Opinions on microswitches and soldering please

[mgb]

I've heard the Groovy Standard Soft-Touch microswitch from Groovy Game Gear is good.  Anybody have a source or seller they prefer for softer, quieter MS.  Details please.

I have the soft touch switches in a Sanwa Jlw and I love them. they are silent. I also have the cherry switches that typically come in a Happ super and they are very nice too.

I agree with alot of the others here too on the soldering thing. I have no problem soldering, I do it all the time but I really don't see much of a need for soldering to the switches. I do alot of arcade work for others and many times the soldered switches are the fault. Crimps are perfectly fine as long as they are the correct size and are tight enough. Also keep a few extra switches because they can fail on you

[brad808]

Some people actually use the correct size quick connects? Hmm must just be all the dumb people around here that do this


Sent from my Desire HD

[TopJimmyCooks]

That QD is the right size for that terminal, it's just bent up. 

[brad808]

That QD is the right size for that terminal, it's just bent up. 

Yea your right. It's still gonna get a repair job using solder though 

[lilshawn]

no, your supposed to get the too small ones and stretch them out with needle nose pliers to make them fit.

oh and can sombody please make them crimpless with a one way friction fit connection so i can plug the wire in and be done?

[nakeworks]

I took the advice of PL1 and ordered a bunch of different switches and will test them out.  Here is what I ordered:

Paradise Arcade:
-Cherry pushbutton MS
-20 gram MS
-50 gram MS
-125 gram MS
-Rollie Leaf swithc

Groovy Game Gear:
-groovy standard soft-touch
-micro leaf
-versa-micro user adjustable

I'll let you know which ones I settle on.  Thanks for all the help guys 

[Mysterioii]

Some people actually use the correct size quick connects? Hmm must just be all the dumb people around here that do this


Sent from my Desire HD

I know I'm gonna get ripped but I actually wired my whole CP (8 years ago) using the wrong sized disconnects.  They were what I had on hand and I wanted to wire it up that night.  I found that I could wedge them on there in such a way that I was satisfied that they weren't going anywhere but I could still take them off if I needed to.

It was a judgement call sort of thing, I was well aware of what I was doing, and if I wasn't satisfied with the connection I wouldn't have gone any further.  BTW I've got my MENG and two PE licenses and at the time had about 10 years or so under my belt doing EE for Naval systems as a civilian so no way would I have done that for a customer or work project, I know the importance of going by the specs in those situations, but when it's for personal consumption sometimes you gotta fly by the seat of your pants.  I've done lots of things around the house that aren't exactly "code" but I still sleep well at night...   

[Nephasth]

I know the importance of going by the specs in those situations, but when it's for personal consumption sometimes you gotta fly by the seat of your pants.  I've done lots of things around the house that aren't exactly "code" but I still sleep well at night...   

Damn. I have a pretty high standard for the work I do for other people, but when it comes to the work I do for myself, I go above and beyond that standard...

[Mysterioii]

I know the importance of going by the specs in those situations, but when it's for personal consumption sometimes you gotta fly by the seat of your pants.  I've done lots of things around the house that aren't exactly "code" but I still sleep well at night...  

Damn. I have a pretty high standard for the work I do for other people, but when it comes to the work I do for myself, I go above and beyond that standard...

Hey now let's not read this wrong, I have a VERY high standard for the work that I do for myself.  And that's why I had to be satisfied that those connections weren't coming loose.  I am perfectly satisfied, and in 8 years have had no issues at all with them.  Now, when I rebuild it (hopefully soon) I will have the correct ones on hand to begin with.  To give a little more backstory, I got my cabinet kit AND a poker table kit from mameroom.com about a week before we were having a huge Christmas party at my house, and I wanted to have both of them assembled before the party (while taking care of all the other crap too).  Some concessions had to be made, but not to a level I was dissatisfied with.  I was satisfied.  I feel that I have enough training and experience to know when something is electrically sound and when it is not.  Remember, I'm the guy who shrinkwraps everything and hooks all my tinned wires before soldering them together to improve the mechanical connection whenever possible.  

I'll give another example....  in my state, it is electrical code that any wire junctions inside a wall cavity have to be capped by a removable outlet cover.  In my current home, the previous homeowner thought it would be a great idea to have a power outlet 6 feet off the ground right in the center of the wall behind where his entertainment center was.  Well, my entertainment center was not the same as his, and if I left that outlet or capped it with a cover it would have been right in the middle of everyone's eye line.  I pulled the wires from the outlet, covered each wire with it's own wire nut, electrical taped the hell out of each one, rolled it up, tucked it all in the wall and patched the hole completely.  It's invisible.  It's not remotely up to code, and I'm perfectly happy.  Those things are not coming loose and I sleep well at night, without having to look at an outlet cover floating in the middle of the wall.

