How can tanks fully rotate their turret and keep their electronics going?

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How do they supply the energy needed to run all the devices located in the turret if this one does a 360 degrees rotation?

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9 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s called a slip ring. They use a data bus and power so there aren’t a million rings trying to transfer information from each sensor or component individually. It’s the same way you have buttons and a horn on your steering wheel, which also rotates. Here’s an example.

[https://www.moog.com/products/slip-rings/aerospace-military-slip-rings/vehicular-slip-rings.html](https://www.moog.com/products/slip-rings/aerospace-military-slip-rings/vehicular-slip-rings.html)

Anonymous 0 Comments

They also use slip rings in RADAR assemblies to allow them to continuously rotate 360 degrees. Cleaning the slip rings is a maintenance item and replacing them is needed on occasion as the contacts wear down.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The same way the buttons on a modern passenger car steering wheel control the radio, dash ect.
A copper disc with contact points connecting buttons in the wheel with a computer. Instead of wires getting twisted in a circle. It’s a disc fixed to the vehicle and a disc attached to the wheel”turrent” in which no matter which position or how many times you spin it, the metal contacts conduct current

Anonymous 0 Comments

Same as how trains and trams get their power – with a brush on a moving track. In this case, the “track” is just a circle around the rotating center.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I remember recently watching a Tom Scott video about Slip Rings, I found this really informative and interesting.. perhaps you will too…

This is a similar way of working to tanks, but unlike most of the mechanical ones mentioned here this also has sewage and water pipes. So clever and fascinating.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A Computed Tomography system uses the same technology at a rotation rate of 4 per second and the same time delivering 200kW to the rotating part and receiving 20+ GBit / s data from it.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Related, turrets are not physically connected to the body of they tank, they just ‘Rest’ on it. When you see a tank that has been hit by a missile, the turret is generally a few feet away. They do weigh several tonnes on its own, so it’s not going to blow away in high winds, but its not held down by anything other than gravity.

Anonymous 0 Comments

A joke we had for new gunner recruits was „remember after 37 turns to the left the turret will fall off“

Anonymous 0 Comments

Look at this [house](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gisdyTBMNyQ)that rotates 360 degrees.