I put a question mark at the end of my statement a bit facetiously. It was more of a statement. It’s a great feeling to shoot that marvel ramp. Ive had some weird rejects every now and then and a ball even went flying off it, but played for some time and never had a flipper fade issue. Hope that’s not an issue.

I have not experienced this on mine. Anyone else?

Karl at IE for sure:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/773906167?t=02h03m07s

Yup I saw this too...
This is why I bought the flipper coil fans from PinMonk. I don’t want to have to worry about flipper fade on my machine.

While I was watching it I was thinking that AIQ is going to sell a bunch of those kits. On most games you don’t have such an important shot that needs full power.

Are you seriously telling Karl DeAngelo to play better?

2 people who own it have just told you they don’t see the problem dude, but you know... I guess you saw it on a stream, so there it is.

Flipper fade is real and it’s a steep ramp. I appreciate your experience but that doesn’t mean someone else is wrong. I also will believe Karl if he says he can’t make it with fade. I didn’t just watch him, he said that all by himself.

I'd like to know what his temps were at that point. He was likely around 145-150F to have enough fade he couldn't make a direct shot. I only tested through 60 minutes on Avengers and got to 135F and it seemed pretty stable around there, not moving much for the last 5 minutes. But he's playing more than an hour beyond that so maybe the additional late-game activity breaks the game out of the 135F range it was in at the end of my test 60 minutes in.

At least there's a solution for people seeing this on Avengers.

Your work is always meticulous man. I’m always interested in what you’re cooking up and have definitely been a repeated customer.

I have almost beaten Karl Deangelo twice in tournament play. I came in second and third when he beat me. It was kind of like being the Utah Jazz against Jordan and the Bulls. So yeah, if Karl DeAngelo says there is flipper fade, then there is flipper fade. Streaming has nothing to do with it.

Not sure what's going on with "flipper fade" but it's a real thing with Stranger Things.

I hooked up those coil fans and it makes a BIG difference on hitting the DEMO consistently.

Seeing Virelands numbers on that pin in particular have me really curious what that feels like. If you’ve ever owned a LotR then you know it’s a real thing after playing an hour long game and trying to make the ring shot.

I said, rather simply, I have not seen flipper fade (leading to not being able to hit the Captain Marvel ramp) and nothing about anyone being a decent player or not.

Maybe that's why i got rid of my LotrLE? . I don't recall but it's so necessary on STH to hit that DEMO shot right that it's a must have mod.

It might have been length of continuous play. Avengers is a slow burn heating up the coils compared to Stranger Things. In my tests it just made it to 135F after an hour of continuous play which would just result in missed and bricked shots but not ramp rollbacks. That twitch stream was over TWO hours of continuous play before he started seeing ramp reject coil fade, which suggests to me he was over 145 degrees where that happens on backhands, probably more like 150+ because he was having fade on direct shots.

All this tells me is I need to do at least one more Avengers AIQ test that's at least 2 hours long instead of the usual hour. If I verify the temps I suspect from that stream, I'll move the game from mild to moderate coil fade ranking.

The point was you questioned whether a top player was experiencing flipper fade or just not hitting the shot properly. I was just vouching for the guy. Of people who could differentiate between flipper fade and not hitting a shot cleanly, Karl is definitely one of them.

I was questioning whether someone watching a stream of someone else playing AIQ and experiencing this was as valid as me playing it for hours and not experiencing it.

Not sure what else I can say about this.

Play for 2 hours 15 minutes straight without stopping and try it.

If non-stop means not stopping every hour or so for 5-10 minute get-another-beer or smoke breaks, I haven’t played it for more than an hour; however, I have played it for 4 hours or more including these ‘mandatory’ breaks.

