Two questions: should we wait for the tests to all be completed before placing an order? Also, do you offer discounts for ordering multiple kits?

I would need four kits…

About time someone made some affordable fans! Pinstadiums should be next!

Yea, these are going to sell light hotcakes.

How difficult is the instal? How long before you are completed with the testing on the games on the list?

I think I asked you in a different thread, but when will you get to Spooky games, particularly Rick and Morty?

Takes like 10 mins. I haven’t installed these, but seems to be the same setup as pinmonk and those are easy peasy.

I’ve homebrewed fans and 3D mounts myself for my pins as well as for some friends. Fans on coils has been done since the RGP days, it does help a lot of pins. Mechanical Install itself is simple, sometimes you have clearance variations from pin to pin depending on what is mounted near the flipper mech. Of course there is a bit of electrical work to get 12V to the fans.

I’ve actually made a setup specifically R&M for a friend. Been thinking of offering them up for sale myself if my project list wasn’t so long….

Just waiting for 2-fan kits for Spike 2 to be available on your site so I can order for EHoH.

Just installed the 2nd an flipper cooler kit on my EHOH today. Took about 10 mins to install from start to finish. Fans fit perfectly with existing screws. I used a few zip ties for a clean look and to keep the cords from moving parts.

Lots of extra wire so no need for to worry about pulling anything out when you lift the playfield.

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*yawn*

If a price cut of 40% doesn't "move the needle" then I don't know what does. Time will tell if there's any substantive difference in the way/filament you guys print, and frankly, that's the only thing that matters here. There was nothing technologically complicated about this idea, you just had the time and knowledge to make a 3d model of a bracket. The rest of the stuff in the kit is literal kiddy design. If the quality ends up being the same, and at half the price.........well....says something about the profit margin you've been enjoying, doesn't it. This has literally happened with just about every major mod that sold in any kind of bulk and was not technologically complicated (Eli Tron Ramps and the arcade mod stand out as " basically unreproducible").

Headphone coin door kits, speaker kits, EL lights, pop bumper plasma caps, splitter harnesses, LED bulbs....list goes on and on and on. Selling mods to the community shouldn't be a second (or first) job for anyone. This is a niche hobby, and it's never really going to generate the 15-20k in profits to make it worth patenting. This specific idea....might've actually cleared that bar, but again.....everyone wants the easy buck up front, not to do the legwork and take the risk on the front end of spending the money for a patent when it's not known if it will be popular or not, but you don't get the right to bitch later when someone else does the same thing. Are we going to argue if Stern and JJP should pay Pinstadium for "Expression Lighting"?

Be thankful this didn't happen much earlier. I got about 3 months to sell my cheap power splitter harnesses before PCB splitters came on the market, lol.

I've 3D printed some myself just to play around with, but have no desire to sell. I (retired) designed RF power stuff that always needed cooled, so sticking a fan on something that needs cooled is not exactly rocket science. On bigger designs, we used water cooling. Sometimes to cool, other times to keep a temperature constant (a temperature variation would affect the system calibration accuracy).

I've worked side-by-side with the thermal engineers for decades and we've thermocoupled the crap out of things to verify our expectations many dozens of times. One thing I haven't seen that would interest me the most is measuring the temperature deep inside the windings (easier said than done). If the core's thermal resistance to the outside world is crappy (i.e. no good thermal path for heat to follow), then the internal temperature could still be toasty, regardless of the surface temperature. Thermal resistance is just what it sounds like (same as electrical, but for thermal instead): High thermal resistance is essentially an insulator. Ideally, you want it low (i.e. the heat trapped in the middle can get out easily).

But I play so lousy it's a moot point if I tried to cool the coils or not.

I hope this didn't sound disparaging to the coil cooler guys, wasn't my intent. More about the dynamics surround cooling something hot.

Edit: Thinking about this more (and reading some articles), a better way to calculate the real coil temperature is to measure the resistance at room, exercise the coil, then remeasure the resistance and work the numbers backwards for internal coil temperature rise. Another option would be to measure current and voltage simultaneously on a scope (use a clamp on current probe for the scope) and figure resistance. Those results are the real numbers that determine how effective coil coolers are.

I made a cooler for the Spike 2 CPU board...

