Sunday, June 16, 2024

"You maniacs! You blew it up!"

     So I'm online looking* for a Bourns Knobpot™, which was a precision multi-turn potentiometer fully integrated with a precise-readout knob that had a little clock-like dial, only with ten major divisions instead of twelve.  They had a big hand and a little hand, and the little hand incremented one minor division for every full rotation of the big hand (and knob).  They were about three-quarters of an inch in diameter.

     Simple to install, easy to read, relatively inexpensive.

     Not simple enough.  The clever little clock face is gone, replaced in current versions by a three-digit mechanical digital readout, like a tiny version of an old-fashioned odometer.  I suppose it is simpler, using existing parts.  Fancy versions of this type (often as a stand-alone knob to be installed on any multi-turn control) have been available for over fifty years.

     I'm still a bit sad to find the clock-face version gone.
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*Not looking too seriously.  I'd like to use one to replace a twenty-turn control in a thing at work, a control that requires lining up a very small screwdriver through an off-center hole to adjust.  But I won't.  It would be too big a modification and would be too easy for curious knob-twiddlers to adjust, which would be quite bad indeed.  I'm going to take a reamer to that off-center hole if I get a chance.

2 comments:

  1. https://www.mavin.com/store.php/resistors/bourns-dial-face-potentiometer-3640s-1-201

    ReplyDelete
  2. Surplus Sales of Nebraska has a Colvern 10K 10-turn pot with a clock dial that might be similar... https://surplussales.com/Potentiometers/Misc/Misc-1.html

    ReplyDelete

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