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Old games play better with old switches and buttons...
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PL1:
Has anyone tried pinball flipper leafs like these from VirtuaPin?




Scott
RandyT:

--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on January 06, 2014, 06:09:28 pm ---  The other thing to note, is that while the leaf can be activated within a hairs worth of movement...  its not like a mouse-trap, or loaded gun.  Meaning.. you can actually rest your fingers on the buttons with confidence and comfort.. and they will not accidentally activate.    You actually have to press them past a certain depth,  which initially requires a bit of force.. but once in that depth... it takes very little force to remain in that depth.

 Unfortunately, some newly designed Leafs are way too light to depress...  so you can not actually rest your fingers on the buttons, with any weight at all.   It causes you to spend more energy trying to maintain a feather-light hover position.. which strains the muscles, and again, causes quicker fatigue.

--- End quote ---

Steve, I really don't know what you base your conclusions upon, but I have an original Defender panel sitting next to me, and you absolutely cannot "rest your fingers on the buttons" without them activating.  In fact, the force one can place upon them before the switch closes is less than that of the CLASSX buttons with leaf switches (although they can be made as light if desired).  If anything, there is more stress when using those original buttons, as the plunger sits higher, causing one to need to hold their hand in a more stressful position to avoid activating them.  Perhaps this is not the case with whatever panels or buttons you based your conclusion upon, but it certainly doesn't fall in line with your blanket statement.  Which leads me to another point about the old design;  Those button bodies are of a fixed length, and the switches are not attached in a permanent relative position to them, rather separate parts.  This leads to requiring spacers for the switches or cut-outs in the underside of the panel, in order to get the desired relative distance between the plunger and the switch, depending upon actual panel thickness.  This, in turn, led to operators and manufacturers all having very different ideas as to what that distance should be, with the worst culprits usually being the operators who were only concerned with getting the machine working again.  When they got it wrong, that's where the problems came in....it also led to buttons of the same style having a different feel on different machines.

I'm not sure why, but you seem to make the assumption that these kinds of things are never studied, nor understood, by those investing $15k and over a year of time into giving these kinds of switches a better chance than they were given before.  But I can assure you that it was not done in a vacuum of information and research.  While I can't speak for whatever other "newly designed Leafs" to which you may have been referring, the CLASSX button with True-Leaf switches can be adjusted for any "feel" you like, obviously other than the long throw past actuation, which would result in the same type of damage inherent to the old designs.  The upper leaf can be adjusted to provide more resistance, and the lower leaf can be adjusted for the desired amount of throw before the contacts close.  And if that doesn't provide enough resistance to suit your taste, stretching the plunger spring a bit will add more.   Like the old adage goes; If it hurts, you're not doing it right.  ;)

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