Pink Coin Inserts? (Coin Reject Buttons)

[javeryh]

The thread about the black and blue cabs inspired this because some people swapped out the normal red coin door inserts for blue ones to match their cabs (awesome touch!).  I was wondering if anyone knew if it was possible to get some pink ones?

Thanks!

[Dmod]

Your best bet is probably to find a clear assembly and backlight it with a pink LED.

[javeryh]

Your best bet is probably to find a clear assembly and backlight it with a pink LED.

Hmm... that's a good idea - is it difficult to do? 

Can I somehow swap out the lightbulbs back there for pink LEDs? 

Any ideas on where to get a clear assembly?

[Dmod]

Here's a link which shows how to swap out the regular lights for LEDs. 

http://joelsgadgets.com/Coindoorpage1.HTML

I just did a google on "PINK LED" and several links come up.  You may have to do some research to make sure they're going to be bright enough and will work with the Happ socket (assuming it's a Happ door).

The clear coin reject assembly looks like it might be harder to find.

[javeryh]

Here's a link which shows how to swap out the regular lights for LEDs. 

http://joelsgadgets.com/Coindoorpage1.HTML

I just did a google on "PINK LED" and several links come up.  You may have to do some research to make sure they're going to be bright enough and will work with the Happ socket (assuming it's a Happ door).

The clear coin reject assembly looks like it might be harder to find.

Thanks - that's great info.  I did a Google search and found THIS but the color says "Amber" - it looks clear to me.  Check out the picture:



Any thoughts?

[RandyT]

I'd be very surprised if you could find a pink assembly.  Clear is probably more likely, but may still be unavailable.

The problems are going to be similar to lighting translucent buttons in that the plastic will act like a filter.  If you try to illuminate a piece of plastic that passes only a narrow frequency of light (color) and you have an equally narrow light source (LED) the two better be a good match or there is a good chance that you will not only not see the color you expect, but you might see no evidence of illumination at all.

Placing a pink LED behind a red plastic assembly will stall cause the assembly to glow red, but only at the intensity of the red component in the pink LED.  IOW, you might as well light it with a red led, because that is all you'll see.

Clear will be the only option.

RandyT

[Kaytrim]

Happ dosen't make a clear model.  Here is their product page.

TTFN
Kaytrim

[javeryh]

Randy - thanks for that info.  I didn't realize how these things even work!

Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether "Amber" means "clear" on the Happ site?  They also offer a pure "Yellow" one so I thought it would be odd if Amber also meant yellow - from the picture I posted above it looks clear, right?

[ChadTower]

It looks smoked, actually.

[RandyT]

Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether "Amber" means "clear" on the Happ site?  They also offer a pure "Yellow" one so I thought it would be odd if Amber also meant yellow - from the picture I posted above it looks clear, right?

Nahh, it's just that it's a monochrome image.  Amber is a warm yellow that borders on orange, but not quite.    Think of the stuff they found the mosquito in, in Jurassic Park

RandyT

[javeryh]

Does anyone have any thoughts as to whether "Amber" means "clear" on the Happ site?  They also offer a pure "Yellow" one so I thought it would be odd if Amber also meant yellow - from the picture I posted above it looks clear, right?

Nahh, it's just that it's a monochrome image.  Amber is a warm yellow that borders on orange, but not quite.    Think of the stuff they found the mosquito in, in Jurassic Park

RandyT

Awww nuts.   

Thanks Randy - I was almost ready to order them just to find out.  Excellent reference too - I know exactly the color you are talking about. 

I wonder how pink spray paint would work on the ones I have... I'd be losing the illumination but at least the colors would look right.  It is bugging me that everything on my cab will be pink or black except for red coin return buttons - they will stick out like crazy. 

Maybe if we put our heads together we could think of a solution...

[ChadTower]

Get the clear ones and put a pink plastic film in them? 

A plastics dye?

They make pink incadescents, maybe easier to try at first?

[polaris]

lighting gel
if you find a theatre suppliers you can ask for a free swatch book which will have pieces of gel (in all the pinks you can imagine) which would be big enough for a couple of coin slots. you might be able to get a swatch book straight from the manufacturers

[javeryh]

These are great ideas - I need to find the clear coin reject assembly first though!  I've been searching Google all day with no luck...  Someone has to make some Happ sized ones so we can get crazy with the colors!!

[Aurich]

I've never seen a clear coin button.

[bfauska]

I don't know if it worth the work to you or not, but you could always try to cast your own like the tron handle somebody on here is working on, then you could make it pink or clear.  Maybe this is a product that randy wants to make If the EI buttons were a custom cast then maybe he has a supplier that would do a run of them.

