Do you? Because you seem to think they don't require any space to fit.
Quoted from PinMonk:I remotely helped another new owner spend over an hour adjusting it until it worked yesterday.
So it works, does it? This seems more like an assembly issue (ie. prepping parts during assembly) than a design issue, since it WORKS.
Quoted from PinMonk:And even if there's no room for an opto, there are other solutions like proximity sensors.
JJP doesn't currently have proximity sensors as part of their kit, so it would take time and effort to: find them, test them, design circuits to read them, program software to read them, design mechs to hold them, etc.
Or, you could put a standard switch there.
Quoted from PinMonk:Funny, that's what Jack did when I asked about the weird placement in person. Literally shrugged and said Pat wanted it there
Sounds smart of Jack to me, since he's not a pinball designer and has no hardware design experience, to defer to the guy with 30 years of experience.
So a custom part with custom wiring is cheaper than the bog-standard door the entire industry uses and is produced in the millions? Yeah I'm sure it's only $3 difference when they order them in batches of 1,000.
The thing is, you're looking at one part - a single switch - in isolation when the design of a game is an exercise in compromise. Change one part, suddenly five others need to move, then you need to customize a standard part to make it fit, and your BOM goes up. Then those changes need to be tested, or software changed, etc. A pinball machine has many thousands of parts all working together, especially something as packed as DI, and you need to consider the whole machine when changing stuff.
Then there's cost factors. What are you going to give up to afford that thing you want? Optos are more expensive than switches.
It's really frustrating that you, someone who has never even built a single game, are questioning the design decisions of someone who created the best selling game of all time. It's not a blanket license that everything he does is gold, but it's a pretty good indicator he might be making more informed decisions than you, who has zero years experience.