I'm finishing up the flippers on my Flash project and found that someone previously had cut off the leaves from the doubled up switch on the right flipper that activates the upper flipper, and just soldered the wires to the lugs on the lower flipper's coil. I haven't been able to find any documentation on it, but from pictures it looks like the secondary switch has the upper flipper's ground on one side, and the other side is just connected to the lower flipper's EOS so as the lower EOS opens the upper coil gets grounded. Is that right?

If so, what is the point of having the secondary switch, and not just wiring the upper flipper in parallel with the lower?

Bump

If anyone has a clear photo of the wiring for the lower right flipper EOS switch stack that would also be nice so I can know for sure what it is supposed to look like

Thanks for the response

I'm trying to figure out what the wiring looks like on the lower right flipper, with the doubled up switch on the EOS that activates the upper right flipper. I think the pics are upper flipper?

Thanks guys, I see now how it is wired. Couldn't find that in the manual anywhere.

I'm still wondering though, why it is wired like this. Essentially the upper flipper coil fires once the lower flipper coil has switched over to low power. Would wiring the upper coil straight to the lower coil cause some problem? I have to assume Williams would not unnecessarily use extra parts but I can't figure why it would be an issue.

Yeah I understand when the upper and lower flippers are independently controllable with dual switches at the flipper button, but this one is essentially just a tiny time delay.

I agree that the only thing I could speculate was to not have both high-power coils activated at the same time for power concerns, but even then it doesn't hurt anything to hit the left and right flippers at the same time, or for example in a four-flipper System 7 to hit them both quickly to have all four flippers flipping at the same time.

What about on machines like Contact or Alien Poker or Laser Cue that have multiple flippers down at the bottom? Can anyone chip in and say if they are wired like this?

EDIT: I see Contact has double switches at the flipper buttons, but can't tell for Alien Poker or Laser Cue.

This is what I am trying to figure out. Why not? Too much current through the flipper button switch/wiring?

Alright. So I measure about 25 ohms across the whole coil and about 2.5 ohms across just the strong side. So figure they are running at 25v so 10A each for pull-in and 1A for holding? That doesn't seem to make any sense though since the flipper fuse is a 10A fast blow, wouldn't the pull-in coils have to draw less than 5A each to be able to hit both flippers at the same time without blowing the fuse?

At any rate I guess that is all academic. I was hoping that maybe I could get away with not replacing the secondary switch that had been cut off since at least presumably the machine worked the way it was wired up when I got it but I guess I should fix it right.

Ah, neat chart.

So I guess even though the calculated current for the high power side is like 22A, it doesn't run for long enough to actually get that high? I am pretty out of my element here looking at physical behavior over time.

My question would be, if you overfused the flippers to 15A and ran the third flipper in parallel instead of with the extra switch, what would blow up and why? Presumably the power supply can handle it since the same supply is used in games that are fused at 15A, so all that would really leave would be the cabinet button switch and the wiring to and from.

Well, my main goal is to be lazy / not have to order a switch and pay 8 bucks for shipping on a 3 dollar part, so I guess I'll just go with the factory setup and deal with it

Thanks for the thoughts

I ended up filing down and reusing one of the old EOS switches, drilled a hole in it and put a screw through with an acorn nut on it as a spacer.

IMG_20140109_185952_805.jpg