I'm convinced I don't want to risk it. Link to the cooling fans?..thx

( been making the marvel ramp shot pretty consistently, but only played the game for a couple hours at a time, taking breaks)

Here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/market/shops/1170-pin-monk/04203-tibetan-breeze-flipper-coil-cooling-kit

Or here:
https://pinmonk.com/collections/avengers-infinity-quest

I've had a handful of times now where I played for 45-60 minutes and noticed the right and left ramp shots get weaker. At that point they were still playable but definitely a bit weaker. Marvel ramp was still makeable for me though. First I'd notice it on the left ramp from the right flipper, but then both the left and right ramp from the left flipper get noticeably weaker also.

Twice today I played AIQ beyond 60 minutes to check it out past the point where I notice the fade. Both times when I was beyond a hour of play I got a couple multiballs and the flippers got weak to the point where the right and left ramp were very much more affected. Balls started having a tough time making it up the left ramp and then started coming up short to the point where it was time to take a break and play JP2 for awhile to let it cool down. After both those sessions I waited about an hour or two and then the shots were stronger again for another 45 minutes to an hour.

I've even lowered pitch on AIQ back down to about 6.5/6.6 from where I liked it up at 6.8/6.9 in order to lengthen the time it takes before noticing the fade. For me, the Marvel ramp seems to stay makeable although it gets to a point where the ball does start to lose a bit of speed through it. But I can still make solid shots to it well after noticing fade starting on the other ramps. I'll be in for AIQ fan cooling kits when they're ready.

Yeah, I haven't done the temp tests with breaks, but depending on ambient room temp, 10 minutes of break would be enough to cut 20-30 degrees off the coil temps, meaning it would likely take another 45-60 minutes on Avengers to get back up since it's a relatively slow machine for temp increase from the tests I've already done.

With these reports of actual fade (not just the very subtle fade effects you see at 130-135F) for longplays well over an hour, I pretty much will have to do at least one more testing round on Avengers with like 90 minutes to 2 hours of uninterrupted play instead of my usual 60. Based on what I've seen on the live feeds, I expect to see temps in the 150+ range after 2 hours and will probably have to move the game to the moderate ranking for flipper coil fade.

This time of year I keep my house at 66 degrees.

Karl hit the ramp fairly easily after he complained of flipper fade. He was in a mode where he needed to hit it. In other streams, he also complained the flippers were too strong, and dialed them back, so who knows what his settings are.

I without question have flipper fade after long streams/sessions on the game. The right orbit/ramp becomes much more difficult and needs a more accurate shot to be made, the Marvel ramp becomes less consistent, and the center ramp cannot be made as easily on the fly. None of the shots are impossible to make with what fade there is, they just become more difficult/occasionally frustrating.

The only flipper I dialed back was the upper flipper as I get airballs off of the gauntlet ramp.

Yeah, then you're losing at LEAST 20 or 30 degrees off coil temps with a 10 minute break with a room temperature that chilled.

So with all the flipper fade talk, do those flipper fans eliminate the fade?

LOTR has the problem with flipper coils overheating as well, and a different coil is the cure there. I wonder if a more powerful coil that is turned down in the settings would be a possibility for AIQ? Looking at the manual it shows a 090-5032-ND coil, anyone know how it crossreferences in strength with other Stern coils?

Not sure, but Im a fan of getting faded...

Sounds like they work though..

Stronger coil is not a fix, it's a kludge. The problem with just overpowering the problem is, in the beginning the coil is much stronger, and a stronger coil is more prone to break things and cause airballs just so when it's faded it behaves as the coil it's replacing did before it heated up and faded. Better to treat the problem and not the symptom.

100% fixes the problem. In my temp testing you don't get the barest hint of fade until you get in the neighborhood of 130F. The flipper coil cooling kits keep the flipper coils below 110F, and often around 100F, depending on the machine. Nowhere near the whiff of fade territory.

What about the flipper coil strength setting in the Adjustments that are now available? What I'm saying is install the stronger coil, then turn it down in power in the settings. Using a stronger coil and hitting it will less power from the driver board so that it equals the strength of the stock coil should cause the stronger coil to run less hot as the stock coil as it is receiving less power.

Yes, where there are no Adjustments for flipper coil strength a stronger coil will overpower the playfield and break things, however with the adjustable flipper coil menu adjustment it should work.

