Julia Divan - Spinning Wheels

Mechanical and Electric Spinning Wheels

Mechanical Spinning Wheel

My mom spinning yarn on the spinning wheel.

This was a personal project I made for my mom. She wanted to spin raw wool into yarn but after doing some research we realized that most spinning wheels cost around $900 so I decided to build one for her instead!

This also sparked my own love of spinning yarn and restoring old spinning wheels.

My excitement the first time the spinning mechanism worked.

Earlier iteration of the design with 3D printed flyer.

Wood gluing my wheel together in the machine shop while planning how to do my axle.

Building the large wheel was the first part of the spinning wheel that I tackled. I decided to make it out of three circles. The two outer are larger than the inner which gives me a track for my drive band. There are two skateboard bearings in the center of the wheel that make it spin smoothly.

The bearings I used had a 3/4” hole that the axle needed to go in. I couldn’t find any bolts that were 3/4” in diameter and long enough for what I needed so I decided to machine one myself on the lathe.

Using the lathe was definitely one of the most exciting parts of the project.

Using the Lathe

I learned how to use the lathe for this project. It was especially exciting because I had to thread each end of the rod on the lathe. This step was pretty difficult for me. It took me three tries to get it right. The first two times I broke the threading tool.

My first prototype failed because I had a section of the axle that was wider than the rest of the axle. This section was not wide enough for the lathe to grip onto and when I was threading the rod that torque caused it to rip out of the lathe jaws.

I fixed this by redesigning my axle to not have a wider diameter in the middle.

The lathe doing an automatic finishing pass.

Failed first prototype of my axle.

Putting it All Together

Originally, I found patterns online for a 3D-printed spinning wheel and used some of the parts in my design for the flyer, orifice, bobbin, and bearing rod ends. However, I later replaced most of my 3D-printed parts with wood which actually worked a lot better.

I designed the flyer (trident-looking wooden shape) in SolidWorks and then laser cut and glued 4 together. The most difficult part was creating the orifice. I needed it to be perfectly round with a hole centered in the middle and a divot for it to rotate on the holder.

Drilling holes to put hooks in the flyer.

I ended up getting a 1.5” wooden dowel and using the drill press to center it in a piece of wood and drill a smaller hole in the center.

I did not have access to a wood lathe and wasn’t originally sure how I would get a smooth curve in the wood. I ended up putting the piece on a drill and spinning it up against a drum sander until it had enough curve to it. The result is smooth and rotates perfectly.

I had originally had my foot pedals hinging on a 3D printed part but it broke very quickly so I had to redesign it out of wood as shown below:

Original Broken 3D printed Part

New part made out of wood

Spinning the Yarn!

The learning curve for spinning yarn was difficult but it was immensely satisfying to spin yarn on my own spinning wheel. My mom and I have both been able to make gorgeous, usable yarn.

Electric Spinning Wheel

This was a personal project that happened to fulfill the requirements for a project in my Electronics and Controls course. I had been planning on making an electronic version of my manual spinning wheel because it was much more portable and I wanted to explore the electronics needed to make this machine work.

The far right switch turns the spinning wheel on and off.

In this video you can see the spinning wheel working.

The left dial is a potentiometer which controls the speed. The middle switch controls the direction of the motor. This is important because when you are plying multiple yarns together you need to be able to spin counterclockwise and clockwise.

Here is an example of a two ply yarn I made on my electric and manual spinning wheel:

This spinning wheel uses the Adafruit Feather RP2040 as the microcontroller. I liked working with this microcontroller. It has good documentation and was pretty user-friendly considering this was my first time using it.

I also used a protoboard for the first time in this project and was excited to learn how those work. In future iterations of this electric spinning wheel, I plan on making a PCB specifically for this project so I don’t have to use a protoboard.

Before this project I had not worked with motors with a microcontroller. I was excited to be able to use an H-Bridge I had designed for this project and it actually worked! It was super rewarding to have designed every component of the system aside from the microcontroller. I was also able to work with PWM for the first time and it worked well for this application. The speed control is very smooth. The code I used to control the wheel is at the bottom of the page.

I especially enjoyed woodworking for this project. It is a new skill for me and I feel that this is my most successful product so far.

Code

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