We have finally gotten in the Illuminated Flipper Bats ... these are made by Peter at B&T in Germany working with us. He has been selling them in Germany for a little white.

The Illuminated Flipper bats are made using modifed flipper bat tooling as well as special flipper shafts in that tooling which have small bores thru to snake a wires thru the shaft to a multi-color LED board mounted in each flipper bat.

Additionally, there is a remote control which you can change the pattern/color of the light. The flipper bats are a special transluscent soft white so as to diffuse the light emitted from the LEDs.

Its available here for anyone interested ...

http://www.planetarypinball.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=PPS-FLIPLIGHTUP-KIT&Store_Code=PP

From Peter this morning:

Hello Rick

Sorry the late reply, I just come back to Hamburg.

I dont know what he is talking about. I have not had 1 complaint that the bats break.
I will try to find the video that I made.

There are at least 6 different suppliers of 'those' type of flipper bats ... there is a different way to ask the question than to propose that there is something wrong when you do not know. Those illuminated bats have only been sold from Europe, so mainly in Europe, and we've not heard of any issues with them.

Oy.

rick

I will post what video's I can find, but it's pretty cool - it uses the little remote LED controllers for RGB leds, so you can change color as well as pattern, etc.

rick

Well, it's taken alot of engineering and pretty low volume, PCB's, RGB wiring, special flipper tooling, complicated to 'get right', and has taken a long time and cost alot of money to do ... I'm not sure why it's 'designed to wear out' ... that's not what we've seen - what exactly 'wears out' on a flipper bat?

The only bat I'm familiar with that had any issue was the lightning bolt bats of years ago (and completely resolved and only effected a small number of bats), which are not the 'same style' as the 3" bats.

I guess you could argue that pinballs are disposable and cosmetic as well.

Once again, I thought I was telling people about a product that they could choose (or not choose) to buy.

They are just standard 3" flipper bats - used on Sterns, JJP, WMS/BLY, etc ...

That's right nothing gets made anymore ... lol ... the sky is falling, the world is ending ... we've never been so busy.

Plenty in stock and more coming in all the time and much more on order than ever before ... took a year to move to Nevada, and you can always criticize, that is the easiest thing to do ...

i'm not sure exactly what your objective is. There are always parts that will be out of stock, that is the nature of this business. There are more parts than anyone can have, there are many parts we have that others do not, it is the way it is. We are ordering all the time, and parts are selling out all the time. I'm sure things would be much better if there is one large seller of parts with huge markups.

Here are the initial instructions I got from Peter, clearly we need a picture/word version, and would be great for anyone who has purchased them if they do a video on the install. But for now, this is what I have as well as a wiring diagram

When installing the flipper bats, please make sure that the wires comming out of the shaft are
laid in a big loose loop, no tension on the wire. Use Ty-Wraps to connect the wire to an existing Wire Harness.
Please double check the length of the screws that you use to fasten the boards, wouldnt be nice if they pop out the top of your playfield!

Look at the direction on the pins in the connects of the bat. They are now loose and have to be removed before installing the bat. Pull the wire out of the connector and observe the direction of the pin in the connector. If a pin is stuck, use the tooth pick. On the color marked side of the connector
Is a rectangular hole. Poke the tooth pick gently into the top side of the hole, there is a tiny metal sheet
That needs to be pushed down gently, at the same time pull the conector out gently by the wire.
The top side of the rectangular hole is always in the direction were the wires are comming out of the connector housing.

1. Remove the flipper bats, Nice oppertunity to re do the bushings.
2. I would advise to re-new the metal clamp and plunger to be on the save side.
3. Put the wires of the bats through the bushing and the metal braket clamming the shaft,
follow with the shaft, adjust the bats and fasten them.
4. The wires and connectors are marked with a color for each channel, RGB and Ground,
Put the wires back into the connector.
Check that the wires are tight by pulling them gently, if the pin didnt hook into the connector it will
be pulled out of the connector.
5. Plug the wires comming from the bats into the CPU board, it has 4 places to plug the bats, you may
take any place. Now you can find the best spot to place the CPU. Always make sure that the wire
comming from the bats are hanging in a wide loop, from the bat to the wire harness, secure the wire
with Ty-wraps to insure that the loop is secured. Then you can find the right position for the CPU
board. Fasten the CPU board, Make sure that the screws you are using have the right length.
6. Plug the wire connecting CPU and Sensor. The sensor board has a black diode on it. This black
diode can be placed under any insert, black diode faceing the insert. Fasten the sensor board, check
the length screws that you are using. The bats can be controlled through the light insert (Infra Red)
7. Now connect the power supply wire harness to the CPU, this wire can be soldered to any 6V ac
(General Illumination) lamp socket. Check for a near by Gen. Ill. Lamp, check the rout and lay the
wire harness, cut the wire at the hight of the solder spots on the lamp socket, make sure that the
wire is laying nicely, loose, not streched. Take of the tips of the wire isolation, apply solder metal,
also apply solder metal to your solder spots on the lamp socket, sometimes the old solder doesnt
flow nicly and is hard to heat up, applying some new solder metal helps the flowing. Then heat 1st
solder spot, once the solder is melted, hold the wire on the solder spot, remove your solder iron
and hold the wire firm a couple of seconds. Then repeat with the second wire.
8. Recheck all the wires, Tie them neatly into the existing wire harness and make sure that the wires
comming out of the shaft can hang through in a wide loop.
9. Switch your pin on. Aim with the remote control to the light insert were you mounted the sensors,
You can choose the color of the bats. You can also start confusion mode with letting the bats
Blink and change colors. Have fun.

Thanks for trusting my work. If you do have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
[email protected]

Illum-Flipper (resized).png

That's possible, it does require tooling changes to the tool, but I think it's a good idea and when I discuss with Peter I will see what his thoughts are.