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Well heres how I drive the spool that I store my lights on.
I have designed this rig to fit several different I.D.'s,O.D's and spool widths.
It is a little more complex than I've shown so far...
Here is the whole contraption! Its my helping hand when my wife and kids refuse to help! It dosn't whine or complain about its hands being cold or tired. It just winds lights and extension cords onto the spools nice and neat.
Chuck, I like beer as much as you do. I've recently started brewing my own also. So if you come up for summer camp we're not going to get any thing done!!!!
The circle is showing the indexer which kevin (klb)guessed pretty quickly. It is turned on and off by the switch and trip-dog on the back of the driven cone/pulley. It moves about 1" per revolution of the spool.
A nice feature of the adjustable belt drive is it easily allows me to un-spool the lights in a controlled manner because the belt provides a small amount of brake tension so the lights don't end up in a pile in front of the winder!
At the end of the indexer arm is a set of PVC rollers. These are made from 2" PVC sithe solid PVC centers glued into them and then machined to fit the axles. The horizontal roller is then held onto the axle with shaft collars with 1/2" axles welded to them for the horizontal rollers. This setup had to be done very square so that the .010 clearance between the horizontal roller and the ends of the verticals could be held. This tight clearance was necessary to keep the wire from getting caught between the horizontal and vertical rollers.
This is a close up of one of the vertical rollers. It's just 2" electrical PVC with a piece of solid PVC glued into each end than machined with a .055 hole.
Ideally when I get the remote control working, I should be able to get a string started then climb up on the roof and feed it lights right off the roof. This will make things much, much easier / faster. My other thought is if I cover the bushes in front of the house right I canlet this thing take the lights right off the bushes!
Well I got some video this afternoon. I had my two sons help me and we wound up all the 3 conductor cords. Several 14 AWG and a lot of 16 AWG. Well the winder works very very well!!! As a matter of fact it was winding cords up faster than all three of us could untangle, stretch out, and plug in....
Here are a couple of videos
low res http://bazillionlights.com/Images/2007/windermovie1m.wmv
high res http://bazillionlights.com/Images/2007/windermovie.wmv
I can wait to start on the lights!!!!Yea a lot of them are still upNot for long!
I've been waiting to finish the winder and for the weather to break a bit. Well both are starting to happen.
Not for long!