This isn’t about woodworking, but you folks are so clever at designing jigs, I figure this will be an easy puzzle.
Background: I have a ton of silk embroidery “floss”–six strands of silk thread, wound as a group onto cones. Great quality, but my weaving calls for using the individual strands, not the clump of six.
I can separate the strands as the floss unwinds off the cone, so each strand can be wound onto its own spool. The challenge is to wind six spools simultaneously, given that I have only one drive. It turns out that the wind-on rate is different for each spool!
So, each spool has to have some kind of friction brake so it stops spinning when the thread is taut, and resumes spinning when the thread is slack.
Is this do-able?
Janet
Replies
hello . If the wind off from the main six strand spool is one speed , why do you have differing wind on speeds ?. Or are the six strands wound onto the feeder spool in different positions (cone shape with one colour at top other colours further down) Could you form some kind of friction drive on each take up spool so that when the line in started to pull, the drive starts to slip (I think? fishing reels have some form of clutch drive fitted). Could we have photo of set-up .
regards Teabag
They start out at the same speed because each empty spool has the same diameter. Then the thread winds on any way it likes, so eventually one spool has thread spread over its entire length, while another spool has a fat donut of thread in the middle. This is like having spools of different diameters, which changes the wind-on speed. The fat donut spool will take up thread a lot faster.
Edited 1/6/2006 10:54 pm ET by jyang949
I expect you will be able to get a usable solution if you post a picture so we know what your "drive" looks like. I.e.:
Are the six spools mounted in a row?
What drives them?
How many hours worth of work do you have to do? (no sense devising a solution that takes 6 hours for two hours of work)
etc.
Off hand, making guesses about all the above...
Put the 6 spools on one horizontal shaft [assume the top of each spool is 5" from the top of the next spool]
Create a guide with 6 eyelets 5" apart - maybe use a yardstick type piece of wood
Create a track that will keep the above guide parallel with the spools
Feed the threads throug the eyelets and anchor at the same spot on each spool
"Drive" the spool shaft, pulling the thread onto all 6 spools
Slide the GUIDE side to side slowly so the thread winds evenly onto the spools
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