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Leaf buttons tire my hands

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Level42:

Ever since I've owned a Suzo Home Arcade joystick (from my Atari 2600 until now) I've loved leaf switches.   The really early one's had leafs, later stupidly, Suzo changed to MS. Anyway, I think you could have two (or one of them) problems:

Take a look at the drawing I attached. I had always seen how some arcade buttons were so very much higher sticking "out" of the button rim than others. It was only until I restored my Galaxian CP that I discovered what caused this. ( I prefer the lower setting).

If you look at the drawing (this is from the Galaxian manual) then you see that the button is kept "in/downwards" by rings Number 4.
If you leave these rings out, the button is much higher, and you need to press it down a longer way.The rings are giving you a "head-start" by keeping the button closer to the upper leaf.

The other thing: take note of the amount of space between the CP and the leaf switch. If the lower leaf is too close, you will be bending it down (unnecessarily) deep. The principle is, that the upper leaf just touches the lower one when the button is pressed ALMOST completely.
At least, that's the way I like it.

That's one of the extra advantages of leafs over microswitches: you can set them up the way YOU prefer them to be. Like tuning a race car.  Tune it wrongly, and the car will feel lousy...same thing with the leafs....

About springs: I ordered 3 new white buttons for my Galaxian from Arcadeshop.com. Two of the buttons were exactly alike, but the third was just a bit different. One of the things was that the spring was a LOT tenser then the other two. So much so, that I decided to replace that one with one of the ancient springs  that were still in the old buttons of my Galaxian (of course, I took it of the 2 player button, least used !)
I like my springs to be "weak", I don't like to use force to press a button...I can imagine that a tense spring is tiring more than a weak one...

rockin_rick:

I recently got my first cab, a Vanguard.  It's leaf buttons are of the stiffer variety, and I've also had my fingers/hands tire out.  Maybe this is because I haven't played much and built up my button pressing muscles....  While I don't workout my forearms, I'd say I'm above average there.

I got some replacement NOS buttons to freshen up the game, and they ended up being (coincendentally) of the lighter spring variety.  I've yet to try them out...

Rick
 

pmc:

Well maybe I overstated the level of "tired" I get. :) The point is, the buttons are not set up right and fight back way too hard. To Level42's point, they need to be tuned.

From what I remember from the one time I disassembled and cleaned them: the buttons start out all the way up (very high), the leaves are near horizontal, and the springs are fairly stretched out and stiff and sproingy. They don't feel like an arcade button should and I have not adapted my play style to work well with them.

There's Lots of information here. I'll take 'em apart to better understand how they work and then modify them per the suggestions here. I'll post my results for the next guy.

RandyT: Yes, they are original (perhaps early 90s).

Thanks folks...

-pmc

RayB:

Could it be "long" vs "short" buttons, used improperly would result in too much resistance?


nate1749:

I don't mean to hi-jack this thread, but on my Donkey Kong arcade cabinet I have to slam on the jump button to get it to work, would replacing the spring be the right answer or the whole button assembly.  I was just going to order some parts off quarterarcade and hope they would do the trick after replacement.  Is there a spot to find more detail on how the buttons mechanically work?  I'm new to all this, but did go through the FAQ and attempted searching to find a solution. 

Nate

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