The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 14, 1999
Filed:
May. 14, 1998
Karl-Heinz Bauer, Bad Neustadt, DE;
Reinhold Moret, Mellrichstadt, DE;
Ulrich Brueggemann, Heustreu, DE;
Preh-Werke GmbH & Co., KG, Bad Neustadt, DE;
Abstract
Rotary potentiometers known in the art having sensitive adjustment of the control knob require a stepdown gearing and have differing moments of friction that vary between devices. By contrast, in a rotary potentiometer of this invention a control knob (3) is mounted on at least three balls (6) that move, guided by a cage disk (7), in a housing groove (8) formed by a radial wall (9) and an axial wall (10), against which the balls (6) are urged by a load pressure of a conical bearing surface (11 or 12) of the control knob (3). The radial and axial wall bearing surfaces have contact and resistive strips (13, 14) that are short circuited by the balls (6). The control knob (3) has a stop lug (15) which contacts housing lugs (16) to limit a manipulation adjustment angle (4) and which, during operational adjustment, contacts at least one of two stop lugs (17) of the cage disk (7), which are positioned at an angle that corresponds approximately to one-half the manipulation adjustment angle (4) and the resistor tap angle (5). This design results in reduced cost and functional improvement.