach Sensor Inductive Proximity Switch NPN NO DC 6-36V Cylinder Type : Industrial & Scientific

Amazon.com: URBEST 8mm Detecting Distance Approach Sensor Inductive Proximity Switch NPN NO DC 6-36V Cylinder Type : Industrial & Scientific

www.amazon.com

You would also need a circuit to take that input and count the rotation. Not sure how best to do that though, but maybe that counter above would work.

 

[gr8legs]

Or just go to the 'shelf of seldom used tools' and grab the hand-cranked coil winder.

Problem solved!

( I occasionally wind inductors and special purpose transformers )