Have you ever wondered what allows Dynapac Rotators to rotate without wires getting twisted or tangled? The answer is collector rings!
What is a collector ring? A collector ring is a small, cylindrical device with several metal rings, called ‘slip rings’, at regular intervals along its length. These slip rings are just as conductive as standard copper wire, but don’t have any parts that can twist or tangle. When the rotator unit is powered on the unit remains stationary while the collector ring rotates alongside the turntable and provides power to the rotating display.
At Dynapac there are two varieties of collector ring; standard power and video signal. Standard power collector rings are used to transfer electricity to a standard rotating outlet, which then can be used to power lights, speakers and movement. Video signal collector rings transfer high quality video signal to rotating screens.
At this time Dynapac is pleased to announced our newly remodeled, barrel style standard collector rings, which are in all Dyanapc rotators as of July 1, 2016. New barrel style collector rings come standard with up to 12 power wires, each wire rated to 15 or 30 amps each and collector rings with higher amperage or more wires can be built if needed. This is a 33% power increase over our old 9 ring standard collector rings. Dynapac is able to provide this increase in power by decreasing the size of the ring itself, fitting more rings into the same space. As well as being more compact, our new standard power collector rings are more heavily insulated; this provides more protection for anyone working on or around the rotator and protects the collector ring itself from debris.
Rotating outdoor signs equipped with standard power collector rings:
Video signal collector rings use a very high quality slip ring system to transfer video signal and data. Our standard video signal collector rings can transfer data over CAT5 Ethernet at a rate of 100 Megabit per second or 1 Gigabit per second, depending on the unit. Dynapac is also able to build custom video signal collector rings when called for, up to 4k video passthrough!