Probably more trouble than anybody wants to go into though.

Later,
Brian

[ChadTower]

Who says it has to be an actual specific coin release button?  There has to be something simpler that can be made/used.  It's just a button.

[bfauska]

Actually if you don't yet have the coin door, or you aren't going to make it functional anyway, you could figure out a way to use the same type of button randy makes the cool coin-in buttons out of.  That would probably be easier to find with clear plastic, then you could either use gel, or dye it.

 
Seems like it could work.


L8R,
B

[javeryh]

I do have the coin door already (the Small Single Coin Door from Happ).

How would I go about casting my own?  Is that complicated?  It sounds like it... 

[Tiger-Heli]

I haven't seen clear coin assemblies.

They used to sell blue plastic "dots" that you could put in the taillights of cars to get a pinkish-purple glow to them.

My point is I wonder what you would get illuminating the red coin buttons with a blue bulb or the red buttons with a blue bulb (and incandescents might work differently than LED's).

I thought I saw a website where someone tested various conbinations, but Google isn't helping me much yet.

[javeryh]

That's really interesting... I wonder if there is a certain combination of Coin Assembly + LED that will give the illusion of a pink glow.  The coin assemblies come in Red, Yellow, Blue, Amber and Green and I'm pretty sure LEDs come in all sorts of crazy colors...  How could I figure this out?

[ChadTower]

Try shining a STRONG white light into a red one.  Maybe you can wash it out?

[Tiger-Heli]

LED's come in many colors, and 194 automotive bulbs will work and come in blue and red.  I am thinking either red or amber with blue 194's might be closest, but that's purely speculation.

I found the site I was thinking of - looks like the closest he got was UV LED's to get purple -

http://www.blurbco.com/~gork/mamecab/coinleds/

linked from

http://www.retroblast.com/reviews/superbright.html

Minimal info here: http://www.notrica.com/arcade/coindoor.shtml

Also: http://www.arcadeparadise.org/arcade/ap3/lighting.html

http://retroblast.com/articles/coindoor.html

KevSteele tested a bunch of these, maybe you could PM or E-mail him and see if he still has the bulbs and return switches and could test some combinations for you.

[polaris]

Try shining a STRONG white light into a red one.  Maybe you can wash it out?

that wont work i dont reckon, youll just get a bright red and a button too hot to touch 

regarding making your own, bear with me on this as its a bit vague, but
my mate used to go to a design college they had a machine which could mold warmed perspex by a vacuum process, from my understanding you could carve a cube of wood suck a piece of perspex around it and you would end up with what your looking for ,a small raised 'groove' on the mold would facilitate easy cutting out of the actual coin slot.
if this doesnt make sense ill try and explain better. from what i understand its a cheap simple process as long as long as can you find the machine.

[javeryh]

Making my own sounds way complicated... I just don't have the experience to do something like that - or the access to any machinery.   

I'm going to keep looking for a clear one though and possibly experiment with the stuff Tiger-Heli posted. 

Also, what do you guys think of customizing the coin door a little to make the coin return doors pink as well as the frame around them and possibly the lock (as long as the paint wouldn't riun the actual locking mechanism)?

Kind of like this but prettier but you get the idea...

[ChadTower]

I'd either do the whole door or leave it alone.  That just looks too hard to do perfectly and one of those things you'll always look at and be annoyed by if it's not.

[javeryh]

I think all those pieces come off so I could spray paint them individually.  Maybe this weekend I'll take everything apart and put some masking tape on everything and then spray them pink.  If I don't like the look I can always take off the tape - if I do then I can spray the parts for real.  It's a win-win, I think...

[Aurich]

Also, what do you guys think of customizing the coin door a little to make the coin return doors pink as well as the frame around them and possibly the lock (as long as the paint wouldn't riun the actual locking mechanism)?

Not going to look good. Even if you paint it perfectly it's going to look very out of place, like you ran out of parts. I understand you've got a pink theme, but there's too much of a good thing. Look at your control panel, it's black, the coin door will look fine matching that. Either go all pink to hide it or leave it black. If you want a pink accent on the door then you need an actual design. I gotta go pick up something soon, if it comes out nice check my project thread for an idea of how you can bring a design to the coin door.

[javeryh]

Also, what do you guys think of customizing the coin door a little to make the coin return doors pink as well as the frame around them and possibly the lock (as long as the paint wouldn't riun the actual locking mechanism)?

