I'm no long time expert like many of you here, but I like them. They hit hard. The ball moves fast. I use Superbands. I suppose this setup is less "rubbery" but I like them better than the plastic flippers and rubber bands they replaced.

I love these aluminum bats. I have 5 pins loaded with them. They hit hard and handle just fine for me, too. I went to buy more at Pinball Life and no dice. PBL says the machinist got tired of making them; I figure the machinist is holding out for more money. At only $10.00 each retail I can see where the machinist might have felt shortchanged. Anyway, according to who I talked to at PBL, there will not be anymore. I'm majorly bummed about it.

Thanks man. Come back here and tell us when they are ready. I need 4 of them. I also need to trade back the 4 white plastics ones I just bought from you; Unused and brand spanking new.

EDIT: Is the old price returning as well? Or is a bump happening?

PBL was selling them for 9.95 and then they went away. And then they were brought back for $12.95. I should have loaded up. They are gone again. Something with the machinist making them wanted more money, I think.

I have them on all my pins. They hit hard and fast.

Is there a minimum order quantity that must be considered?

I never heard of transparent aluminum. Google says you know what you are talking about. Interesting.

https://www.google.com/search?q=transparent+aluminum&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=rqtD7hZW1CQuNM%253A%252CnHtUQRgNi01aeM%252C%252Fm%252F08drsf&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQLFEEhvZaBWZFkZ_095qC-KtQZ1A&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjlw_2g_ejnAhVOKa0KHc9FBWwQ_B0wHHoECAgQAw#imgrc=rqtD7hZW1CQuNM:

You might be right about the exposure but as in all things there are always some negative Nancy’s offering up negative vibes saying the are sluggish or don’t hit hard enough. It is also BS. Get your flippers and flipper switches adjusted correctly and they kick like mules.

I would be in for 4 of them. In the great scheme of things that is not very many.

What I like about them is, while they work very well, I could paint them any color I wanted. And if I got tired of a color I could always paint them another color.

Here you go.

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pinside and pictures do not always work smoothly.

Considering what everything is costing this day and age, $15.00 is a screaming deal. However, I need 4 for my Big Game; That's $60.00 worth of flippers. But the plastic Stern flippers are priced at $7.00-$10.00 each which takes some sting out of the extra costs.

I'm not sure how the machinist makes his cuts, but these flippers are hog outs from a block of solid aluminum i.e they are hollow on the bottom side to reduce weight. A steel shaft is pressed in from the bottom and has a tight fit. The machinist knows his stuff; They are of quality manufacture.

They are a little heavier than the plastic flippers but the flipper coils have no problem with making powerful hits. For anybody installing these flippers I highly recommend a fresh shop job on your flippers. If you install these and leave in crappy worn out coil sleeve and a mushroomed coil plunger you probably will not like the results. And then you will come on the board and trash them as being lousy performers.

I understand. It is not factory but it is easily reversible.

I really like mine. I could use 10 more. Wow. A $150.00 worth of flippers.

And Wow again. I have four new of the Williams style. I never thought to check for flex. They flex. I would like to see what that flex looks like with s slo-mo camera.

Yes. I could use 10 more of the metal bats.

I would buy 10 of them and pay in advance.

How many is "some". We ain't gonna get PL to act unless there are some real numbers.

Right now, we are at the 10 I said I would buy.

Anybody else want to step up?

OK. We are at 16. But I don't know what the magic number is to incent Terry to make them again.

We are up to 54.

But 15 sets? 30 bats? That's a lot of jack. $450.00 @ $15.00 each. You sure?

Corrected. Thank you.

You are in for 8 each. Pinball Life did not sell them as sets before. We are now at 62 bats.

62 plus

_62
+ 4
+ 6
= 72

What if Terry would want pay in advance before he pulled the trigger? Would you still be interested and willing to pay up before hand? I would have no problem with paying an outfit like PL in advance. What about you?

I am asking about this advance stuff because we may really have to kiss Terry's ass for him to tool up for another run.

So, 72 bats have moved back down to 62 bats.

3 of us would pre-pay if necessary.

Anybody else?

Will you pre-pay?

Maybe.

The price that was discussed up above was $15.00. And that is a WAG number.

