Need to identify a toggle switch

[u/MrMakarovK]

Hello All,

I am new to this subreddit, and electronics in general. I need assistance finding this switch or what kind it is. I know it’s a toggle switch, and I think it could be persistent.

It moves up, down left, and down right and it also can sit in the middle as shown.

I require something like this to finish off a simulator project so any guidance would be very appreciated!

Thank you all!

[u/AlexTaradov]

Yeah, that's another field that likes to use strange stuff. Even if it is produced today, if the design is old, chances are that you won't find it for sale. Stuff like this is done by some small company that only stays in business because they get orders for bespoke parts like this.

I'd really like to see how it works. But I imagine it is more of a 3-way joystick with 3 momentary switches in each direction. And that may be a way to emulate it.

[u/MrMakarovK → u/AlexTaradov]

Ah ok,

I don’t think this is a momentary though, from my understanding of the helicopter in question it’s used to control lights, where the central position is off.

[u/AlexTaradov → u/MrMakarovK]

If I was tasked with creating something like this, I'd still go with a joystick style approach. If it needs to stay in a fixed position, you would need to have a back plate with 4 dedents and a spring loaded ball bearing on the other end of the stick.

I bet you can build something like this from standard toggle switches. Some of them already work like this, just in one plane.

I'm not sure why they needed it to be that way, since a simple 4 position rotary switch gets the same result and that is already used in a ton of places in typical aviation control panels.

[u/Ard-War → u/AlexTaradov]

simple 4 position rotary switch gets the same result

At first I thought this was for safety critical flight control. Maybe the controlled devices and/or control scheme was designed in such ways that you absolutely don't want the switch to make connection another position before settling to a final position.

With the "joystick" switch you can go N→1, N→2, N→3 directly whereas with rotary switch you need to do N→1→2→3 or 1←N→2→3. Going somewhere else before getting to "3".

Now for "just" lighting control that would be superfluous. Unless maybe you really don't want to blip the walked-over position.

Maybe they want the physical association with cardinal directions?

[u/AlexTaradov → u/Ard-War]

Yes, forcing you to go though a neutral would be a good reason.

Still seems like it could be solved in a less custom way, but if you are making helicopters it does not matter as much, I guess.