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guides:homemade:rr2commutator

The commutator is a 12-channel, passive slip-ring unit from Moog (SRA-73683-12; datasheet; there is a also a similar one called the AC6200-12 but this has more friction).

For two Amplipex headstages, we are only using channels 1-9; these numbers refer to the numbers on the commutator in the schematic below (NOT to numbers on the D-sub pins):

(pdf of above diagram, which came from Amplipex)

The corresponding wire colors on the commutator are:

1 purple
2 white/brown
3 blue
4 white
5 green
6 brown
7 white/black
8 black
9 orange
10 (not used) red
11 (not used) grey
12 (not used) yellow

Each D-sub connector is labeled either “1” (commutator data channels 1 and 2, purple and white/brown) or “2” (commutator data channels 3 and 4, blue and white).

On the Omnetics/headstage side, as can be seen in the schematic, the two connectors have shared inputs. To accomplish this, 5 wires (scavenged from Cat5e ethernet cable) connect the relevant pins from one connector to the next. The colors for this are:

channel number color on commutator wire color on “bridge” wire between connectors
5 green green
6 brown brown
7 white/black white/green
8 black white/orange
9 orange orange

This has my original (messy) working notes on this when I was building it (MvdM).

guides/homemade/rr2commutator.txt · Last modified: 2018/07/07 10:19 (external edit)