It looks like the count is up to around 84.

This is about where we were at 6 months ago.

I forgot what mine weighed at. There is not that much difference, IMO. All I can tell you is that they are solid as rocks and hit like hammers. You are not going to get any weak and light flipper hits with these.

Maybe someone else has the weight numbers you are looking for.

They are probably not lighter. And I don't know if you would want them lighter. The weight they are not does not slow the swing action down. I don't know how much pulling strength an electromechanical coil and plunger have but there is enough pulling strength that the swing action is not affected. My aluminum bats will send the ball all the way to the back of the play field quickly and I think the little bit of extra weight helps. But I don't have any scientific studies to back it up.

Will you announce here when they are in stock?

I committed for 10. I'm buying 10. I hope the others who spoke stay true to their word,

I do need to qualify what I said. If my memory is correct we all seemed to gravitate to $15.00 per flipper or $30.00 for. a pair. If the price is more than that I may have to adjust my order.

Sort of like going to the big box store to get four 2 X 4's at $2.50 each and when getting to the store, you see that 2 X 4s are now priced at $6.00 each and you buy only one.

Order here as well.

I bought 4 and received them today. They seem to have nice tight shafts. I'll install tomorrow and give the play test.

All 4 of mine are no good.

I'll need to contact PL.

I just got am email for PL. I am being refunded as well. It sounds like everybody will be refunded.

I also was comparing the new aluminum flipper bat to my old ones I bought several years ago. It looks like the machinist cheaped out on the machining, too.

The new one weighs 2.2 oz.

The old one weighs 1.8 oz.

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And here is why. The machinist decided to cut corners on hogging out the insides.

I bummed. I really like the older ones that I have; They are for sure not for sale.

I hope Terry does not get shanked on this deal.

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For grins, I poured some super glue down into the shaft hole to see what would happen. The super glue did tighten things up but I doubt that it will last under use.

The other thing I think will be a problem is the weight. But I will not know until later today when I can install and give them a try.

Drilling and tapping the hole sounds like it may have possibilities. But the big difference is that you would be tapping a hole in aluminum as opposed to the tapped hole on the flipper lever that is tapped in steel. I don't know if aluminum would hold under what has to be tremendous stress to keep things from slipping.

I just looked. You are correct. There is a key milled into the original. I did not notice that.

Not workable. The bat is aluminum. The shaft is some high grade steel. An aluminum shaft would not last. And a steel flipper would be too heavy.

My super glue trick held for just long enough to say these are paper weights. They are too heavy. That extra .4 oz. of weight kills them .

Not worth the time and trouble. It is not worth it for Terry to pay for return shipping. And you are not going cut a keyway without hiring a machinist with the proper tools for cutting a keyway.

And as I noted in my previous post, they are too heavy.

Terry said he ordered 500 of them. If he paid $10.00 (wild guess) each, this is a big hit. And that is a lot of machine work for $10.00 (wild guess). You would need a CNC that could gang mill in quantities to make any money.

When there is nothing to lose.....

I have just drilled a cross hole and hammered in a roll/spring pin. I have no idea if a roll pin is up the the shear stresses that will be placed on it as a rotating pin locker, but I figure it is worth a try.

It was not hard to drill through the shaft metal and the pin drove right in with a couple of hammer taps. But it takes a drill press to be able to drill a straight, clean hole. Obviously, the pin will be hidden under the rubber.

It will be a couple of days before I can test this out.

Wish me luck.

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Yes. I am concerned that the aluminum will be able to hold up.

EDIT: However, the small roll pin slides inside a larger roll pin. If the aluminum gives out, I may be able to oversize the hole in the bat aluminum only and use the larger roll pin as sort of a bushing.

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And now...The Aluminum Flippers.

Before pinside went down I showed my roll pin mod to lock the flipper to the shaft.

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Since this time, I have played perhaps 250-300 short ball time games. I did not keep a log but I probably put about 3 hours of play time on. And so far, the flippers are performing quite well. I think they will go the distance.

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However, the weight with these new flippers weighed in at 2.2 oz. as opposed to the original flippers that weigh 1.8 oz. My own subjective judgment is that I did not care for the extra weight. So I fixed that.

