Fantastic. Would love to do this on specific games.

are these the same as what PP announced yesterday?

Sweet! I just ordered clear flipper bats for my WH2O, and this would look awesome in them. Please post the DIY.

+1, i also want to know how, thanks.

That looks awesome!!! Great job to say the least.

That will look sweet with the urethane rubbers

definitely!

Looks great ! I think mb in green would be sweet

I've seen them in person, they look awesome.

I can't see the LED's lasting very long. The flipper is the highest vibration item in the machine and it's the most used unit too. The vibration will get to the LED's and kill them.

I can't tell much from the two pixel video, but those pictures look awesome. If these things are durable, then they will sell like crazy. I can't wait to try them out.

Cool, I have actually been thinking about doing this since I first saw the transparent flipper bats.

same thing here but i'm not sure it's gonna last very long. definitely look great.

My hammer drill has LEDs and they stand up (so far) to intense vibration.

Are these the same LED flippers that PPS was talking about on Friday?

Please do!

if you do that, someone will copy this and sell it, guarantee!

i think it's a great idea and should sell it yourself.

how are these going to hold up in the long run? i see joints breaking from constant abuse. Nice to see zaccaria bats getting some love with LED's.

Too late, PPS announced them at Expo on Friday.

damn, i completely forgot about that!

go ahead give us the infos! i'll do it myself!

How are the wires run into the bat without affecting flipper movement or wire breakage?

Yes please post a tutorial on how you did them. I have wanted lighted flipper bats for my Lost in Space and STNG for so long, but could not figure out how to run the wires/LEDs to the flipper bats.

Hey Ken isn't the whole idea of the LEDs lasting in high stress/vibration areas, due to the fact that they have no moving parts (filaments etc.) To break like normal bulbs? I can see failure at solider joints if used in a standard incandescent bulb package, but if they use the small T1 style LEDs (like the ones used on circuit boards), those are encapsulated/sealed in plastic, which Should take the vibration issue out of the equation.

Hammerhead1550 hit the nail on the head - LEDs don't have a filament...hence vibration resistant, and they won't get "killed" - it's exactly what you would want to use in this application.

They look great! I cant wait to see your tutorial!

Get some of the new clear Superbands on those and they'll look even better!

Cool mod, terrible video

Nothing new about it, been doing that LED mod for years and taking it to the PAGG show for 3 years. I'm surprised it took PPS so long to copy the idea. Mine have been tied in to the Mind Orbit plunger boards so they strobe with them, matching colors of course. It's a mod that's easy to do.

Steve

Actually, it won't be the LED's that will have issues Ken, it'll probably be the wires supplying current to them that will fail.

Steve

I've seen plenty of the Williams opto transmitter and receiver boards fail with broken LED's and broken phototransistors. The vibration breaks the LED or phototransistor leads right where they enter the component (they lose connection with the circuit board foil). Even ones with a dob of silicone glue have had the leads break off. Most of the time this problem manifests itself with intermittent operation of the opto board (sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't). Sometimes the LED or phototransistor completely breaks off and you find it jamming the ball trough or laying in the bottom of the machine.

I could see the same thing happening in this application of LED's inside the flipper bats. Where would you get the super flexible wire you'd need to have because of all the flexing/twisting going on with the flippers?

Do your homework...the LEDs themselves are indeed vibration and shock resistant. Uses in transportation and industrial environments where this is of concern is soaring. Google vibration & LED for keywords.

The fault that you are suggesting - super flexible wire? You say this like it is a new thing, like we've not had super flexible wire in industry ever? A moving pinball bat is nothing compared to what applications "super flexible" wire is being used in: aerospace, industrial robots, your ride in an airplane, earbud headphones, and more.

So, is the shaft of the flipper bat hollowed out to run wires up into the bat?

Anyone figure out how to LED a pinball yet? I believe that's the last untapped goldmine.

I'm saying this from real life experience on pinball machines. I have seen many times LED's and phototransistors break off the circuit boards on the playfield. The leads break right where they enter the component body. They break from vibration/flexing.

When manufacturing anything requires durability and expecting quality, the manufacturer uses a good quality LED and uses good quality assembly methods and other supporting parts. (example, an LED indicator panel that is expected to perform critical functions on a highspeed train or an industrial LED lightbar that might be used on an ambulance or police car, for example) The same requirements are not true of the pinball machine, an amusement device. They were assembled as quickly and cheaply as possible to make a profit. Replace those phototransistors with good quality ones and mount them as should be in a high vibration environment and they would last the life of the game.

If modding flipper bats with an LED, a good quality LED mounted with supporting parts correctly *should* last whatever the life of the LED is, in thousands of hours.