Previous owners at my old house were an old couple who felt the need for a corded phone in the main bathroom.  I didn't share that need, so that one got removed and patched over too.  Again, not code in my neck of the woods.  Will never be a problem.

[BadMouth]

TWIST AND TAPE BABY!!! 

[TopJimmyCooks]

 . . .  covered each wire with it's own wire nut, electrical taped the hell out of each one, rolled it up, tucked it all in the wall and patched the hole completely.  It's invisible.  It's not remotely up to code, and I'm perfectly happy.  Those things are not coming loose and I sleep well at night, without having to look at an outlet cover floating in the middle of the wall.

I think you're fine by code (NEC/IBC based) if you just go into the crawlspace or attic and kill the feed to that wire.  OK to abandon and cover wiring in place.  just go to the next box or whatever that it connects to, or to the panel if its a home run, pull it out and label it as abandoned and you'll sleep even better. 

[CheffoJeffo]

I'll give another example....  in my state, it is electrical code that any wire junctions inside a wall cavity have to be capped by a removable outlet cover.  In my current home, the previous homeowner thought it would be a great idea to have a power outlet 6 feet off the ground right in the center of the wall behind where his entertainment center was.  Well, my entertainment center was not the same as his, and if I left that outlet or capped it with a cover it would have been right in the middle of everyone's eye line.  I pulled the wires from the outlet, covered each wire with it's own wire nut, electrical taped the hell out of each one, rolled it up, tucked it all in the wall and patched the hole completely.  It's invisible.  It's not remotely up to code, and I'm perfectly happy.  Those things are not coming loose and I sleep well at night, without having to look at an outlet cover floating in the middle of the wall.

Problem is that you have now left yourself open to a potential liability when you resell ... or are potentially being a dick to the next buyer.

I have had to deal with a bunch of these stupid "I know code, but this is fine" issues since I bought this most recent house some time ago (12 years).

Apparently these arcade machine things may require upgrades to your electrical system ...mine is an older home and I wanted some extra lines, so I upgraded the panel.

When I upgraded the panel, I had some unpleasant surprises hidden within the walls. All of which are, by my judgement, safe, but fail code, so *I* had to repair his "perfectly-safe-but-not-up-to-code" work in order to proceed with the real stuff I wanted to do.

Guess who had to do the work and pay for the parts of the work that I didn't do ?

Yep, not the guy who slept fine knowing that things would work the way he wanted them.

[Mysterioii]

Hi Chef.  First off, I have not dealt with you directly before, but I have read lots of your posts and have a general respect for your knowledge and opinions.  Not looking to cross swords with anyone, and of course you're entitled to your opinion.

I am, however, completely comfortable with what I have done, and can honestly say that my house is much improved from where it started.  We have no plans to sell, but if we do, I'll be fine.  I can always track down the distal end of those wires and disconnect them, but that might require cutting a few holes in my wall.  Didn't wanna do that at this time, and I'm comfortable.  There's more insulation on the ends of those wires than there is along the length of them, and it's not going anywhere.

There are so many things that should have been taken care of by OUR previous owner, that we have since corrected (or have identified and will soon correct).  Our ---smurfy--- home inspector missed several things; some small, some fairly big dollar issues.  Our previous owner was a 40ish mother of two little girls who had recently lost her husband to cancer...  we probably could have pursued some compensation for some "undisclosed issues" but out of the goodness of our hearts we just let things go, even though we're out thousands on a couple of the bigger problems.  Yes, if we ever sell I'm sure our buyer won't be as understanding, but again, I'm comfortable.  I've got one plumbing modification that I know is probably not up to code, but knowing that I designed it so it can easily be cut out, capped and brought up to code when/if it becomes necessary.  And I'm fully prepared to do it myself.  In my opinion this modification is crucial...  the water/sewer dept in our area should never have allowed our home to be built at the elevation it is because we're too low with respect to the pump station across from us so we are at risk of "backflow" whenever there are heavy rains...  My mod is almost assuredly not "code" but I had to take proactive steps to protect my family and my home because I simply will not allow my little girl to have a risk of being exposed to other people's waste water just because the sewer district and the builder cocked things up.  Like most engineers, I over-engineer pretty much everything.  Throw in a rebuilt roof to eliminate some chronic leaking issues, a new deck 4 times as big as the old one (put in by pros, not by me), and hardwood floors on the whole first level replacing some crummy old tile, and I guarantee my home is in far better condition than when we started.

