Another pleasingly good control component from China. This time I went a bit further and analysed the contact materials too.
I can only guess that these switches are mass produced in the control panels of Chinese factories, since the quality seems quite high for the cost.
The real question is... Does the factory that makes these use them in their own panels?
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I can only guess that these switches are mass produced in the control panels of Chinese factories, since the quality seems quite high for the cost.
The real question is... Does the factory that makes these use them in their own panels?
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
I don't know why but I absolutely love the novelty of switches. The basic workings are fascinating enough with their simplicity, but seeing so much ingenuity in every different switch….so cool!
Now please test them against dead short or heavy inbductive load like your water pump in thge garden 😊
Will this china plastic burn or self estinguish?
Well, copying something mechanical is one thing. Understanding what you're doing and copying correctly is entirely on a different sheet of metal.
Look at those cheapo USB pear-chargers, "made in Calfornia" and such. They're often not even capable of chosing the correct letters, if at all. 😀
Sliding/Wiping contact feature is nice but is it effective in accomplishing the true action it is supposed to do? I sincerely doubt that. And as others stated before me, there's no ark quenching (primarily relevant in DC applications), neither.
I can imagine what's going to happen when loaded. The plastic gets soft (glass transistion temperature) and then all hell breaks loose.
One might use this product. But I personally would derate those "ratings" by 60% at minimum!
These Chinese ratings are most of the time rated at 200 to 300% (and often even more than that) of their real/safe capacities. Better be safe than sorry.
A guy with absolutely no electrical knowledge to disassemble this thing and get in trouble is really raising my blood pressure. The silver-plated refined copper shock can make you call it steel, outrageous!
They are quite flimsy, but I kinda understand why people are buying them. I've assembled DIY board for learning PLC programming. Switch like this, from Eaton/Moeller consists for example of two NO contact blocks, holder, the 3-position switch "head" itself, and also a LED element, cause i wanted an illuminated switch. Together it came to TWENTY FIVE POUNDS (120 PLN in my country). FOR ONE f** SWITCH. I understand they're made to industrial quality, but the pricing is absolutely ridiculous, and Siemens is even more expensive, not to mention the Allen-Bradley. The S7-1200 CPU itself (second hand, unused) costed 200 pounds (so 10 switches=PLC)…
Great, I was one of those about to lever the top off, you saved the day. Thanks!
They're cheap because, probably, they're made in sweatshops, by people in a semi-slave condition, striving to build the "brightest" communist future ever imagined.
My chinese electric car, a three-wheeler, uses this switch for the forward-off-reverse selector. Funny how Chinese manufacture quality is just really uneven, some if it made really well, others junk. On that car the driver side window glass survived a car wreck where the lightweight car was tipped on its side and spun around with the window glass like the point of a top, gouging the thick glass, but not breaking or cracking it at all. But if you open the door too hard on that car the cheap plastic doorhandle breaks in your hand.
While I'm a regular BigClive watcher, I'm late to the party on this one.
You didn't mention the reversible contact feature. Invert the movable contact plate and invert and insert the fixed contacts in the alternative slots and you convert the switch from NO to NC. Handy if you need a push to stop switch where in the classic Run/Stop pushbutton control station, you need a black NO push button switch to close the contractor whose aux contact seals the holding circuit and a red NC pushbutton to break the holding circuit so the contractor drops out. You may need to interchange springs, I can't recall.
These cheap Chinese control panel switch units are pretty good. For a while I made custom control panels for local small industry. I tested a few Chinesium control units off eBay by making and breaking an inductive 120 volt 10 Amp load (a transformer with a resistive load on the secondary) to make more productive a Sunday afternoon of mindless TV. At the same time I ran the same test on a $30 Allen Bradley equivalent device (US maker of choice in this niche). No welding, heating, sticking, failed connection, etc on either. Contacts of both showed about equal wear. No change in operator feel either. From this I'd submit they're about equal in performance and durability over 10,000(?) cycles. One still might be shy of using these cheap control units where hundreds of thousands of cycles may be required but my experience suggest no material difference other than (A) Chinese and (B) cheap.
Thus, I felt justified building replacement control stations using Chinese control units for a local fruit leather processing plant.
YMMV.
Thank you so much! I was being driven crazy on how to dismount the knob. A google search didn't find any instruction what-so-ever.
A bit late to the show but the plating won't be nickel as that too is magnetic
I guess there's only so many ways you can mess up a switch? the plastic looks like it'd melt on a hot day though lol.
Thanks for this as I have just bought this switch.
wow thanks for all the good info, glad to know that these are really well made