Wiring jig story

There’s too much work in my (real) work so all things are unfortunately slowing down. Anyway, I’ve got finally couple minutes now where I’ve got to write an update. As there is too much to share, I’ve started with a bit title – Wiring jig story, however thinking about all what’s going on I think it will be more “Wiring jig report”.

This article is also a follow up on the “Heater for Carbon fibre tube manufacturing” article, so if you have no idea what’s going below – some relevant info might be there (e.g. If you are asking WHY???).

Long story short – after the latest disaster with tube diameter Vilda pretty promptly provided 60mm tube.

Huge thanks Vildo!

Now – from previous pictures, you surely noticed that wire spacing is ideal – causing the heat not being evenly distributed.

So I came with an idea of a simple “re-spacing jig” which I would screw through all that to get wire properly distributed along the tube. I’ve started with a simple “nut” design with a deep thread and it took me several prints to realise that that’s going to become serious rabbit-hole.

As the wire heated up, it partly glued with the Capton tape and my design + ABS Material strength wasn’t able to overcome that, always ending with that jig’s thread being ripped off or jig layers separation (collaps) … or both.

Based on my favourite Murphy’s law – If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it probably needed to be replaced anyway. – I started thinking about something else – a new plan!

Actually it worked out pretty simple, let’s unwind that wire first and rewire it properly. As getting that wire back on a spool manually would clearly take at least 30 minutes (it is 80m long), I decided to make a new jig which would allow to rotate that tube so I can use a drill. We’ll apparently need one jig to hold the tube somewhere-ish in a middle (1) and another point at the end (2). Oh, we can’t forget a completely new jig which will then allow re-wiring itself (3)!

Let’s fast forward several weeks to review where we are now.

Weiss jig design is GREEN

.. and printed + tested.

+ picture with reinforcing bolts mounted (the idea here is to prevent the layer separation)

Wall-mount jig – to hold the tube’s end

Printing worked out nicely

And the final product got printed …

… wall-mounted and actually tested!

Final product – spool of a copper wire. Sort of where we’ve been 3 months back 😀

Wiring jig itself

There is a spool holder and wire lead-in which enters the inner thread.

When having fun with the OpenSCAD I also did a picture showing all those weeks’ work at once.

Printed & tested.

Where it quite stopped as the thread is not deep enough + the spool holder broke. So some re-designing is still needed here.

I think that this article is already super-long so I’ll end it up with a video of Sebi rewiring that tube.

That’s how the story ends for today – as always please leave us some feedback, it is greatly appreciated!