Hi All,

i was wondering how do the manufactures of today cope with the "cable cant turn in an column" problem.

With other words. how do they produce buttons on the steering wheel while it can turn??

Wich solution do they have for this problem? I know the old famous copperring solution but that won't work with digital signals...

...

stuff to think about..

Regards,

Tks

[Edited on 19/3/06 by tks]

I've heard of optical sliprings being used, but mainly to cross over turrets in battle tanks.

F1 cars seem to just use an umbilical cable as they only go about 1 turn lock to lock.

Howcome a slipring wouldnt work with digital signals??


Ed.

do they use coils of wire in a drum like they use for air bags ?

Radio transmitter?

My car is only 1 turn lock to lock. I have used an umbilical for my full throttle gearchange switch.

An slipring just like a normal button wich
generate sparks like hell.

CPU"S and microcontrollers are especially prepared for this..

imagen you could look at the status of a wire with the power of 1Mhz (wich isn't much).

then when you will rotate the wheel and there will be one spark...then the chip could have seen the sparks untherstand??

one solution would be don't check the wires that often, but then you stick with the problem that the button response is very poor...

and that it could see a spark just when it takes a sample of the line...

Tks

- Rf transmitter isn't likely because a airbag doesn't work with rf, i can imagine that it would be to dangerous and not as fast/secure...

- What exactly is that wire where you guys talk about??

is it like the spring telefone line wire type..??

Tks

what kind of wire is it?

An umbilical is exactly like the coiled wire that connects a telephone handset to the base.

I suspect a lot of production cars use the so called "clockspring" which is also used for the airbag. Basicaly a long strip of thin ribbon cable which is coiled up like a clock spring.