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Announce: Translucent Early Solid State Pinball Buttons/Housings

I’m excited to announce the immediate availability of the C904 Housings and C905 buttons in 10 different pinball friendly translucent colors. The Colors are intended to closely match the colors of many pinball plastics such as lane guides, star posts, and switched inserts and are intended to be back-lit with LEDs. These new buttons are replacement parts for the following manufacturers / Part numbers:

  • Buttons:
    • Bally C-905 button
    • Gottlieb B-16680 button
    • Stern / Chicago Coin Machine 4B-200 button
  • Housings:
    • Bally C-904 housing
    • Gottlieb C-13900 bushing
    • Stern / Chicago Coin Machine 4B-199 housing

The Gottlieb BUSHING FOR DOUBLE PUSHBUTTON #B-21018 is not currently available; however, it should be possible to modify our buttons easily to replicate them. I’ll try to spend some time in the future to publish a how-to-modify here in this blog if there is interest.

These buttons are available in the following translucent colors:

  • Yellow,
  • Amber,
  • Orange,
  • Red,
  • Blue,
  • Green,
  • and Purple.

Additionally we’ve created some unique custom colors which should be of interest to the pinball community:

  • Clear
  • Teal,
  • and Smoke Black.

We also have some limited stock of:

  • Lime Green,
  • Smoke-Blue,
  • and Light Purple.

Colors are show below and should represent the colors available. Please Note:Keep in mind your monitor and my camera’s color balance will throw the colors off a bit from the actual product you receive so use these as an approximation of what will be shipped to you.

Pinball Button

C905 Translucent Pinball Buttons

The Housings:

Pinball Button Housing

C904 Pinball Housing

C904 Translucent Pinball Button Housings

Both the Housings and Buttons are made out of PMMA (Acrylic) so they can be easily laser etched and paint filled like I did on my Original Bally Star Trek Restoration.

Please let us know if there is a color not represented here… or if you’d like to see some opaque colors made.

To buy a set for you Pinball Machine; please see the following product page:
http://pinball-mods.com/oscom/index.php/cPath/28

Bally Flipper Button Mod

I’d also like to call Attention to a product we’ve had on the website for a couple of months… The Bally Flipper Mod was designed by myself several years ago for the Bally Star Trek Restoration. Each PCB features 12 LEDs in either Red or Green and rotated the LEDs to simulate a rotating pattern. I’ve held off announcing them here because I wanted to get the companion buttons on the website so fellow Pinheads would have the option of buying them with the colored button of their choice – IE one stop shopping.

This Flipper button mod is available as a 2 PCB set and looks like this in Green:

Here are a couple of videos of the Red in action:

Green LEDs:

Please take a gander at our product page:
http://pinball-mods.com/oscom/product_info.php/products_id/5
for more information or to purchase this modification.

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Custom Buttons & Housings (Early Bally, Gottlieb, Stern, Chicago Coin)

My Shapeway’s store should be open to purchase early SS or late EM buttons and housings. You can visit the store at:

http://www.shapeways.com/shops/Pinball-Mods

You can buy in single button / housing configurations or in pairs allowing you to configure the colors as you want. The buttons work interchangeably with the original housings and vice-versa. At the moment; I have 13 color and/or materials available:

Blue nylon
Purple Nylon
Pink Nylon
Yellow Nylon
Green Nylon
Orange Nylon
Matte Black Nylon
Smooth Black
Polished Metallic Plastic
Grey Nylon /w metallic sparkle
Translucent clear
Matte Translucent clear
Matte Frosted Translucent Clear

I do not offer White or Red Opaque buttons in the store as they come much cheaper from PBR or Marco. I understand the prices are high; it’s what Shapeways’ charges for the material. I guess it’s the cost of customization.

At this point; I offer the following part numbers at the shop:

  • Buttons:
    • Bally C-905 button
    • Gottlieb B-16680 button
    • Stern / Chicago Coin Machine 4B-200 button
  • Housings:
    • Bally C-904 housing
    • Gottlieb C-13900 bushing
    • Stern / Chicago Coin Machine 4B-199 housing
    • Gottlieb BUSHING FOR DOUBLE PUSHBUTTON #B-21018

Here’s some pictures I took of the housing in polished metallic plastic and the button in frosted detail:

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Chicago Dynamic Industries Sound Card (EM Gun Games)

A fellow Arcade collector sent me this Private Message a few months ago on the KLOV forums:

I’ve got an old EM Chicago Coin “Shoot Out” gun game. Works great, but came without the sound PCB that generates the gunshot sound. They also made a “Coney Island” game that used the same sound PCB, but I’ve been searching for ~5 to 6 years for a used board with no success.

The problem with the soundcard is it used older End-Of-Lifed (EOL) transistors that can’t be easily found. I offered to help him design a PCB and BOM which would duplicate the sound and provide a “modernized” BOM which could be ordered off Digikey.com. He reported back that after some rework to the pinout; the card worked as expected. As a result; I’ve incorporated the rework (ie corrected the design)… and have provided the materials here for the public to duplicate and use for any older machines which are missing (or has a non-functional board) the EM Gun Soundcard used in these games.

The major changes to this board vs the original are as follows:

  1. The PCB is double sided with large ground plans to aid in noise reduction.
  2. Additional caps are placed on IC1 (LM380) and the Zener diode regulators to help improve the immunity of the circuit to noise. CIC1, C22, C23 – all .01uf.
  3. PCB’s has both a top and bottom silk screen:
    1. Top has values and reference designators to aid in assembly and debug.
    2. Bottom has used edge fingers labeled as well as the legs of the transistors; again for debug.
  4. All transistors were replaced with 2N3904 NPN transistors which are very much still in use today. The single PNP was replaced with the 2N3906.
  5. Test points for the 18V, 12V, 9.1V, and ground rails are provided for easily troubleshooting the voltages on the sound board.
  6. LEDs provided for the 12VAC and 30VAC lines coming into the sound card. Again quick glance that there is at least some voltage going into the sound board.
  7. Although not needed in a real game; two mounting screw holes are needed if you have a non-standard installation.

I’ve decided release this design to the public under the TAPR Non-Commercial Open Hardware License which indicates:

You may make products based upon this design, provided you do not make more than ten units in any twelve month period for your personal use.

If you agree with the license terms; Schematics and BOM lists are posted here under TAPR/NCL license:
Rifle 444-310 Soundboard Package

Ordering should be easy: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/6GKvZu4s
The boards are $67-ish for a set of 3 PCBs… and they are high quality. Gold plated fingers, two layer, silkscreen on both sides. It’s the cost of doing prototypes. OSHPark usually get the PCBs back to you in about 2 weeks.

BOM Cost from Digikey came to a WHOPPING $17 for one board. My advice is to take the BOM and multiply it by 3 in Excel or some other spreadsheet app. It’s usually cheaper to by 50 or so of the resistors. IE in one qty; they are 8cents… in 50s they are > 3cents. I usually buy 50-100 of each; just so I have them around when I prototype on breadboards and such.

The PCB is very compact; it was done this way to save on the prototype PCB sq inches cost. If you find some of your components are tight; you might try laying them similar to this:
http://pcb.bastl.sk/?page_id=50

Here’s a picture of the assembled board:

Rifle Ricochet sounds w/ AMP Fab B assembled
Rifle Ricochet sounds w/ AMP Fab B assembled

Hope this helps the EM Gun collectors out there. If it does… please drop me a comment letting me know it’s done some good!