Visco Fuse Winding Machine

grabcad

After searching in vain for a useable model of one of these machines online, I decided to give it a go myself. This is not at all easy to get up and running, let alone get consistent results, but I'm happy to say I've managed it. Unfortunately, all my individual printed part files are in 3mf, thus not uploadable here, so I had to bunch them together onto a few plates as stl files which are not really complete. There are a ton more parts (and many different versions of them) in the actual CAD files. The way I have it running now is with one or two strands of KN03 soaked cotton embroidery floss as the carrier core. These run through the funnel, which is filled with very finely milled BP. The first (outer) stage carries 24 cotton threads and the second 8 threads wound in the opposite direction. There is a NC coating stage in the model, but I currently don't use it as it developed too much tension so I unwind the spool and coat it afterwards. All of the hardware and electronics are labeled in the model (I think; if not it should be fairly obvious what the part is). The gearing is a bit of a mess; this is a consequence of redesigning the ratios while keeping the frame the same. The motor runs at 60 RPM. The uptake spool gearing is 3:1 so it runs at 20 RPM. Drive shaft to first plate is 1:4, so inner wrap is 240 RPM. The outer wrapping plate has an idler gear that's a tad larger so it's running a bit slower, probably around 200 RPM. The frame plates are made from 3/32" aluminum. If you want to build this, you're going to have to spend a lot of time tweaking the CAD files to your needs. The f3d file is fully jointed and motion-linked with the correct ratios, so it's fairly straightforward to change gear ratios or even substitute belt drives (which was my original intent, but they were much too slippy). It's not quite as simple as you'd imagine to run, but it definitely works and I finally have reliable and repeatable fuses that don't go out and, perhaps more importantly, don't decide to behave like detcord. Much depends on the quality of your BP, as well as the NC coating, but that's beyond the scope of this site. I'm still working on the integrated coating stage and if I get that working properly I'll update the model. I don't post anything that I have not actually built and which can be reliably reproduced by someone else.