Industrial counters.

[Ohiogoldfever]

I lucked across quite a few of these recently. Something I’ve never heard discussed so I thought I’d bring them to peoples attention. They would be easy to look past.

Thick foils and nice contacts, not sure what the contacts are as they just get tossed in my pale of contacts for another day.

 

[nickvc]

Check the contract tips for values

 

[kurtak]

Check the contract tips for values

Yes - they are likely silver - or Pd - or an alloy of silver/PGMs

Kurt

 

[macfixer01]

I lucked across quite a few of these recently. Something I’ve never heard discussed so I thought I’d bring them to peoples attention. They would be easy to look past.

Thick foils and nice contacts, not sure what the contacts are as they just get tossed in my pale of contacts for another day.

Those are not counters. They’re known as thumbwheel switches and are used to input a numerical value. You turn them to select a particular number, and that closes a combination of contacts which can then be read out either in hexadecimal or binary coded decimal format. They used to be used on a lot of industrial machinery, CNC machines for example. I suspect they’re becoming rare these days since it’s a lot more common to have a screen and a keyboard or keypad to use instead.

 

[Ohiogoldfever]

Those are not counters. They’re known as thumbwheel switches and are used to input a numerical value. You turn them to select a particular number, and that closes a combination of contacts which can then be read out either in hexadecimal or binary coded decimal format. They used to be used on a lot of industrial machinery, CNC machines for example. I suspect they’re becoming rare these days since it’s a lot more common to have a screen and a keyboard or keypad to use instead.

Thanks for the input. Makes sense.

 

[Schwany]

I just found a few hundred of these, very similar anyway, in a bunch of slot machine related scrap I obtained. The metal the contacts are attached to on mine, almost look gold plated to me, but I assume it to be copper??? Have you figured out what metal the contacts are?

 

[orvi]

Composition of contacts vary from pure silver, to hard silver (CuAg), which can be gold plated. There are AgPd contacts, and I have necountered even AuNi5 contacts from old soviet era ones. I say from my experience that most of the value is on the thick gold plating of the small board, if the points aren´t AgPd or Au alloy.

 

[Schwany]

Composition of contacts vary from pure silver, to hard silver (CuAg), which can be gold plated. There are AgPd contacts, and I have necountered even AuNi5 contacts from old soviet era ones. I say from my experience that most of the value is on the thick gold plating of the small board, if the points aren´t AgPd or Au alloy.

Thanks for the info Orvi!