PickupForge W1, the winder you print yourself
A CNC pickup winder you build yourself, 3D printed, for under $100 of parts.
I wanted a winder that counts the turns and lays the wire on its own, without paying what a shop machine costs. The W1 is what came out of it: two stepper motors, an ESP32 board with a touchscreen, and everything else printed.
It sits in a corner of the bench. You pick a coil on the screen, or send it one from a phone over Wi-Fi, bring the wire guide against the flange, press, and it winds.
What you need
- An ordinary 3D printer. Every white part in the photos comes off it.
- Under $100 of parts: two stepper motors and their drivers, an ESP32 board with a touchscreen, a lead screw, a couple of bearings and some screws.
- The bill of materials says what to buy, and the notes say how to put it together.
- The firmware is ready. You flash it from this site, over USB, with nothing to install.
Why a machine at all
Winding by hand works, and plenty of people do it very well. What is missing is repeatability: two pickups that should be identical never quite are, and you cannot say why.
A machine counts the turns, lays the wire in the same place every time, and keeps the file of what it did. You can make the same coil again six months later. That is all I ask of it.
The rest of the site goes with it: the calculator says how many turns and how much wire, the winder page writes the file, and the machine runs it.
Frequently asked questions
What does it really cost?
Under $100 of parts, filament aside. Most of it is the two motors with their drivers, the board with its touchscreen, and the lead screw.
Do I need a big printer?
No, an ordinary FDM printer is enough, in PLA or PETG. There is no exotic material anywhere in it.
Where are the STL files?
Not up yet. The first winding tests still change a part here and there, and I would rather put the files up once they are right than put up a link that leads nowhere.
What can it wind?
Guitar pickup coils: single coils, humbucker bobbins, P-90s. You give it the core sizes and the number of turns, the rest is worked out for you.
Has it wound a pickup yet?
Not a complete one. It is wired, it turns, it counts and it lays the wire, and the first test coils are running now. Each one brings its corrections, and that is what is left to finish before the files go up.