Link does not work for me.

Me either

I guarantee figuring out the correct YT link is easier than making your own LEDs.

How long does it take you to make 1 led, would you say?

I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'd rather not spend my time custom making 150 LED bulbs for each game.

It might be a handy alternative for a specialty one-off bulb, though.

I wouldn't want to be doing half the wackadoodle things Pinsiders do with their time, but you never know.

I am too lazy and they are cheap enough, I would rather just buy them.

what third world country do you live in that this would be worth your time?

Functional — but not too pretty or practical...

Ha ha! Call me a Wacky Doodle then. I think this is a great idea and I would like to try it out. I've got thousands of old bayonet style lamps just sitting around doing nothing.

Yeah, not worth the time for most people, including me, but part of the fun of pinball restoration for me is making my own parts.

Wouldn't it be easier and a lot faster to solder the resistors to the lamp socket lugs? You would have to solder both LED leads, but that should be easy enough.

If you had 6V LEDs, could you put these in an EM without the resistors? And if you were using 6V LEDs instead of 3V LEDs, couldn’t you use a 750 Ohm resistor on early SS pins? I have a bag of those.

@JethroP, thanks for sharing!

tough crowd. Seems like a good idea to me.

If you are doing pinball restoration you have exactly what you need: original lamps. Just sayin'

I like your enthusiasm!! It's been along winter I could use some.

Thanks for the thread OP, nice job.

You've got a job waiting for you at PHoF! Tim Arnold's been looking for you!

This is awesome. I no longer feel like all the crap I do on my machines is a waste of time, thanks!

But seriously, my mom spends hours knitting/crocheting (don't even know what it is) slippers to sell for charity, I could see a retiree leisurely doing this...

I'm drawing the line on this one though... ha...

Are they easy to get in and out of the sockets ?

Awesome concept, but i'm going to go with Comets for the time being

i would bummed and/or pissed if i bought a machine and it turned out to be full of a bunch of home made hack bulbs.

Got some before and afters of a game done with these?

i didn't insult you. i merely questioned the practical utility of making one's own LEDs.

Fair enough OP - bit of background helps build a context. Thanks for sharing— if you have time on hand these could be methodical/therapeutical to build ..I could see that. Still young in my engineering career so more money than time but I can see the enjoyment of finding a cheap solution and saving $150 on a full game.

This is a good alternative for some older games that have fitment issues. Didn’t some guy start a thread bashing Comet for not fitting in his pin and blowing up a bunch of stuff? And then he methodically measured all of the LEDs available? This is for him
I appreciate the OP for showing some ingenuity and sharing it rather than trying to take old bulbs and flip them into the “perfect” LED and charging a premium.

That's really interesting. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

Time is money, how much to make me a thousand? I can supply’s the incandescent bulbs

Wouldn't these flicker like mad on any game with strobed lamps?

Hmmm?

Good job! Just a question... the GI is VAC, LEDs are in DC... no flickering?

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/advice-with-leds-strobe-effect-in-gi-application

I think he lives in Virginia.

I can appreciate The ingenuity, and the work that you are willing to put into making them, but as for me I am LAZY. LOL. I can't give you my opinion on retirement because I am not quite there yet. Hopefully when I am there I will have the get up and go to work on my machines. Its cool that you are enjoying what you do, and you were sharing some LED info with the pinball community.

Basically, this is what Tim Arnold was doing over ten years ago. He didn't even bother with the old bulbs. He jus soldered the LED's to the lamp sockets or wires. Added a bridge rectifier to make the AC into DC and put one resistor in series on his EM's.

Funny about the time wasting comments. Everything about pinball is a gigantic time waste. Constant trouble shooting, learning repair and restoration, finding games, trying to unload games. I totally enjoy it but it is a time killer from A-Z.

He stopped doing it because pre assembled leds are so cheap in bulk now. Especially if you buy direct from china.

You might not notice it now, but there is certainly strobing unless you have added a bridge rectifier. The way you are assembling them, they are polarized, so they only light for half of the AC wave.

Let's safely assume you value your time at zero dollars per hour (which is fine, you enjoy this as a hobby in retirement). The problem here is that you are inferring a 30 ratio of the cost of commercial bulbs to one of yours. So if your bulbs cost 5 cents, as you say, a similar commercial bulb is $1.50. That's no where remotely near true. In fact, having watched your video using straight LEDs out of a harbor freight lamp, the parts you are using are comparable to 1 LED bulbs that are available at COMET, for example, at $29 per 100, or roughly a 6 ratio.

I get it, and I'm not trying to dissuade you, but I LED games for customers all the time. The days of $200 or even $150 LED jobs are over (unless someone is overpaying for a premade "kit"). Even using the preferred SMDs over LEDs, I'm spending around $80 on an entire game (including backbox and GI), and if I need to use non-ghosting lamps in the inserts on certain titles, I'm barely over $100 in pure bulb costs.

No link. Tim is quite the recluse. Simply go to the Pinball Hall of Fame and find a machine open to observe it. I was watching him install this set up on machines I'm Different visits to both the original Hall and the current one.