Because of said plumbing issues I even built a home monitor/water detector system that monitors for leakage in 8 different places in the basement and will send me a text and emails to multiple accounts whenever an issue is detected...  And acts as a server so I can check the status on a web page from anywhere in the world whenever I need to.  It connects directly to the internet, no PC needed.  As long as my cable modem and router are on, I'm good.  The whole thing is on a battery backup, and I hacked one input line to the signal for the "on battery" buzzer on the UPS so I get an alert whenever the system is running on backup.  We have an emergency shutoff valve on the main sewer line in case of flooding issues and I put tilt switches on that, so I can cut power to the basement sewage ejector pump whenever the valve is closed to keep from pumping poop water into a closed sewer system (otherwise it's coming out the drains... not good).  Got an RGB LED indicator by the garage door to tell me when water is detected, or the valve is closed, or both, or everything is A-OK.  Got a buzzer in the cold air return right by the master bedroom to wake me up at night in case we get a leak while we're asleep.  Got a temp and humidity sensor on there too... mostly just for fun but since it's located right next to the hot water heaters it should see a temp and humidity spike if one of the pressure-temp valves decides to dump.  It's tight.  And I sleep much better knowing that I've got that in place.

I'm not gonna go jacking things up for myself or anyone else.  I'm not putting pennies in the fuse box, figuratively or literally.  I'm not replacing the ground fault interrupt outlets in the bathrooms with regular ones.  Believe me, I am actually PARANOID about things going wrong.  In this one thing, I am comfortable.  I know how to contain 120V sir.  Just the wire nuts themselves would really have sufficed but out of paranoia they have been mummified within about a third of a roll of electrical tape...  No harm is being done.

[CheffoJeffo]

Slow down a minute ... I am not questioning the safety aspect in any way.

 I agree that you are safe, although I might have chipped enough wallboard out so I could seal the box.

I'm not gonna go jacking things up for myself or anyone else.  I'm not putting pennies in the fuse box, figuratively or literally.  I'm not replacing the ground fault interrupt outlets in the bathrooms with regular ones.  Believe me, I am actually PARANOID about things going wrong.  In this one thing, I am comfortable.  I know how to contain 120V sir.  Just the wire nuts themselves would really have sufficed but out of paranoia they have been mummified within about a third of a roll of electrical tape...  No harm is being done.

At this point, the harm is purely potential and, to my mind is entirely monetary for the next owner in the event that an overzealous inspector finds the hidden circuit. That happened to me and I had to trace every ---smurfing--- wire in the house to every ---smurfing--- termination point. The previous owner was actually a friend of the family and we had doen electrical work together before. I know what he did was safe ... it just wasn't what was required to keep from ---smurfing--- me over with respect to the authorities.

I am not making a judgement on your knowledge or the safety of your work ... just pointing out that you could be ---smurfing--- somebody else by not doing the "proper" thing and killing and capping the entire circuit.

In a nation where restaurants can be sued for serving hot coffee, you might want to think about the legal aspects -- you already have the safety aspects covered.

Here it is against the rules to sell a house if you have knowingly modified against code ... I suspect you have the same, likely harsher, laws down there.

[nakeworks]

If your electrical wiring isn't humming you don't have enough games plugged in.

now you're talking

[Mysterioii]

Slow down a minute ... I am not questioning the safety aspect in any way.

 I agree that you are safe, although I might have chipped enough wallboard out so I could seal the box.

I'm not gonna go jacking things up for myself or anyone else.  I'm not putting pennies in the fuse box, figuratively or literally.  I'm not replacing the ground fault interrupt outlets in the bathrooms with regular ones.  Believe me, I am actually PARANOID about things going wrong.  In this one thing, I am comfortable.  I know how to contain 120V sir.  Just the wire nuts themselves would really have sufficed but out of paranoia they have been mummified within about a third of a roll of electrical tape...  No harm is being done.

At this point, the harm is purely potential and, to my mind is entirely monetary for the next owner in the event that an overzealous inspector finds the hidden circuit. That happened to me and I had to trace every ---smurfing--- wire in the house to every ---smurfing--- termination point. The previous owner was actually a friend of the family and we had doen electrical work together before. I know what he did was safe ... it just wasn't what was required to keep from ---smurfing--- me over with respect to the authorities.

I am not making a judgement on your knowledge or the safety of your work ... just pointing out that you could be ---smurfing--- somebody else by not doing the "proper" thing and killing and capping the entire circuit.

In a nation where restaurants can be sued for serving hot coffee, you might want to think about the legal aspects -- you already have the safety aspects covered.

Here it is against the rules to sell a house if you have knowingly modified against code ... I suspect you have the same, likely harsher, laws down there.

Well Chef, I suppose I will concede that you are probably technically correct.  At this point in time I am not particularly worried about it.  I'm fully prepared to remove and cap my "plumbing customizations" if we ever sell (on a positive note our sewer district is supposedly building a new pump station far down a hill from us to which we will be connected in 2015, eliminating our pump station altogether and remedying that unpleasant situation... just have to wait out a few more years there...)  We have no plans to sell but if we ever do I might try to find the other end of that wire.  No promises though.     It is in the basement and there is no attic/crawlspace access...  I *suspect* it's tied to one of two nearby outlets, but if I pull them and find no connection then it would be a matter of knocking holes in the wall.  Not gonna tackle that one now.

I appreciate your POV though.   

[CheffoJeffo]