Sounds great, but it will still fade and you'll have less power being sent when it does, so back to square one. UNLESS you want to open the machine and change the setting for the big coil mid-game to make it more powerful once fade sets in, but that's a losing long game - the heat will eventually win.

It shouldn’t fade as less current being sent to the coil means less heat is being produced and needing to be dissipated, which means it’s not overheating. If it’s not overheating it’s not fading.

It may take some trial and error to find the right combo of coil and coil strength setting, but once it has been figured out it will work. They do the same thing at Stern when they are engineering a game to determine the right coil and coil settings for a particular game, it just turns out that this time they may have missed it.

But it does. I put a LOTR coil in stranger things and it still faded.

Nothing fixed the fade issue except for PinMonk ’s fans.

What testing was done? Some objective measure of how flipper power is related to coil temperature would go a long way in these arguments.

Interesting, did you adjust the flipper strength down in the adjustments to compensate for the stronger coil?

That makes me wonder if the quality of the power sent to the coils is suspect, as a dirty signal with too many harmonics can also produce too much heat in the coils. It could be that Stern is adjusting the flipper strength via PWM instead of actually lowering the current output, which could dirty up the power. Need to put an oscilloscope on it to see. If that is the case then there really may be no other way than solving it via active cooling. Really need to pick up a new scope.....

Yeah. Max is 255. I lowered to 240 because it was too strong. After 30-45 mins I had to bump to 245-250 to compensate for the fade. But on a cold coil, that strength is too much. With the fans I can leave it at 240 and forget it.

Fair enough, never a doubt that cooling does help, but ideally with a clean signal a stronger coil with lower current should as well. I've just ordered a cheapo handheld scope on Amazon, sold my big tube scope 15 years ago when I got out of the hobby. Got me curious now to check things out once my AIQ arrives.

twenty84

Didn’t you do some testing with a scope on Stranger Things?

I did. Even streamed it with a real time view of an oscilloscope and thermocouple on the coil. The coil gets warm for sure and the resistance in the coil goes up when it gets warm but just a couple ohms. I looked at the pulse to the coil and it was always about 37 ms independent of the coil temperature. The voltage across the coil also didn't change over time. At the time I was doing it I figured I would see the time the coil was energized getting longer as the coil took longer to get to the limit switch but this never happened. Thus, I was never actually able to quantify any weakness over time. In hindsight maybe limit switch isn't used for changing the pulse duration like it is on some older games.

Like others I have felt on occasion that the coil got weaker with time. I felt this was especially the case with the TK lock on NST. I have not noticed the effect on other new Sterns but I know others believe it is there. I don't have an issue with my NST anymore after doing a number of fixes and I actually had to turn the powder down it get it to work properly.

I think the key would be trigger off the coil then use a second channel of the oscilloscope to monitor an accelerometer on the flipper or the end of range switch to see if the performance changes over time. Maybe I'll do this at some point, I'm just not as motivated at the moment because I feel like I'm not experiencing any issue.

I watched that video. I saw him get rejects 3 times in a row and then he talked about flipper fade. Then next ball he hit it successfully 2 times in a row, without rejects. This is the same thing thats happening to me! Its frustrating, especially when it happens in soul gem mode

Here is a great explanation about how 1 ohm makes a huge difference for flippers.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cooling-flipper-coils-by-aluminium-heat-sinks-or-pc-fans#post-2604942

That analysis deals mostly with the steady state or in pinball terms the holding power after the flipper is up. The magnetic field is proportion to the current and in the steady state (DC) there is no inductive reactance so I = V/R so if the coil resistance goes up by 30% then you have a big drop in current. The power that is relevant for making shots is right after the voltage step where the inductive reactance of the coil (inductor) is likely to be large relative to the resistance due to the changing magnetic field in the coil. The relative size of the inductive reactive relative to the electrical resistance depends on the inductance of the coil used, which I haven't measured but I would guess is relatively large.

My whole point of this is that I think it would be useful to measure what is actually happening rather than just say someone missed a couple shots because the coils are getting hot.