Home-made yarn winder (Now with more pictures)

[ImperiestroMary]

Holy god. That's incredible. How inventive. I don't know what a swift is, but if you've come that far, it couldn't be hard at all to come up with one.

Man, the engineering part of my brain can't get over how cool that is.

[Atouria]

Peer pressure in hopes of a tutorial.    I absolutely HATE rolling my yarn into balls.  I'd just buy a winder, but DIY is so much cooler and I LOVE the way the legos look!

<crosses fingers> 

[JoHunter]

Thanks Atouria, believe me I'm pressuring him to make a tute but it may be a while.  In the end this winder is pretty expensive compared to one in the store.  Kind of like making a sweater out of lovely rowan yarn with love in every stitch compared to just buying one from the gap

[lisascenic]

Oh, I love it!

[neko_loco]

Oh, please, do not let this topic go!  I am so in love with that winder, I really hope your (ingenious!) boyfriend can find some time for writing a tutorialm because mine would love to help me build one!  If not, at least you've planted the seed that it could be done.

Ingenious!!!

[kategirl]

that's so cool!

[JoHunter]

Sorry for the delay everyone, our digital camera was on the fritz so I had to wait to take pictures for those interested in making the winder.  There are quite a few photos coming up but I tried to keep them small for sake of loading.


Here's a picture of the motor assembly, underneath the two gears on either side of the turntable are the motors we used.  They drive the turntable which revolves around that central gear


A closeup of the central part of the winder.  This part looks the most complicated but don't be intimidated, it's mostly to keep the upper assembly stable and because we didn't have an angled beam long enough it's keeping the black beam at about 45 degrees.  The length of this beam depends on how big you make the winder but we used a 12 hole beam


Yet another closeup of this small bevel gear, this is probably the most important part of the winder.  It does not move and to get it to be rigid and fit on the block we needed to get rid of the 4 studs around it with a dremel tool.


Here's a shot of the winder that helps show the upper assembly, this took a bit of experimentation to get right.  Against the small central bevel gear is a large 30 tooth gear, this is helping to gear down the winder so that it has more torque and is stable.  We original had a 24 tooth gear in its place but it was unstable and struggled with thicker yarns or any amount of tension.


Here's a look underneath the upper assembly, the small gear is connected to the large gear on top, and there's another 30 tooth gear connected to that.  This again helps for stability.  Connected to the big gear is the bobbin, which is essentially a rod with lego tires on it, but to reduce friction we taped a rolled piece of paper to it.


Shot underneath the winder, taking a look at the motors and the turntable.  We usually tuck the wires from the motors under here just to keep it tidy

Our finishing touch was adding a tension arm to one side of the winder where the yarn would go through just to keep an even tension but it also helps keep the yarn wind at a consistent level, and connected our RCX unit to the side of it.  We experimented with a few things like a touch sensor that would automatically wind the yarn when it was at a certain tension, adjusting the height that the tension arm would feed the yarn onto the winder.  Now it's just as simple as turning the motors on and off when I need them.  Please feel free to ask questions, modify it to your own requirements, add or remove motors or even make it a mechanical winder (we tried this originally but it was hard work, unstable, and not smooth).  I hope these pictures and descriptions help

[crochet hooker12]

 

[JoHunter]

Just an update on my winder...over 6 months and possibly hundreds of hanks later it's still running, though a few gears have been changed after being worn down.  Best gift ever! 
 

[francie pants]

he's a genius!!!!!!  my husband would SO rise to this challenge.  he'll do anything to keep his legos in the house.  i remember some woman at the lys saying she would turn her swivel rocker chair upside down and used that as her winder.  THIS is 10 times better!!!!