They don't have filaments but they do use tiny connectors on a strip like this (tiny solder points on some versions) so these connections would be what get flaky after the hammering of the flipper action... I'd be doubtful of a long life on these and it wouldn't be because of the LED itself.

I still don't understand where the wire goes. Do you drill a hole through the bushing?

The way Steve "blownfuse" did it was to drill the center of the flipper shaft. But the Gottlieb flipper shafts of that era are much larger in diameter than others. I don't know how else you'd do it.

Steve is an innovator.
--
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://www.Team-EM.com
http://webpages.charter.net/chibler/Pinball/index.htm
http://www.PinWiki.com - The new place for pinball repair info

I have seen Steve's in person and they are very innovative and look amazing. He said he did drill the shaft for running power.

I hope not to offend anyone here on what maybe a touchy subject.

I just had a thought about the wire though. Couldn't there be a small pcb board manufactured that has the LEDs along with a motion sensor & very small battery? That way the flippers bats light up when you flip, then there would be a timer that goes off when motion is detected. Then they just light up for say, 30 seconds after the last movement detected. When the battery dies, just replace them completely.

You could use a small battery and a mercury switch.

It would only flash when flipped.

Neat idea but no RoHS-compliance so limited to where you could ship the stuff.

I didn't read through this thread but are you selling these?? If so I will buy a bunch!

You could probably do that or more likely drill a hole through the center of the flipper bat shaft or even just mill out a slot in the shaft.

They look great! Please post a tutorial or at least some photos of what you have done.

Thanks!

I got the idea from a stripper I know shoes - she ain't getting shipped out nowhere.

I like the stripper shoes idea vid.

But in seriousness: We cannot possibly make LED for flippers that is reliable? I find that very hard to believe.

We should have LED lights on automobiles failing all over the place because they simply can't take the vibration. Do you all really believe this? We are close to getting commercially available flexible LCD screens on the market, but we can't get a simple two wire connection to last on a pinball game? We've had printer heads whipping back and forth for years with a ribbon cable flexing THOUSANDS of times, and robotic arms that are still running today....but we can't get a wire that will last to supply an LED on a pinball bat?

Even if wire can't accomplish the job and you want to get creative, look into the other ways power can get conducted to moving devices without the use of wires, they've been out there in our industries for a long time.

Here is one possible suggestion. Mount LEDs in the bat and then fill the bat with clear epoxy. Nothing shakes, nothing moves, resistant to vibration and impact. You figure the rest.

Because I like to make sure that proper credit is given:

Max Wiczer is the person who invented this...in 1981!

http://www.google.com/patents/US4398718

Tony

I tried to make LED flippers work in B/W games years ago and I haven't seen the LED B/W flippers yet that PPS sells but the wires are probably outside of the shaft. Hopefully, the wires come out the back of the flipper so the wires can be routed through the playfield under a kicker or other object (the cheapest solution since it makes less stress on the LED wires and with minimal chaffing to the insulation though these issues can be fixed by protecting the wires with different colors of shrink wrap). If not and you're drilling through the nylon bushings, there's moving flipper parts that need to be routed around that the wires can hang up on.

Since I like mods that can be converted back easily to factory (with the exception of my 6 to 7 digit Gottlieb conversion), I'll try to explain the issues I ran up against as I found them, maybe there's a solution out there that I didn't see. The problem is in the design of the B/W flipper assemblies, they weren't designed with the idea of running wires through the flipper shaft and running a wire down the center is ideal for less travel damage to the wires. They use such a small shaft, when doing the things suggested (drilling or milling), the pawl will crush the shaft when it's tightened down to prevent movement. Then, you can't remove the flipper once any damage is done without cutting the shaft off. Milling worked the best for the wires but the shaft became weak and would twist at the milled area when the bat was being hit by balls.

Also, the milled area made it real difficult to hold the bat firmly to the shaft even though the shaft was filled with a good epoxy to hold the wires in place. So, the only way I could LED a B/W flipper is to leave the shaft alone and have the wires hanging loose, then you drill through the nylon bushing and fish the wires through (other than routing/drilling through a kicker area). The problem this creates is that there isn't enough travel room inside that little space between the flipper and bushing, so the movement of the wires will cause them to fatigue and break or the playfield will eventually saw through them as the flippers move back and forth. I've seen both happen in my testing so I abandoned that path.

A solution for this is to redesign a B/W LED flipper kit that has a larger shaft on the bat so the wires can slip down inside the shaft like I can do with the Gottliebs, a center rotation means less chance of wire damage. Also, 2 new larger inside diameter shaft bushings and a larger inside diameter pawl would need to be made. I was working on designing/making a B/W LED flipper kit but had to shelve it for other projects I was more interested in.

Steve

Ghastly looking, but opinions are like mods, not for everyone. As long as it brings people happiness in the hobby, great job and Grand Lizard!