deskthority

I've seen my share of switches. From itty bitty Mitsumi Miniatures all the way up to burly IBM beam springs. But these are (just a touch) bigger yet. Behold: Clare's High Profile Series Reed Switches:
Mitsumi and MX on the left, and a whole lot of bigger on the right.
I picked up a good number of these, and their caps, from the local museum. They had been in a box of parts for a decade or two, along with other caps I'll post in a separate thread.

Note the switch on the right:
Bulb!
Somewhat larger than an MX. These are linear switches, of course, good and smooth; I'm guessing 6 mm of travel, it's certainly deeper than Alps and the rest. Pretty heavy too, as was the style of the time. My multimeter says they conduct at what feels like 75% of the travel. It's a deep activation point, all right.

There's a little socket integrated into the switch for the detachable, LED-sized bulb. And two more contacts on the bottom. The accompanying cap has a whole different mount, with pegs either side of a central hole, which the bulb slides up into to provide (what I assume is) a nice bright and even light.
Imagine the translucent, spherical cap in the foreground lighting up like a button on a vintage sci-fi.
More on those back two in another thread.

Meanwhile, the other caps are mostly doubleshots, and look like this:
That triple mount on the engraved caps is distinctive. As is the spacebar stab:
Yup, Pyrelink has these as well! His switches are the "Low Profile Series" mentioned in the same Clare-Pendar parts catalogue. Only mine are straight Clares:
I've no idea what this ring is about, but it does highlight the unusual Maltese cross-section of the mount:
As usual, I need to shoot more pictures. There's several versions of the switch, as told by the numbers. They're all the tall size, though, and Belgian! I'll get them in the wiki once I know more about them.

Neat, I have some of these switches from a keypad I got from Israel (the wonders of ebay ).

DSC_1087 by triplehaata, on Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/triplehaa ... 051206013/

I thought you might! But have you got the bulbs?

I'd like to see one of these guys lit up, but I'm wary of burning the wee thing out.

Gold, silver and bronze!? Fancy!

Something you didn't mention — some of yours are latching (SK is latching illuminated). From the PDF:

SF = momentary
SG = latching
SI = illuminated momentary
SK = illuminated latching

The final digit is weight, with 4 being a whole 200 g, and 1 being a sensible 50 g.

It's always nice when companies make things this easy for us! :)

The codes aren't just decoration? How novel!

I'll line them up and see what I've really got. As usual, the caps caught my attention first. Some nice ones coming up.

Already mentioned in a private message, and in another topic, but for reference again:

http://www.visualux.com/catalogues/kswitch.pdf

Interestingly, the PDF shows French-made Pendar-branded switches, not Belgian-made Clare switches! It might be like Hi-Tek/Stackpole, who basically made the same products under different names, give or take possible minor variations.

Reckon we should ask to mirror that file on the wiki? Catalogues all go the way of the dodo eventually. Although this one's stuck around for a while already!

Beautiful switches you have here. They kept them in great condition! Any chance you would be willing to take one apart? Clare made some of my favorite vintage keycaps, and it looks like you got some awesome ones too.

P.S. I think someone needs to implement mini lightbulbs into their next custom board. So much cooler then LEDs.

I'd rather send you a few. HaaTa's photoset has a take apart, and I bet he's more competent at the task than me!

Wonder who's still making little instrument lamps like that, nowadays. If anyone is still on them, it might be aircraft instrument makers. I hear they're still behind the times for various reasons. (New model? Why would we want that? Is it flight tested? Who cares about power savings, we got all the power we need up here!)

There is some similarity to my mystery switches. Very interesting. Mine do not have any markings if I remember, I need to take another look.

Yay, weekend sunlight! I got the loose caps out and took some pictures (hopefully the right ones for Facet). Here's a taste:
Clare doubleshots surrounding a couple of grey IBM beamspring tripleshots, a blue SA doubleshot in the background, and a dark grey DSA doubleshot in the foreground. Note the similarity in height between all the tall vintage sphericals!
Thick.
IBM's tripleshots are the gold standard of caps. These aren't too shabby either, mind.

Nice. I should do some cap shots like this too with my Micro Switch caps, my Fujitsu´s and my mystery Pendar´s. Too lazy right now.

Cloudy today, but sunny yesterday — I noticed that my photography spot outside currently doesn't suffer from shadows from trees despite the low sun. I've just ordered a replacement camera battery so that I've got two good batteries instead of one. I don't remember what else needed photographing now, though, only that I ran out of time last year due to annoying shadows.

I never have any lighting problems with my Pentax K-10 flash, but small objects like keycaps and switches look better in daylight. The flash tends to "burn out" detail.

That's the thing with photography: just because you can take a shot doesn't mean you should. You really want everything weighed up on your side. Especially with slow old sensors like I've got. Really need to get something that can reliably go above ISO 400 someday. This Canon's coming up on its 10th birthday.

You won't be surprised to hear it's dark and moody now, and about to piss down with rain. Just before I got to that Monterey PCB too! I'll do it someday, honest. Along with the Honeywell insides.

seebart wrote: I never have any lighting problems with my Pentax K-10 flash, but small objects like keycaps and switches look better in daylight. The flash tends to "burn out" detail.

When it comes to whole keyboards, a flash is really only useful unless you have reflectors or, at the very least, the flash on a separate stand so that you can position it such as to evenly light the subject while having the camera closer. A flash mounted on the camera is great at giving you horrible illumination gradients, which is why I realised it was easier to use the front path — the sun's light is a lot more even!

Not that there's anything wrong with rain right now — technically it's still winter! (Though I count seasons as starting on month boundaries: for me it's now spring, and yesterday certainly felt like it.)

I´m sure you´ve seen some of my shots, all taken with a camera mounted flash! I mostly succeed with flash diffusion and choosing the right angle without gradients and reflections. Shooting with "longer" lenses at a distance is another workaround for flash problems. If all else fails I get out my tripod and do 1+ sec. exposures. But daylight is still the best option.

I struggle to remember who's who :)

inspired by Mu here some of my finest keycaps in this order: Micro switch,Clare Pendar?,Fujitsu 2nd gen. leaf spring,Fujitsu 1st gen. leaf spring.

Muirium wrote:


Imagine the translucent, spherical cap in the foreground lighting up like a button on a vintage sci-fi.

Oooh... I can imagine that. Who wouldn't want buttons to light up like that? I bought a vintage EKG machine with translucent multi-coloured buttons just to get that kind of thing.

seebart wrote: inspired by Mu here some of my finest keycaps in this order: Micro switch,Clare Pendar?,Fujitsu 2nd gen. leaf spring,Fujitsu 1st gen. leaf spring.

Awesome. (...though I've never liked those Fujitsu "tombstone-style" keycaps)

Oh, nice pics Seebart. Those are all doubleshots by the way, just in case right?