Slip Ring

A rotating electrical connector that keeps power and signal flowing between a spinning part and a fixed one.

A slip ring is made of a conductive ring that turns with the shaft and a fixed brush that presses against it, sliding to keep contact as the ring spins. That sliding contact carries power, encoder signals, or bus data across the rotating interface. It solves a basic wiring problem: a joint that needs to spin continuously, all the way around, would otherwise wind its cables up and snap them. In robots, slip rings show up wherever a joint needs unlimited rotation — camera pan-tilt heads, turntables, and some waist or wrist joints. Arm joints with a limited rotation range more often route cables straight through a hollow shaft instead. Slip rings wear over time and can add contact noise, so high-speed signal lines need a slip ring model rated for that.

ExampleA security pan-tilt camera that can spin without limit relies on a slip ring to feed the camera power and send video back through its base.

Also called

Rotary Electrical Connector, Conductive Slip Ring

Related

Hollow-Shaft Cable Routing · Wire Harness · Joint Actuator Module · Revolute Joint · EtherCAT (Ethernet for Control Automation Technology)

Sources

Slip ring - Wikipedia