After seeing a few teardown of the types of fancy rotary switches used for precision decade boxes and voltage references I have been thinking of what makes for a 'good' switch for this type of application. Some things that come to mind are:
1) Solid detent into positon, i.e. feel of switch
2) Low contact resistance
3) Contact material
4) Self wiping contacts
5) Break before make/make before break
6) Contact arrangement/number of contacts
7) Multilevel possible
Style: thumbwheel or standard
I have a machine shop at my disposal so I thought it would be fun to try and design a switch from scratch. What is your idea of the ideal rotary switch for precision instrumentation? Any links to switches you lust over?