Ron Flemming & his morse code keyer machine...

We had such an exciting visit today from our lovely customer , Mr Ron Flemming.  He's been visiting us recently (to get bearings to repairs his grandchildren's scooters) & on his last visit Ron mentioned a prize winning project he'd created, using our bearings. 

Prize winner (& awesome customer) Ron Flemming, pictured with some of his trophies 

We always love seeing what our inventive customers use our bearings for, so we were a bit cheeky & asked if he'd be able to send us a picture of the morse-code keying machine that he'd painstakingly built by hand in his workshop.  

You can imagine our delight then, when he turned up with this today:

"Hi, As promised  I have attached  some photos of a morse code keyer shown in various stages of construction,  that I built  using your small bearings SR144ZZ.

I am a licenced Radio Amateur with the call sign of "G0 BNC".

The morse keyer was built using scrap materials, plus your Bearings. The keyer is completely  my own design, and  can be used as 3 separate types of keyers.  As far as I am aware there is not a keyer available commercially that can do this. 

Materials used are:

• Base: oak over 50 years in my possession...

• Alloy Arms: scrap window frame,   

Finger Keys and Front Arm:  are from a used electronic printed circuit board,  Transmitting Contacts: cut from a electrical relay, then soldered onto the end of brass bolts,   

• Key Adjusters:  brass screws, brass screw cup washers, compression springs. 

• The Electronics and Batteries are cut into the base, and Speaker is under the arms.

• Plus your SR144ZZ bearings that 2 top ones can be seen with  1/8”brass brazing rod centre pivot pins with brass screw cups on the tops.

  

With this I won the 2012 annual construction  contest. The entries normally have only a few votes separating the first, second, third places, but one of the adjudicators advised me I received well over 50% of the votes. To make it better still, an ex military  operator advised me it`s as good as his expensive keys, and another friend paid over £1000  for his, and the difference is hardly noticeable. One of the reasons is because of the smooth operation of the bearings. One problem I found was because they are so small and smooth, I lost a few between the garage and house (they rolled so well)!

There are a few pics of the cup/trophy to keep, and the annual trophy that is kept for one year with a tag fitted with previous  winners details. (also in pic is the annual new years day direction finding trophy which I won, then  the annual construction contest in February. The main  trophy was donated by the family of G2HIF  who was one of the leading pioneer designers of radar detection systems.

Thank you for your excellent and knowledgeable  friendly service.  Kind Regards,  Ron Flemming."

 Well, Ron - what can we say, apart from thank you, thank you, thank you!  

It is such a delight to see our bearings in use & especially so when they have been used in such a unique way. Ron Flemming is truly a home-build star & obviously a force to be reckoned with in the world of engineering.