Video idea?

I recently bought an ultra low budget ($42 after shipping) manual powered coil winding machine.  Last week I posted a photo on my instagram of an audio transformer I successfully made with it.  I bought the winder to attempt to make some of the transformers I need for my Trinity channel strip.  If it worked, and it did, the next step is to buy a professional computer automated transformer winding machine.  The whole point of this is to try to make 2 of the 5 audio transformers for Trinity myself instead of going through a certain well known transformer company.  I would love to get away from relying on them because I really can't rely on them when my phone calls result in a request for an email, my emails rarely get responded to, and then if I do hear back (after a month if I'm lucky) its a 6 week lead time at best.  There's no way I can work with that and not lose my marbles.  Sorry for the frustrated run on.  Problem solved!!! 

I bought this little Chinese coil winder on ebay with very low expectations.  The device is very simple to understand and to care for.  Before using it, I oiled it well with light household oil.  Next, in order to use it without burning up my fingers I needed a way to control the wire layering, so I made a sliding wire guide (manual control).  The wire needed to be tensioned, so I made a tensioner and the wire bobbins needed a way to freely rotate without getting tangled, so I made a bobbin holder.  Basically this winder won't do much without some additional rigging.  I'll save photos for the video if I make one.  

It wasn't only about making the specific transformers I need, it was also about making them on PCB bobbins so I could easily incorporate them into my channel strip design.  Unless you've done the research and know already, its surprisingly difficult to find transformer core material and bobbins, so procuring a source for the exact materials I needed was a major step in justifying a professional transformer winding machine.  I found a lot of companies that will sell you transformer core material, but only if you open up a line of credit with them and then place a minimum order the size of Maryland.  That seems to be the case if the core material you want has any amount of Nickel in it.  I settled on some annealed grain-oriented silicon steel laminations and I'm very happy I did.  The difference with that compared to a high nickel ratio alloy is the steel has more of a vintage sound due to a higher degree of harmonic distortion an limited frequency response.  To tell you the truth, the difference isn't huge.  I actually prefer the sound of the steel core transformers and I was able to get a flat frequency response that extends beyond 10Hz-22kHz with my first successful transformer, which has a step down ratio of 4:1. 

Leave a comment if you'd like to see a video of me making a transformer and talking about this simple manual machine, or let me know if there's something specific you'd like to see related to this topic.  BTW, I'll be out of town from today until August 17th, so limited to no response from me till then.   Thanks for reading!  ​