Sometimes you have projects where you require rotating electrical contacts. Let me Zoom down this. This is an eBay slippering assembly. You've got six wires going in, six bars going out, and the main thing is that with this, you can rotate one set and the other set remains static, but current is apparently being transferred through.

Let's check that current is being transferred through by putting this through to continuity. I'm going on to the post of here which I've stripped in advance and uh, positive here and we have continuity through. Even when rotation is occurring, doesn't seem to be too glitchy. They're not bad.

The specifications for this a little bit suspicious. They claim it it's suitable for 220 volts Ac I'm not sure I really want to put names through this in 250 RPM which isn't hugely fast. uh, two amps per circuit. It's very thin wire, but they do say it is Teflon insulated and they say the good gold plated contacts in here.

We'll find that out because obviously I'm going to open this up. So I'm thinking the application This probably are things like robotics, displays, and stuff like that just where you need that uh, rotating contact that gives a greater freedom of movement. So this looks as though it's the way in here and it looks glued. but I shall try and splutter it.

First of all, see if that's going to break a ceiling anyway? Loud, scrunching, popping noise. It's peeling the plastic away at the sides. I Don't think this is the way you're supposed to go into I Don't think you're supposed to go into at all. In the past, they used to have numerically weighted slippery contacts where you could actually get such good connection that you could put data through it.

Uh, they they get kind of got banned because well, you know Mercury it's a terrible thing Hmm this isn't looking promising and go just keep gouging. but uh, you can skip ahead if you want to see what's inside. I think I'm gonna break it anyway with the feel of it. Yeah, this is just kind of like splitting apart I may just pause momentarily to do the set of getting into it.

but I can pure plastic? Well, no, no, tell you what? No. Tell you what, we have action, we have action. What have we got here? I wonder if this I can see the little gold contacts in there? Can you see them? Oh, this is potted in with resin and this one, uh right. tell you what.

Um, so far it's not looking too bad, it's out. I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna try and dig this resin out and we'll see what we can uncover one moment, please. Well, that turned out quite impressive. I Have to say when I've taken that out, the two halves of these shells actually just parted and, uh, left the core inside.

There were two bearings. These two bearings here. a big one and a little one. The little one was at the end uh, that doesn't look the wires and The larger one was around the bar section very hard.

taking this core apart I've kind of done a graphical representation. I'll show you in a moment. but uh, the whole thing is injection molded with plastic so that the there's a initial structure here and then plastic is basically pumped in around the wires, so they are physically fused in here. That does also explain perhaps why they're Teflon But the wires are soldered.

Let me just zoom down onto this a little tiny bit. The wires that come in here are actually soldered and little tiny dots of solder on the inside of these brass rings. and the Rings are actually a little Channel a round. Channel And it does appear to be, well, simply gold flashed The contacts here, um, have been resin in, but they've kind of pulled the gold flashed wires through the contacts after soldering the wires on, and they've presumably clamped in a jig because the resin hasn't flowed down further.

These little dots here are actually grease. Um, but then they've potted it in resin. As you can see at the back here, it is just completely potted in a sort of translucent resin. Um, and once they've then removed the jig, it's revealed those wires that are just roughly spaced apart and when it's assembled, they actually sit across the other side of these uh, rings.

And there's a two r's for each. I Presume it's a single wire just folded round there with the electrical connections. Sort of done, but they said to another side of one of these rings and they're staggered so that this one may do say this ring this ring and this ring and this one would do uh, that ring that ring and that ring. Very interesting I did try taking this apart as I say it's pointed I Get the feeling they've got initial core and then they've sat the rings on and then spacers but there is I wouldn't call.

they say 220 volt I do not say 220 volt. I would say this is for low voltage, low current use only. I wouldn't even read it. Two amps with these tiny wires here would just be basically be doing its signal wires, but if you wanted to carry a bit more current, you could double up on the connections.

Let me show you the drawing that I did to try and give an indication of what might be in there. So if this is the core coming in here, they've sat on these rings and then they've sat on the spacers and inside they have. if you look at the inside those Rings it literally because that's a whole ring. It's basically tacked on the inside and then the wire is going down the middle at their contacts.

Basically they're just as you push it and it just displaces them and they just ride in that uh track there and just touch onto the side of it. I'm not sure what Duty segment I'm in the terms of what number of rotations they could. Quite a high value, but then again, they often do. and why is it on? eBay at not too high a price? Well, maybe it's the rejects because you know what eBay is like.

It tends to be a dumpster for stuff that wasn't quite up to standard. Having said that, I mean the construction is quite complex. Maybe they are mass produced. Maybe they'd use a lot of them.

One of the other things I did mention was CCTV I Don't know how to really trust a video signal coming through this? Maybe pan and tilt and stuff are, but not necessarily the video signal. But there we have it. Um, the slip rings for transferring power to moving electrical contacts. I Wasn't expecting it to be too good inside.

In reality, the assembly looks very refined. actually looks pretty good. It could be trustworthy for some low current low voltage applications. Quite neat inside.