If anyone was wondering how [wiki]MEI WEAB[/wiki] works, here are some new photos of non-WEAB switches. It's the same switch, just without "WEAB" written on it. These are not only pre-wiki photos, but two of them violate my full disassembly rules and need re-shooting as I forgot to remove the spring from its terminal! (I also have to try to bend it back to the correct shape, as it was impossible to remove it without bending it.)
I'm still not wholly sure how this works, but the little plastic separator part holds the contacts apart somehow:
- MEI not-WEAB contact separator.jpg (205.62 KiB) Viewed 1354 times
Note that the switch is DPST ready, although there are only physical holes for SPST.
There are two seemingly identical terminals, and one has a spring wrapped around it:
- MEI not-WEAB contacts.jpg (149.25 KiB) Viewed 1354 times
It's really hard to see, but there's a prism-shaped wedge on either side of the centre shaft that the spring braces itself onto. The other end is held apart from the opposite terminal somehow.
Almost full disassembly:
- MEI not-WEAB disassembled tops.jpg (262.15 KiB) Viewed 1354 times
- MEI not-WEAB disassembled bottoms.jpg (272.01 KiB) Viewed 1354 times
I need to re-take these (a pain as they took a while) fully disassembled, so I might need to take another one apart and remove the terminals to get a good shot of them before the spring got removed. It's OK, I've got five of these!
What's interesting is that they have 5 mm travel. It's not common to have that much travel.
I can't prove that they're from Mechanical Enterprises Inc (the MEI we know) but MEI do have patents similar enough to make me think that either a) this is one of the patents where the images aren't yet available, or b) they never bothered patenting it. Nothing with this actual design though.
