The linear rotary potentiometer is made up of a resistance body and a rotating system with sliding contacts. Resistors are formed by winding resistance wires such as constantan, manganese copper or nickel-chromium alloy on insulating brackets into rings or other shapes.
The linear rotary potentiometer has the following characteristics:
1. The linear rotary potentiometer has good heat resistance and can withstand large power.
2. The success rate potentiometer can be made. The rated power is generally 0.25 - 5W.
3. Under the same power condition, the volume of the wirewound potentiometer is smaller than that of the non line wound potentiometer.
4. The resistance body of wire-wound potentiometer is made of metal resistance wires, which have regular crystal structure, so its noise is low.
High precision, and can be made into precision wire wound potentiometers.
5. The distribution parameters are large and are not suitable for high frequency circuits.
6. The resistance wire of the resistor is wound on the insulating bracket one turn at a time. When the sliding contact slides from one resistance of the resistor wire to another turn, the resistance changes into a ladder, so the resolving power of the wire-wound potentiometer is low.
8. The range of resistance is narrow, generally not more than hundreds of thousands of ohms.
According to the structure and characteristics of wire-wound potentiometers, wire-wound potentiometers can be made into precision potentiometers, power potentiometers, multi-loop potentiometers, fine-tuning potentiometers and general wire-wound potentiometers. Wire-wound potentiometers are generally used in high-precision or high-power circuits.

What is the difference between the wire wound potentiometer and the carbon film potentiometer?

Wire-wound potentiometers are wired around the skeleton, then fixed in the potentiometer shell, and then contact the resistance wire with sliding contacts to obtain variable resistance value; while carbon film potentiometers are coated on a substrate, then sliding contacts lead out its adjustable end. They have different dielectric resistances, one is that the wire with high resistivity is wound in a circle, the other is that the carbon paste is printed on the substrate.
The biggest difference between the two is that the power of the wire-wound potentiometer is much greater than that of the carbon film potentiometer, which can be made into potentiometers with different power according to the needs of the former.

Characteristics and usage of rotary encoder potentiometer
The wire wound potentiometer is wound around the annular framework with resistive wires. It is characterized by small resistance range and high power.
1. The composing of the wire wound potentiometer is composed of a resistance wire coil wound on the skeleton, a sliding arm moving along the potentiometer and a brush on it. The skeleton section should be equal everywhere, and it is made of the material and the resistance wire with uniform cross-section.
2. rotary encoder potentiometer has the advantages of high precision, good stability, small temperature coefficient, reliable contact, high temperature resistance and strong power load capacity.
The disadvantages of rotary encoder potentiometer are that the resistance range is not wide enough, the high-frequency performance is poor, the resolution is not high, and the wire-wound potentiometers with high resistance value are easy to break, large in volume and high in price.