Micro switches are tiny little switches used mainly for automation of machines that needs to stopped or started automatically on it’s own. The most common place that one will find an a micro switch in action are at the auto gates and doors the we see swings open at shut at will. Other than these places micro switches are widely used in the manufacturing sector where they need to calibrate their machines to do certain job at certain times.
For description sake. we shall take the automated gates as a simple example. If you look carefully you will see a lever on the motor that pushes the gates open. Once the gates are fully opened, the lever gets in contact with a tiny button that is hardly visible to the eye. That is the button of the micro switch. The lever moving in tandem with the gates will be calibrated to press against the switch which will in turn “open” the electrical circuit, exactly the time the gates are fully opened.
When the gates are closed, the lever, again moving in tandem in the opposite way, will release it’s pressure on the micro switch’s button, closing the circuit again. Unlike other switches, the micro switch can be made to be “normally opened” or “normally closed” to suit different working environments.
Due to the versatility and the size of this switch, it has become a electrical engineer’s dream come true. It is can be applied to lots of uses especially on machines that needs to stop and run at close intervals. prices of these switches are also cheap and they are easy to come by.