To lose some weight I trimmed off some of the bottom of the flippers and got them down to 1.9 oz. I could do some more trimming and get them down to 1.8 oz. However, they are performing flawlessly and are kicking like mules.

What I did was cook up a jig for the table saw and trimmed some material away.

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IMO, they look fabulous. And they perform. I am very happy. Now I want the other 6 flippers that I was planning to buy.

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One more thing: By cutting the bottom of the flipper away I have all kinds of clearance between the bottom of the flipper and surface of the play field. I will never ever have to worry about flipper drag marring my play field.

I have offered to Terry to pay for them. He took the risk and I have a product that is working how I expected them to work. Give me a small discount for my time to make the corrections and I will be happy to pay the man plus buy the other 6 that I was planning on buying.

I would like to hear how you would propose to do that. They are already hogged out.

They are already hogged out; Just not as much as the earlier ones were hogged out. I also drilled a hole at the tip to take out some extra material, as well.

You can see the hogged out areas. To hog out the inside even more would take a Bridgeport mill or a CNC machine and an end mill to make those cuts.

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I went with down and dirty. With the tools I had. And to be honest, I did know if this would work or not.

Cutting the bottom off has hurt nothing and got the weight down. And I have the extra clearance that cannot be seen from a playing position.

It works. I'm happy.

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I found this link about spring/roll/coiled pins. The main thing I got from it was that the pin diameter should not be more than 1/3 the diameter of the shaft that it is pinning.

https://www.spirol.com/library/sub_catalogs/cldp-Design_Guidelines_us.pdf

https://www.spirol.com

Sort of sounds like that. I suppose it depends on the definition of "near future". Once bitten, twice shy.

I would like to agree with you. I really would. Logic is on your side. However, if weight is of no issue, then all that would need to be done is to cut a profile of the flipper, and mount a flipper shaft. That would get the production cost way down since no provision would need to be considered for hogging out. And the flipper would probably come in weighing at least 3 oz. IMO, there has to be a law of diminishing returns creeping in here somewhere. E.G. How many ounces can a flipper coil pull without losing the power it needs to move the bat? At some point, weight becomes an issue. Your mileage may differ but for me there is a "felt" difference between 1.8/1.9 oz. and 2.2 oz.

I agree that my experience is subjective and without expensive engineering testing all it will be is subjective reasoning on my part. But I have been playing my Seawitch with these aluminum bats since 2016 and also my Catacomb in 2018. When I installed these latest bats on my Big Game, I did one side only. And they just did not feel right. The timing of the hit felt off. With nothing to lose, I chopped off the bottom of just one flipper and gave it another go. Again, subjective measure here, but it played better with the extra weight removed. I lost no time in cutting the bottoms from the other 3 flippers. If I manage to score some more from Terry I will waste no time in putting them through the weight loss program.

And looking on the other side of the coin, the factory style Williams flippers I like to use weigh in at 1 oz. And they do a good job of whacking the ball to the back of the play field with the much lighter weight. That puts me in the opinion that the law of diminishing returns applies the the lower side of the weight scale, as well. For extreme example, a flipper weighing it at .01 oz with be paper thin and as limp as a wet noodle.

So maybe there is a sweet spot that lies somewhere between 1 oz. and 1.9 oz. ?

I'd like to agree with you, but I cannot.
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I did drill one hole in the tip but the amount of material removed did not amount to much. I could drill one more hole at the tip but to do it right, really calls for and end mill bit.

That web in the middle would definitely require a router type bit to make any kind of effective cut. Trying to use a drill bit on that skinny strip of web would be a fool's errand.

And you cannot remove very much metal from the base circle area with a drill bit. You could drill a couple of holes and remove some material.

You might be able to make it happen, but I don't consider myself good enough to hog these areas out with a drill bit. I do not have access to a Bridgeport or a CNC or I would have chosen to complete the hog out in the same manner as the original aluminum bats. With out the proper tools, cutting the bottoms off is the only way I can see to get enough weight off to make a difference.

And while I do not agree with John_I on weight differences, I do agree that removing metal from the base circle is of minor issue regarding weight.

If I do get some more of these bats, the only thing I will do different is to make some sort of jig for the band saw to make straight, unwavering cuts and stay away from the table saw.