Finally it's time to start this project.
A friend acquired not one but three HP-8569B, and one HP-8569A spectrum analyzers.
One 8569B would not power up, that was an easy find a bad tantalum cap on the supply module's -15V rail. The power supply module was borrowed from one of the A model and all four analyzers appear at this point to have no electrical issues, however..........
All of them do have one or more of the rotary switches, damaged.
The front panels were removed from the two that are most likely to be easily fixed.
And a rear view...
Oh and then there are these...
The one on the left has been straightened and is ready for re installation.
Since the freely available manuals online were garbage, to put it nicely, I want to Artek Manuals
http://artekmanuals.com/ and picked up the three volume set for a very reasonable price (under $20.00USD) and received a wonderfully scanned manual set.
These guys are great and the price is so reasonable....
Moving along to the immediate problem...
The switch rotor is a piece of what feels like ether nylon or delrin plastic. They have hot stakes that secure the contact fingers to the rotor, pay close attention to the inner pair of hot stakes, they were never used in this switch rotor, the outer ones as can be seen are sheered off, no doubt from the decades of pressure on the hot stakes....
At this point
laziness kicks in, and I am going to ask if anybody has ever repaired these switch rotors before and what did you use to attach the contact fingers?