If the data sheet had simply stated: "Maximum switch output current is 4 mA" there would not have been any question. It is a case of a nebulous description. No telling how many times it was translated from the original language.

 

OK, and THANK YOU to Tony.
If the TS had located that link there would be no questions remaining that I can see.

I saw it in the very first post , the OP gave the part No , a link easily found with a search??

 

I looked at the picture of the tag, it certainly gave me the impression that 4 mA was the current drawn by the encoder. Thus I stand by my assertion that I made in post #21. If it had been stated correctly there would have been no confusion.

Certainly it is true that I am quite picky about using non-ambiguous and correct statements. That comes from 15 years of writing "sales letters" that are functionally a contract description of what a customer does get and does not get for their money. So words can be worth thousands of dollars in those documents. And the motivation to have things be correct has not faded much in the past few years. But really, it is just a more technical version of: "Say what you mean, and Mean what you say," which used to be repeated in jest, it seems.