Does anyone carry Illuminated Balltops, other than SLIKSTIK?

[baylorj]

Does anyone carry Illuminated Balltops, other than SLIKSTIK? 
Having alot of trouble finding any.

Thanks

[Franco]

Lizard Lick (www.lizardlickamusements.com) sell Seimitsu LB-39 Clear Joystick Ball Tops that fit Sanwas and Seimitsus



Ive just bought four clear ones from www.arcadeshop.de as lizard lick were out of the clear ones.

Im going to make some hollow stainless shafts with a counterbore to fit a 5mm LED for my Sanwas. I think the bubbles in the balls should refract and diffuse the light nicely. Hopefully I should receive the balls in the next couple of days and Ill be able to try one out.

If they are succesful ill let you know and I should be able to make you some shafts to fit any joystick base as well as the ball tops.

[Franco]

My ball tops arived yesterday so I have had chance to have a little fiddle with them. I was going to order them from lizard lick but they were out of stock of the clear ones so I ordered them from www.arcadeshop.de instead and I must say I was most impressed with the service. Shipping only took a couple of days from Germany to the UK and they came very well packaged.



I took one into work with me this morning and also some LEDs I bought from ebay. As you can see from the picture below the insert nuts in the balls are open ended, its a good job other wise no light would have been able to shine though to the ball.



I test fitted one of the LEDs in the ball and the main body of the LED fit nicely inside the bore but it it stopped on the shoulder of the LED. It makes sense really as the thread is M6x1mm so the bore of the screwthread is 5.1mm. This wasnt really a problem as you can easily remove the shoulder with a fine file. Once the shoulder was removed the LED fitted all the way inside the ball leaving about 5mm of thread. This would probably be enough to hold the joystick shaft but I wanted a bit more for it to hold on so I ground of the top of the LED on a bench grinder although you could easily do it with a file, I was just being lazy. The (very bad) picture below shows an untouched LED, one with the shoulder removed and one with the shoulder removed and about 4mm taken off the top.



Once the extra material was taken off it allowed the LED to fit further into the ball which will give the shaft more to grip on.



I then attached a resistor and soldered some wires onto the leads (excuse the soldering, im pretty crap at it but I have 100 or so LEDs to solder for my project so that will give me plenty of practice  ) Obviously thee will be heat shrink etc on the wires and leads when I do them properly, I was just eager to see the result!



I then gave it 5v from a PC PSU and shazzam!



    

That picture really doesnt do it justice, it looks beautiful, you can see every bubble and the brigtness is spot on.

I was hoping to make the hollow shafts for my Sanwas but im still waiting for the to arrive, hopefully they will be here by monday and I will be able to make some then.

[baylorj]

Hey, that does look really good.  Thanks for the replies.  I was going to use a Happs P360 and was hoping to find something that was ready to install, but I may have to break out the tools for this one.

Thanks Again

[Grasshopper]

Wow, that's really nice.