Not because of the CPU as most would think, but because of the backbox LEDs. They make the board (specifically the woofer chip) rather toasty. Took a FLIR of the PWB, and I was rather surprised at the temperatures.

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Installed the Flipper Coil Fans on RUSH LE. Had to unscrew the left side playfield support bar to have better access to screwing the Left Flipper Fan down. Right Flipper installed easy, 2nd Right Flipper Coil I removed a couple of zip ties to push a wire bundle more to the right of the fan. Used a few zip ties to clean up the wires. Very easy install, about 10 minutes total. Fans are very quiet.

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That is not something I have seen before! Nice work!

Great message to people willing to invest time and energy so others don't have to do it themselves... "Don't bother! Philosophically our hobby doesn't want anyone to be able to profit off our inability to do it all ourselves!"

Lame

When prices are high, the market finds a way.

*Crawls into a hole*

Really no other choice for me, considering the demand I've had, and I'm much happier for it, despite it still being stressful much of the time (my previous work was certainly more prestigious, but I was miserable).

Hopefully the community wants me to continue putting full time effort into it, and that pinball continues to be popular.

I can agree it doesn't offer much job security, and since hiring help that relies on me for their main income, the pressure is on to keep a job available and not produce a failure, which I've done before, and is a constant reminder of the level of work and creativity I need to put in.

Good meeting you at TPF btw.

Have you tried testing the difference between temps by just adding heat shrinks to the coils versus the fans?

No, what's lame is not acknowledging the situation and sticking your head in the sand like it's just going to go away.....all the while criticizing other people and offering zero solutions.

Yeah....when it comes to mods, the good thing about visual mods is that they can be done many different ways. I feel like things are a lot harder for the "tech" modders in regards to what I was talking about. Stuff that can be easily replicated without artistic know-how...and a lot of that stuff is personal aesthetics as well, whereas, like these fan mods for instance...there's really only extremely minor variation possible. You can only make a power splitter so many ways, etc.

One thing I wondered about is why someone hasn't rethought the coil construction itself w/respect to cooling. I've toyed around with it in passing over the years since it was part of my work (not solenoids tho). Construct it in such a way it is able to passively cool (i.e. have a thermal path from deep inside the coil to wick out the heat).

i'm ordering a set for my AIQ premium, will report back as well. thanks for offering a 3 fan alternative!

I mean, if history holds true, Stern will just steal the idea from the community and start selling them as an option themselves....with pot metal brackets, and for 500 bucks, no doubt.

And everyone will fucking eat it up and be so happy for some reason.

Making them for woz is no different than any other game. I made my own for gnr and they fit exactly the same on AIQ. They are just $10 fans, thingiverse printed brackets and a connection to 12v. Not much more to it really. I bought enough to make four sets, only used two as I rarely play longer than 30 mins and didn’t notice much fade so didn’t put them on my other games. I have two extra sets and am not looking to get into the fan business and compete.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088BMC34Q/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_HGYT9W2BCZB0X9FP6TEN

What's different about the harness other than the connector to 12v?

I wouldn't call that very different. They easily could be made interchangeable/universal with an inline connector. 6 feet of wire is enough to reach any connector in a game with the playfield in a full raised position (having more wire than less is better). You said the brackets are different, but the ones I printed worked on GnR and AIQ with the only adjustment needed having to drill a couple of holes in the bracket to fit the flipper plate. You could just make one bracket with multiple holes so it becomes universal. Sorry if it comes across as arguing, that's not my intention, just noting that these really are or can be universal across games.

And you are right, people are paying because they can't do it or don't have the time and want a plug and play option, nothing at all wrong with that.

Are the fans drawing/sucking the hot air off the coils or pushing/blowing air over the coils to increase the convection? Is one better than the other? Any insights or test results would be interesting to see.

Blowing air onto the coils.

In the immortal words of Bart Simpson
"I didn't think it was possible but this both sucks and blows at the same time.".

How the fan works, not the product.

Always better to push than pull in this specific case. Directionality of airflow being what it is with most fans, there's going to be a huge { shaped intake on that side, and a narrower < shaped exhaust (if the fan's any good, anyways..) on the blow side.

Link?

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4715685