recognise this plug

bigger pic

It's called a "mini trailer plug" I bought a bunch of them for a project years back. Never saw any made up leads. On mine, the leads were attached to the plug with small set screws

It's called a "mini trailer plug" I bought a bunch of them for a project years back. Never saw any made up leads. On mine, the leads were attached to the plug with small set screws

I used them on my TV antenna rotator. Haven't seen new ones in many years, or a good cheap alternative to them.

jsw

When I bought mine they could be had in multiple configurations from two wire to 5 or 6. I will try to find a source when I go back to work Monday

Does not look to be of US origin. Those usually have the spring part of the contact on the female connector, not the male.

However, it looks as though you could make your own brass contacts -- with a milled flat with a cross-drilled hole for the solder connection, and embed them in a Delrin or similar plastic. Knurl them and press them in. And, it looks as though one pin (the lower right hand on the photo which shows the connector pins up close) is smaller in diameter, so you can use that for keying.

Beyond that -- you may have to wait until you get the switches, and measure the pin diameter and spacing (and look for maker's name molded into the plastic), and then order the connectors from some large supplier like Newark.

Good Luck, DoN.

Four contacts could be for an electrically isolated microswitch with NO & NC contacts and a case ground.

I think I'ld just cut the plugs off and use my own connector. Something I already have bunches of laying around. Or just use a barrier strip.

Looking at some of the other photos, at least one showed a pinout label on the switch. It is a SPDT switch (likely a snap-action type microswitch) with all three contacts brought out and a ground for the case.

The reason for bringing all out is to allow for choices like a bunch of NO switches in parallel, or a bunch of NC switches in series, so any one of them could stop the machine. And, if switch bouncing is a problem, both the NO and NC contacts could be brought out, and fed to a RS flip flop (easy enough to make with two two-input NAND gates so you could de-bounce two switches with a SN7400 TTL chip), so even with bouncing contacts, there would be only one transition input to the computer.

Enjoy, DoN.

How long are the cables? A barrier strip needs to be somewhere protected from chips, since you aren't milling electrically insulating wood. (Maybe plastic, but I'll bet that you will mill metal too. :-)

If you put your own connectors on there -- make sure that they both are enclosed enough to keep the chips out, but also liquid-tight enough to keep coolant out as well.

The look like a nice set of limit switches.

Good Luck, DoN.

Karl, check out some of the Delphi waterproof automotive connectors availible at Mouser. This link is for four pin connectors, but they have a wide variety availible, if you do a keyword search for 'Delphi'.