Miniature Potentiometers

[Freak]

Hi,

Just got a kit, no assembly instrucitons, which contains a rotary carbon track potentiometer with printed circuit board mounting terminals. It has 3 pins which I presume one is an input and the other is the output and the third is??? Am I completely off track here?? Which is which? It is for adjusting the strength of an RGB, as in I have 3 pot's one for each of the R G & B.

Cheers

 

[laroche73]

pots

Two of the pins are the outer terminals of the pot, the remaining pin is the tap. With a multi-meter, you can easily determine which terminal is which. On the inexpensive single turn rotary types, you can often identify the terminals from inspection. In some circuits, the tap is connected to one of the end terminals to make a 2-terminal variable resistance.