Phosphor bronze rivets?

Copper rivets are probably more easy to find than phosphor bronze. Probably thousands of listings on fleabay.

You could also silver plate and solder to them...

Chris

try a blob of high silver content silver solder on a copper rivet.

Assuming A/ you don't need very many, and B/ they are small:

Get some appropriately sized phosphor bronze wire, mount it tightly in a spare three jaw drill chuck held in your hand, and peen over a rivet head shape on the end of the wire with a small ball peen hammer. Cut off and start again!

AWEM

About 200, 1/8", or thereabouts, shank.

I'd almost came to the same conclusion based on the use of a collet chuck and a capstan lathe!

If you were to google for "National", "NC100X" and "Catacomb" you'll get an idea of what I have in mind, except that I'd use the rivets contacting against sliding contacts, and not the preformed indented contacts that they use. Think of it as being like the old turret tuner from 405 line TVs, except that it is laid out flat.

So much of what we do as model engineers is introverted, insofar as we use the lathe only to make more attachments for the lathe, etc, but I'm combining two (I've many more!) of my interests, model engineering and ham radio, to make the sort of communications receiver I dreamed of as a teenager 50 years ago but could never afford.

Most of the past year, when time has been available, has been on this project, but mainly to set up some attachments for the mill so that I can hob 200 tooth wormwheels for the flywheel-driven tuning mechanism,

Have you seen this fellow's site?

I had seen something similar in the past, but the guy is doing free hobbing and because of my background interest in hobbing (I'd been assisting another with spreadsheets to set up his hobbing machine) I was desirous of doing a proper job. I now have a setup for hobbing only 200 tooth gears, for the moment, based upon the optical sensor / stepper motor principle.

But thanks for the heads up

What I am aimimg for is an anti-backlash pair of wormwheels, and I have taken the coward's way out by using an M10 tap as the hob so that it will mate with off-the-shelf M10 screws.

Why phosphor bronze?

Phosphor bronze is a bearing material, and there are many bronzes more suited to your requirements - or just straight copper.

How about relay contacts? Available in all sorts of sizes.

.........Tom

Might be interesting as an exercise, but a bit hair shirt when you consider that copper rivets are an off the shelf item, are a better contact material and are cheap. :-)...

Chris

Ho ho - an HRO without the coil packs ! No more callouses on your thumbs as you change wavebands.

AWEM