mounting pots (mechanically)

[saxtim]

This is probably a stupid question, but it's something I've been wondering about, as I think I've been doing this wrong  for a while now.  Every pot that I've bought has a little tag on one side, paralell to the shaft, that protrudes from the body.  It looks something like this if you're not sure what I'm talking about (this diagram may or may not come out looking right when I post it):  

---------- tag
-----|(bolt)        (nut/washer)
-----||||------------||--------------  shaft
-----|
-----

(side views, left hand side is the body of the pot)

This tag is longer/petrudes further than the nut on the shaft - which means it's impossible to actually get the pot flush with a surface as the tag gets in the way.  What'd the purpose of this tag and is there a specific way you're supposed to mount these? For some time now I've just been snipping these tags off with some cutters - but I'm sure the manufacturer didn't intend it to be done that way!

tim

[Peter Snowberg]

Those tags are to stop the pot from rotating in the hole. If you're making 10,000 of a product and you have a chassis with a faceplate mounted over that, it's common to have the alignment tab fit a hole in the chassis, which the face plate then hides. If the nut comes loose, the leads don't have to take any mechanical stress that way.

For DIY stuff, keep doing what you're doing and just trim them off.

Take care,
-Peter

[sfr]

Once, (when I was able to get my hands on a drill press) I made the extra holes for those little tabs.  It was nice, but honestly, I didn't really notice a difference, from things I'd done w/o the holes - I tend to have more problems with loose jacks than pots.   It certainly wasn't worth the trouble given the number of pots in the thing.  I'm fairly accurate with my hole drilling, but w/o a press I wouldn't even bother - you have to be pretty dead on with lining things up for them to be useful.  I just snap off with the pliers on my Leatherman.

[saxtim]

yep, that makes perfect sense.  I'll just keep clipping them off!

thanks guys

tim

[petemoore]

With pliers.
 At some point you must trust what's purported to be the first machine: the wedge.
 Each and every pot has a trusty wedge [the nut and threaded shaft tube], I've not been let down even once when I trusted the wedge.
 Tighted that little wedge up, and it should never come loose.
 When you're mass preducing, you put the tab holes in your faceplate...ya never know if the wedge will be preperly tightened.
 Screw and nut=a wedge.
 My mechanic buddy routinely overtightened nuts and bolts, stripping them way more that was necessary, or buggering the shoulders of the nut.
 that's where all this "At some point you must trust the wedge" stuff came from.
 Just a littel rotational torque on the nut produces exponentially  large 'tightening' pressures ... You would be surprized the percentage of 'seasoned' mechanics fail to understand this..."King Kongs" wrench must tightened this one...lol.