EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff => Topic started by: Pete2103 on April 29, 2018, 07:07:21 am
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Hi
I never thought it could be so frustrating to try and find pinouts on a 4 pole 5-way rotary switch. I have searched all over Google, came across several which look simple enough but cannot find anything which is like the one I have typical :-[ tried with multimeter Coffee break & more multimeter, just when I thought it was correct it turned out it wasn’t >:D Has anyone came across this type of switch, it’s very small, the solder lugs do not make any sense to me.
Thanks
Pete
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Pinouts for pre-Millenium parts are fairly rare and difficult to find on the web except for popular semiconductors where someone's scanned the paper datasheet. Without a make and exact part number you are usually S.O.L. Wafer switches are especially problematic, as there were various brands of rotary make-a-switch kit, some of which were customisable right down to loading individual bare wafers with contacts of different angular lengths. You can still buy switch frames with adjustable stops, and different types of individual wafer for them (all proprietary so not interchangeable accross brands and ranges), but nowadays the wafers come pre-assembled with a captive rotor.
Better photos would help - in focus and properly lit so they aren't so grainy. Four with the pillars holding the switch body level, (use bluetack) at a slight oblique angle tilted to the front and to the back looking down into the contact side of each wafer as far as the center - take a pair from the top then flip it for the other pair, and one square on to the back wafer.
Worst case you can always undo the two pillar nuts at the back and slide off the wafers and spacers one by one, photographing each wafer, and stacking the spacers and any washers on two stiff wires in the order they came off in to aid reassembly. It looks fairly old, so that's also a good opportunity to clean each solder tag so they take solder more readily.
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I also had difficulties with a "simple" 3 ways 3 poles switch ...
I dismantled it to finally find the correct wiring ... and as lots of springs popped up was unable to rebuild it after that !
I would say you need to write down 4 tables of 5x5 entries, and in each pole entry you write the ohms betweens each way.
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Start with a close visual inspection + confirmation by multimeter of the rear wafer, then see if that gives you enough to make sense of the other wafers multimeter readings