Barry --

At work, we use a match for stripping high-temperature magnet wire.  Play
the flame quickly over the last 1/4" (or however much you want to strip) of
the wire.  It only takes a fraction of a second to do it.  Then gently
strip the charred insulation from the wire with a pencil eraser.

If the wire breaks while winding, it's best to start over.  You can splice
it, but the bump it causes will disturb the layering of the rest of the coil.

Winding with small wire can be tricky.  Let the wire feed off the end of
the spool and straight up, as you mentioned.  Putting the spool on the
floor facilitates this.  At work we use a "whisker disk" to control the
wire feed.  This is an aluminum disk (maybe 1/16" thick) with a polished
perimeter that is larger in diameter than the ends of the spool, and has
"whiskers" extending out from the edge.  It looks a little like a rotary
wire brush with only a few wires present.  The whisker disk sits on top of
the end of the spool of wire you are feeding from.  The large diameter of
the whisker disk forces the magnet wire to feed out from the layers on the
spool without snagging on the adjacent turns, and the whiskers (VERY fine
stainless wires) keep the magnet wire from moving and getting tangled when
the winding operation stops.  The whiskers extend about 1" from the
perimeter of the disk.

I'm not sure how you could make the whiskers, but some bristles from a very
fine brush might work if glued to the outside of the disk.

Karl


At 10:24 AM 1/16/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi Steve
>   Thanks for the input. If I break a wire during winding I would try to
"side
>lap"  the wires and try to solder. I was always concerned about whether the
>connecting was made. I had the beginning of the coil as one end for checking
>continuity. I would then go away from the joint and bare ,with heat, the
wire to
>check for continuity.
>   I have two types of magnet wire coatings, red and orange. The red
appears to
>be easily removed with heat. the orange is more difficult. Do you have and
>suggestions on heat temp required for coating removal? I seem to remember it
>being mentioned in the recent past. The reason I was having problems with
>winding fine wire was one of two reasons. If one tries to allow the source
spool
>to turn then inertia  fluctuations from changes in rotational speed causes
>breaking. Secondly if I let the wire feed off the end of a stationary source
>coil then the wire seems to snag on adjacent windings of the source coil
due to
>the steep angle as it comes off the coil.


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