(Topic ID: 306545)

Best Place To Buy Capacitors and Rebuild Kits

By The_Great_Man

2 years ago



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  • 6 posts
  • 6 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 2 years ago by barakandl
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    #1 2 years ago

    I have been working on pinball machines for a couple years and I am just starting to get into rebuilding the "Boards". There are so many places to buy Capacitors and Rebuild Kits. Does anyone have a great place that I can get all these things at a decent price and who will ship quickly. So many places and different prices - I do not want to reinvent the wheel and spend hours going thru all the different shops....I am sure someone has already spent the time and has the answers.

    Thank you.

    #2 2 years ago

    Great Plains Electronics, Big Daddy, or build your own from Mouser or DigiKey, etc.

    #3 2 years ago

    I've bought parts from all of the above.

    If you have a specific game you're working on and don't want to spend forever gathering part numbers and shopping, get a kit from Big Daddy.

    If you plan on working on more boards in the future, make bulk purchases from Ed at Great Plains of the common components. Get a bunch of .100 and .156 pins and connectors, caps and bridge rectifiers, fuse clips, transistors, diodes,etc. Depends on what era games you like.

    I've gotten into early SS games the last couple years so I have a handful of components common to those board sets so I can upgrade them without having to place little orders when a game pops up. For $50 - $75 you can get a good assortment that will last a while. Same w the other consumables like coil sleeves, rubber rings, etc - next time you order from Pinball life get extra, many are common to hundreds of different games.

    #4 2 years ago

    Great Plains Electronics is my go to. He has most anything you need. He is geared towards the pinball hobby. Best of all, he is very reasonable on shipping costs.

    #5 2 years ago

    GPE is by far the best place for "kits" but is often out of stock or closed. Big Daddy is comparable. Be aware that each supplier has their specialties: GPE may carry things Big Daddy does not, and vice versa. You'll have to get used to cross-shopping and comparing as your incidental needs arise.

    And yes, no shame that despite such effort you'll inevitably someday have to bite the bullet and order one or two (out of 30) random stupid components from Mouser or Digikey or Newark from time to time. It's more likely now than it used to be given exploding demand and supply chain issues. Whenever I have to relent those one-offs from other places, I always try to padd other things like tools, agc fuse breakers, other components, etc to lessen the shipping sting.

    #6 2 years ago

    If you do this work often just stock the individual parts. For sound boards with a TDA2003 amp you will notice there some common values on each design. 1, 10, 100, 470, 1000, 4700, 12000, 15000uF @ 25v are some general values often found in pinball boards. High Voltage sections often use 100uF 200v or 160uF 350v.

    I have been buying NIC capacitors from Arrow lately. I got some great bulk priced deals from them on smallish quantities. Keep an eye on parts that are low in stock and they will often price a small amount of parts at their top quantity price break just to clear a SKU out of their warehouse.

    https://www.arrow.com/en/products/nre-hl471m35v12.5x16f/nic-components

    All good Capacitors are made in Japan, right? "Illinois Capacitor" have a China tariff applied to them now.

    Axial caps are getting hard to find. Should have stocked up when Nichicon announced they where discontinuing them.

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