Rotary switch adaption
November 5th, 2005 | by dnw |Was sitting here in my office on a 31C day thinking it feels a bit hot. Was just then I remembered I could turn the ceiling fan on thanks to a switch mod my father did recently.
I’d had many similar mods on rotary switches of many types done previously and as I cannot grip anything and turn a knob, always the idea was to extend something out perpendicular to the curve of the knob.
Once this was done with a hose clamp holding a piece of wire (that was on a Radio).
In this case a piece of thick wire was inserted through a small hole drilled into the plastic of the knob. There are two protusions because the switch turns through such a circular range that when one goes out of reach the other one can be used. This is expecially needed as the location of the switch is higher than desirable and on the limit of my reach. But this two protrusion approach works like a treat.
An interesting thing is this switch goes from the OFF position to HIGH. As I mostly use the fan on LOW it means I have to turn it through 3 positions and back each time. I don’t know, this idea just seems silly and counter-intuitive to put HIGH after OFF. I’d like to know the reason behind that little gem of thinking.
Another example weird design I think.
