Filament winding machines, and software

Why would you need software? It's basically just rope making with smaller threads. 99.9% of it is in the mechanics.

I think we are talking about different kinds of filament winding?

The kind I am talking about is used for making composite (eg fiberglass, carbon fibre) pipes, masts, spars, propeller blades, tanks, bridges, cooling towers etc - and you need software to run the machines.

I suppose you might wind a tube without software, but anything more complex would be beyond me.

There are at least three kinds of commercial software at £1500 per year or so, but I can't afford that.

-- Peter Fairbrother

Brain fart moment :) I was thinking of braiding machines which produce the geometry of fibres that are used for wet layup large vacuum bagged composite tubes, normally with a 45 deg pattern similar to protective cable braid. The end result is similar to filament winding but far less messy.

Going back to what you really meant, It's a case of coordinating the rotation of the mandrel with longitudinal movement of the feed mechanism to get the winding pattern you require.

As it's not really high speed and the possible winding patterns are not huge then its probably within the capabilities of a dirt cheap PLC fed by a optical encoder for mandrel rotation, with limit switches at each end, a few delay loops with bit of calculation to get the right wrap pattern and then a step / direction output to a stepper motor moving the carriage.

Is this any help?

Described like that it sounds a lot like threading on a CNC Lathe. Which probably means with a bit of tinkering MACH3 could do it?

Dave

I first thought of filaments for light bulbs and valves. For these (45 years ago) there was no software - it was all mechanically controlled and made from thin tungsten wire wound upon a mandrel.

Maybe you could rig up a counter to add the number of turns and stop at the amount needed.