Electric Eel Wheel

The hardware and software for this project are shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

The Electric Eel Wheel is a clever electric spinning wheel making it great for easily spinning the fiber of your choice into yarn! You can use a traditional wheel; however, there are many advantages of this electric wheel design. First of all, the Electric Eel Wheel is lighter and smaller than most spinning wheels making it easier to take your spinning with you.

This electric spinning wheel’s design is based on a Scotch tension design, so it is easy to vary the spin and weight of your yarn. You can easily adjust it to make fine lace yarn as well as softly spun bulky. Another nice feature of the speed control dial is that it can spin the bobbin forward or reverse. Most people in our testing lab appreciated the range of speed that this wheel offers.

For build guides, Eagle files, bill of materials, source code, and more visit the Electric Eel Wheel’s home page.

If you’re interested if purchasing a kit or assembled version of this project I sell them in my store.

Even if you’re not interested in spinning yarn there is nice motor controller design in this project.

7 Comments

  1. Josh Malone said,

    March 10, 2010 @ 6:44 pm

    Thanks for sharing your work and experience. My wife & I want to build an EEW but with a larger orifice and bigger bobbins/flyers. Would you consider selling just the motor and controller kit? We plan to build a bigger box and I’d like to avoid having to source the controller parts and program the ucontroller.

    I posted in the forums too but I’m not sure there’s any activity there. Thanks,

    -Josh

  2. Maurice Ribble said,

    March 10, 2010 @ 11:11 pm

    Hi Josh,

    Unfortunately, I run a really small store and want to keep the number of products to a manageable number so I can’t reasonably offer just the this part of the kit. Sorry.

  3. Nona said,

    September 9, 2010 @ 2:56 pm

    In your instructions on the linked pages it says that the board is ‘custom’. Does this mean I need to do something extra to find a board in this configuration or can I find the equivalent online somewhere? I am highly interested in making one from scratch, and appreciate any further info!

  4. Maurice Ribble said,

    September 9, 2010 @ 3:30 pm

    I’ve made a new version. I do sell a kit http://www.dreamingrobots.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2&zenid=6pd9h07homoailrsoi5073t392 , but if you want to build your own I include links to all the parts. This new one uses a motor controller that you can buy. Here is the build guide for the new versions: http://www.dreamingrobots.com/ElectricEelWheel/wiki/index.php?title=Buildguide

  5. nick kettering said,

    September 30, 2010 @ 7:34 pm

    Hi Maurice, very impressive design. I’m currently trying to design a controller that looks very similar to yours in this pic. I was wondering if I could get some advice to design this almost identical controller but Ardunio microcontroller. If you can help thanks!

  6. Maurice Ribble said,

    September 30, 2010 @ 8:53 pm

    Hi Nick,

    My controller uses the Arduino bootloader so it is essentually an Arduino. I don’t understand what you’d need help with?

  7. Nona said,

    October 11, 2010 @ 8:10 pm

    Thanks for the update (9/9/10) … I am excited to get the pieces and build my e-wheel!

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