Help with Rotary Switches

[Guest RichardL]

Hi Bud,Yes, I agree. Common courtesy doesn't appear to be a company goal.I looked at the Elma E27. It appears to a common mechanical rotary encoder, not switch.http://www.elma.com/us/products/rotary_com...l%20Encoders/37Well Peter, any help you can provide in finding a source would be much appreciated.Richard

[Guest Bud]

Hello Richard,I agree about the E27. Actually I spoke to someone who had used them and was not encouraging. The main thing was the life expectancy is, apparently, limited.Must say I'm getting v frustrated by this. I've got a couple more names to try next week but I'm not confident. If all else fails, I just might try the kdarling method, modified for the Hagstrom.Bud

[Guest kdarling]

Hi Bud,Yeah, while optical encoders can go millions of cycles, the affordable mechanical ones "only" go tens of thousands. That's why the Panasonic EVE-GA series at DigiKey seemed the best bet to me, because they're rated minimum 30,000 cycles and are only $1.35 each in batches of ten or more. I got a few extra just to play with and/or to eventually replace a worn out one (although I really doubt that will be necessary!). They don't have any way to use a nut to fasten them to a panel, but I intend to insert their rear pins/clamps into a cheap Radio Shack perfboard anyway and then mount the whole perfboard with all the switches to a face panel via standoffs.As for the Knitter encoder that gives a different output each way... I'd say it would be perfect for things that require fast input, such as VOR and DG rotation. Their downside is that you'll have to use up two Hagstrom pins for each switch, since each output must go to a different pin.For other things such as radio tuning, I think my method is better: you can hook all the commons to ground, all the phaseB outputs to a single Hagstrom pin as SHIFT or CTRL, and then only the phaseA outputs need go to individual Hagstrom pins for each upper/lowercase character decoding.Best regards,Kevin Darling

[Guest Bud]

Hello Kevin,Thanks for your idea. Actually for me almost the best bit is the significant saving on the Hagstrom pins. Oddly I'd been planning to pose this point as a question.The not so good bit is that I really need a switch that I can fasten directly to the panel. Bud

[Guest PANTU]

Hi All,unfortunately Knitter seems to be the only company producing these simple rotaries and their sales strategy is fully directed to companies buying large qty.I