Self cleaning wire stripper and method

The self-cleaning wire stripper includes a wire stripping element, such as an RF coil, which burns insulation from a segment of wire. A wire guide, such as a insulating burn tube, positioned within the wire stripping element guides the wire through the wire stripping element. The self-cleaning wire stripper uses a reamer having a wire channel such that the wire passes through the reamer. At the desired time, such as at the end of every burn operation, the reamer cleans the wire guide, resulting in no down time for tube removal/cleaning. The reamer cycle time is transparent to the process and does not slow down throughput because reaming occurs during the coil winding process.