We are building an electrospinning system and we have tested the fiber produced and we found that we have reached nano-scale. Now, we want to optimize this system by installing a drum with motor to obtain best distribution of the fiber and we can not connect the negative charge to the rotating drum.
I am not completely sure I understand what you are doing, but if I do understand, I think you could adapt an electric motor commutator to conduct the charge to the rotating device. There also are sliding contactors for doing similar things. Finally, you could inductively couple a voltage to the device, in which case there would not need to be any direct contact.
Larry
Eslam,
Slip rings are the devices that you seek. The main problem is that any (cheap) commercial device will have its housing rather close to the track - and 10kV may well arc over.
So one solution is to build your own.
Brass on steel is quite a good combination.
http://www.carlpisaturo.com/_ElNo_SLIP.html
If you have access to a lathe, and have a little ability with hand tools and so on, I think that this would be the fastest solution.
Of course, in the bad old days, a little bowl of mercury would be an ideal 'fluid' connector that an annular contact would be 'bathed'.
:)
Slip rings are the 'standard approach'. Though - as already mentioned - you may require some custome make.
Of the same importance: you'll have to mount the drum fully isolated, the isolation also capable to withstand your highest operation voltage. To begin with, I'd suggest to isolate the motor from the drum by some plastic clutch - as it might be quite difficult to achieve suffucient isolation within the motor itself.
An afterthought: if your drum has metal ball bearings, you might think about omitting the slip ring - relying on conduction via the bearings. Such setups work for quite some time, but continuously degrade the bearings. On the long term, this does not work out.
Regards
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