Not going to look good. Even if you paint it perfectly it's going to look very out of place, like you ran out of parts. I understand you've got a pink theme, but there's too much of a good thing. Look at your control panel, it's black, the coin door will look fine matching that. Either go all pink to hide it or leave it black. If you want a pink accent on the door then you need an actual design. I gotta go pick up something soon, if it comes out nice check my project thread for an idea of how you can bring a design to the coin door.

Agreed.  After staring at it for a while I don't like it at all.  I sure wish I could get those clear assemblies though...

[ChadTower]

Do you actually need the ability to insert coins?  If you do away with the coin slot and just go with a rectangular button it will be a lot easier to source.

[javeryh]

I guess not...  I kind of want the coins to work though so I can limit my daughter's play time (hand her $5 in quarters/tokens and let her play until they are gone).  It will also force her to get good at the games she likes.  Are you talking about Randy's coin buttons?  Can those be swapped in for the assemblies?

[ChadTower]

I'm talking about any rectangular buttons.

Now that I think about it, if you don't need coins, what do you need buttons for?

[Tiger-Heli]

I wonder if you could use the red buttons and some type of translucent white paint on the interior of the button and get more of a pink tint . . .

[ChadTower]

Wouldn't work, the red plastic is still on the outside of the paint.  You'd just end up with a dimmer red button.

[javeryh]

OK, here's an idea...  what if I used colored LEDs behind the colored assembly to try and produce a pink color according to the color wheel?



What if I somehow got a purple LED behind the red plastic?  According to the wheel, Red and Purple make Pink.  Any reason why this wouldn't work?

[ChadTower]

Yes, because it's not equal parts.  You're shining purple light through a red lens.  It's not combining red and purple lights.  There's a small chance it would shine pink light on your leg but it's not going to magically change the red lens to pink.

[Tiger-Heli]

I mentioned the UV LED's looked closest to what you were looking for from the pictures on the site I posted.

I also think either red through blue or blue through red could get you purple with would blend in better with the pink theme than red will.

[ChadTower]

If he doesn't need the button/coin slot function he could just cut a small piece of plexi to fit in the slot that is any color he wants.  Hell, he could even animate it.

[RandyT]

I also think either red through blue or blue through red could get you purple with would blend in better with the pink theme than red will.

Nope, it doesn't work that way.  If you put a blue LED behind a red filter, you get squat

Read what I wrote in the post above.

RandyT

[Tiger-Heli]

Nope, it doesn't work that way.  If you put a blue LED behind a red filter, you get squat
Read what I wrote in the post above.

I did.  What about blue or red 194 wedge bulbs?  Same thing or not?

[RandyT]

I did.  What about blue or red 194 wedge bulbs?  Same thing or not?

Same thing.  Translucent, colored plastic is a filter and red filter passes only red light.  Same with Blue and so on. 

You can put an incandescent white light behind a red filter and it glows red, even though the white light contains virtually all the colors of the spectrum.  That's because those other light frequencies are being blocked and only the frequency of the filter is allowed to pass, in this case, red.

RandyT

[javeryh]

What about the link Tiger-Heli posted:  http://www.blurbco.com/~gork/mamecab/coinleds/

This guy appears to illuminate the red or yellow assembly (it's not clear from his post) and gets a nice purple glow...

[ChadTower]

Those are yellow buttons.  Not red.

[Tiger-Heli]

What I'm guessing is the yellow lenses, especially after some wear, and now faded and closer to clear, so more of the LED color shines through unfiltered.

The UV light is the one that looks purple, and might look good in your machine, though not a true pink . . .

[javeryh]

I can get yellow assemblies, if necessary... actually looking at my project thread I think I do have yellow assemblies (they appear to be standard on the small coin door).  I haven't looked at the coin door in ages but here's a pic of it:



So a UV light will make it purple, huh?  I've got a little bit of purple in my marquee (green too) so it might not look so out of place...

[Tiger-Heli]

The website also said the UV LED was not as bright as he had hoped, FWIW.

[Kaytrim]

Ok folks, think of a filter as sunblock.  It selectively blocks the UV rays from reaching your skin.  The coin return or any piece of colored plastic is a filter only it exclusively filters all light rays except for those that are the same color as the plastic.

What Randy is trying to say is that no matter what source you use for a light you will only get red light when it shines through a red filter.  There was a project here that tried to shine a blue LED through a red coin button.  The button stayed red but where the coin went through you could see blue.  I think it was sodapopkins PunchOut project.

TTFN
Kaytrim

[ChadTower]

What Randy is trying to say is that no matter what source you use for a light you will only get red light when it shines through a red filter. 

