Amusement Technical is well on with the build of its first observation wheel. We’ve made hundreds of parts in our Machining Shop but this is a firm favourite – a slip ring.

The purpose of the slip ring is to carry the electrical supply from the static leg structure to the rotating wheel structure. The part had to be designed for ease of installation and maintenance.

 

Our in-house team designed a modular arrangement which is constructed from layers of overlapping segments with grooves to retain the copper rings.

The advantage of this solution is that it can be repeated to provide as many circuits as required, and individual segments can be replaced if damaged, rather than having to replace a whole layer or replace the whole unit.

The segments were manufactured on our CNC milling machine from billets of acetal.

“By using a block construction for the acetal dielectric spacers we are able to make much more efficient use of the material than would be the case with complete rings”, says Sean Brian, Director, Amusement Technical.