I was passing through Chicago, and stopped in to visit the Happ Controls headquarters there. It was a cool experience. Thought I'd post about some of the stuff I saw there.
I found out that, despite what many people say, they do manufacture many of the products they sell. They have a factory across the street from the building I visited, and a guy I was talking to mentioned that their pushbuttons are often manufactured to meet orders. They didn't have any black ones in at the time of my visit, and when I requested them he said they didn't have any but they'd just have to make some. This means, it might be possible to get pushbuttons from them that are swirled, spackled, blended, or custom colors. I don't know how their process works, but they very well might be able to. The sales guy I talked to seemed very interested in what our little market was interested in, and seemed willing to try new things like manufacturing a purple illuminated pushbutton for me. He said if they get feasible special requests, they will often make up a new part number for them and add it to their database.
I also found out they have been doing some kind of crazy market research with their trackballs and some national champion Golden Tee players, and are designing the "perfect" Golden Tee trackball. I thought that was pretty funny, but hey if there are Golden Tee fans here they might be interested.
They have a showroom full of cool stuff, some of which never made it to manufacturing, including some tiny little keyboards with completely dust / grease / smoke / cornish pixy / beer resistant surfaces, that have the basic typing keys (no numeric pad, no f-keys on some) and are built as part of a metal panel with mounting holes for attaching to something. Thought those of you thinking up inventive keyboard schemes would be interested. (these could easily be screwed in to some sliding drawer bearings from Lowe's, for example.) There were also cool things like joysticks with full 8-way restrictor plates, so that the joystick naturally sunk into one of 8 little hollows, similarly to the way a true 4-way sinks into its 4 directions. I also got a look at their cool Monster Pushbutton, or whatever it's called, that is used for games involving whacking something upside the head with a padded mallet. Looked very cool, made me want to build a Whack-A-Mole.
Found out their search engine on their website is much more than I thought it was... it will return a search result if they have the product at all, even if the product does not appear in either their website catalog pages or their paper catalog pages. At least, that's what he told me.
Also found out that if you talk to the right person, sometimes you can bend the prices a little bit to your favor, especially if you've already been a customer and especially if you will be buying some other company's product just because theirs is cheaper. I was describing my project, and mentioned using a goofy metal bucket I got at Lowe's for a coin hopper since theirs was too expensive, and he made me a better offer and said I should tell you guys to order over the phone and mention stuff like that.
Found a cool little kit for easily mounting a light underneath one of their transparent trackballs that I'd completely overlooked before. It screws into a convenient little hole on the bottom of the trackball, and puts the light right where it needs to be. (gives a wedge-base insert with pins to solder to, can take LEDs or incandescents.)
Part number 91-1224-00.
Oh yeah, and their warehouse is MAMMOTH! I was staring at the room thinking how huge it was, then noticed there was a door that led to another one, and another one. It was like being on top of a mountain made entirely of nifty arcade parts.
Anyway, just thought people might be interested in what I saw. Cheers!
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Topic: Visited the Happ Controls headquarters! cool info... (Read 2956 times)