Not always that simple... it also depends on how deep the filter is.  Those red filters are really red and the yellow filters are only somewhat yellow.  The darker the filter the more it will block.  The lightness of the yellow color is going to help here as it's not going to be nearly as effective in blocking off wavelength colors as the dark red button.

[Aurich]

The front of Happ coin inserts, do they come off? My coin door has the whole front plastic come off. That wouldn't be too hard to replace with a piece of clear plexi and a pink gel filter. Drill out the back of the insert so the light goes straight through.

[RandyT]

Not always that simple... it also depends on how deep the filter is.  Those red filters are really red and the yellow filters are only somewhat yellow.  The darker the filter the more it will block.  The lightness of the yellow color is going to help here as it's not going to be nearly as effective in blocking off wavelength colors as the dark red button.

Exactly correct.  It has to do with the filters spectral transmission curve.  You can have a very narrow spike at the red frequency, and then only that shade of red will pass through, and then only at the percentage indicated by the height of the spike.  But if you have a broad, high curve that peaks in the yellow frequencies, it will appear yellow (or more likely "pale yellow") to your eye, yet allow certain amounts of other colors to pass as well.

In the absence of clear, the best bet may be a pale yellow.  It may still block enough to change the color of the LED, or be too dim, but it's probably your best bet.  "Amber" sounds like it would be too dark, but who knows.  One persons "amber" could be another's "pale yellow"

RandyT

[Aurich]

IME "amber" usually means a pretty orange color. I have amber LEDs lighting my coin doors for instance, and they're definitely orange.

[SodaPopinksi]

Unfortunately it seems Happ has discontinued the clear reject buttons? Because I remember 5 months ago purchasing my Green and Blue reject buttons and there was an ebay seller selling "Grey" as a color choice with a picture just like the one earlier in the thread. The same seller only has amber, red, blue, green and yellow now, the same that are listed on the Happs site.

[javeryh]

Unfortunately it seems Happ has discontinued the clear reject buttons? Because I remember 5 months ago purchasing my Green and Blue reject buttons and there was an ebay seller selling "Grey" as a color choice with a picture just like the one earlier in the thread. The same seller only has amber, red, blue, green and yellow now, the same that are listed on the Happs site.

Really?  That's so disappointing but it also means that someone somewhere has to have them... now I need to track them down...

[ChadTower]

Keep an eye on ebay for the coin doors that would carry that size button... and just wait for one with the buttons you want.

[polaris]

get some red ones and leave em out in the sun or put them on a sunbed see if the uv will bleach the colour out.-this is sort of a joke.
but it might work

[ChadTower]

It would also make the plastic really brittle in the process... more damage than good.

[polaris]

It would also make the plastic really brittle in the process... more damage than good.

cheers, i forgot to mention that.  ,and that itd take about 5 years in the sun or a planet destroying amount of electricity for a sunbed , but you americans dont worry bout that.
thats a joke before anyone has a go

[javeryh]

OK, I'm bumping up this thread because I've decided to BYOCRB.  I'm going to make a mold of one of the ones I have and try to pour something that will harden into the proper shape (and be pink). Some questions:

1.  What's the best way to make a mold?  Plaster?
2.  What's the best stuff to use for the plastic?  I want it to be clear so I can dye it (or maybe use a pink LED but I'd prefer dye).

Any tips would be great - I've never done something like this before but if it works I'll at least feel like I have something original on my cabinet...

[Kaytrim]

Send a PM off to Donkey_Kong or Pinewood_Princess.  They do casting for their carvings.

TTFN
Kaytirm

[javeryh]

Good call.  I'll do that right now.   

[Donkey_Kong]

We thought about the molding and casting of this piece in translucent materials would be cool but our supplier doesn't have a pink either. They only have [Blue, Orange, Green, Brown, Black, Purple, Yellow, Red] in translucent. I have attached some pics of trans casting experiments that we have done. The Ms Pac & GR sign shown below are casted in translucent yellow. Melissa painted pink onto the Ms Pac and it just isn't the same as using a die.

But seriously I think Melissa had the best idea yet for your project Javeryh...wrap the clear reject button in Pink Translucent Vinyl. It comes in about 10 different shades of pink. It is going to be just about $50 though for a 10yd roll if you ordered from the link provided below. One thing you could do is check with your local sign makers and buy a sq. ft or two from them and experiment.

Here is a link to the trans vinyl...
http://www.signwarehouse.com/shop/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=V-OR8500-1510

Hope this helps...Good Luck!!