US 6,386,886 B1Granted

Gimbal system

AssigneeRaytheon Company

InventorWilliam A. Filaretos

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Abstract

A system includes a slip ring plate and a pair of brush assemblies mounted on each side of a housing. The disk-shaped slip ring plate is mounted to a first gimbal member and has a plurality of concentric, truncated circular shaped electrical conductive segments disposed on one surface thereof, the electrical conductive segments being electrically insulated from each other and divided (truncated) into half circular segments by discontinuities on each side of the slip ring plate. Pins (22) are fixed to a cylinder (152) on the gimbal (22). The pins (22) pass through acruate slots (40) in the slip ring (18). Motors (14, 16) are used to cause rotation of the gimbal with the slip ring remaining stationary until the pins engage ends of the slots (40), the slip ring then rotating with the gimbal, the rotation being limited by slip ring stops engaging housing stops. The brush assembly has a like plurality of brushes, each of the brushes being positioned in electrical contact with a corresponding one of the plurality of conductive segments while the brush assembly and disk-shaped ring platter rotate with respect to each other about an axis common to the concentric, truncated circular shaped conductive segments.

Claims3

Dependent claims

A system having a pair of members, a first one of such members being rotatably mounted to a second one of the members about an axis, such system, comprising:

a first plurality of electrical cables, each one of such cables having a first plurality of electrical conductors;
a second plurality of electrical cables, each one of such cables having a second plurality of electrical conductors;
an electrical interconnecting structure for electrically interconnecting each one of the first plurality of electrical conductors to a corresponding one of the second plurality of electrical conductors, such electrical interconnecting structure comprising:
a disk-shaped slip ring plate having a plurality of electrically isolated arcuate sectors, each one of the sectors having a plurality of concentric, truncated circular shaped electrical conductive segments disposed on one surface of the plate, each one of the plurality of segments in each one of the sectors being electrically connected to a corresponding one of the first plurality of electrical cables, the electrical conductive segments being electrically insulated from each other;
and
a plurality of brush assemblies fixedly mounted to the second one of the members, each one of the brush assemblies being electrically connected to the plurality of segments in a corresponding one of the sectors while the brush assembly and disk-shaped slip ring plate rotate with respect to each other about the axis, such axis being common with the center of the concentric circular shaped conductive segments.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.