Real Pinball Plunger on Control Panel - How To

[DeLuSioNal29]

Has anyone had any success with mounting an actual plunger in place of the plunger button on their control panel?  I was trying to come up with a creative way of doing this without killing the microswitch or leaf switch.  I don't have to do it, but it would be a nice touch instead of a button.

The BYOAC Wiki doesn't give much info on how to do it:  http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Pinball_Plungers

I was looking at the microswitch option shown on the link above and was thinking that maybe I could extend the metal so that the switch would not take the actual abuse of the plunger smacking into it.  Instead the flexible metal would take the hit.  (see attached photo below that I altered to show my idea - the extended piece of metal is represented by the red line).

Thoughts?

P.S. - You can buy a plunger here:  http://www.lakesidepinballparts.com/pbplunger.html

[ark_ader]

I would construct a plastic housing around the plunger mechanism with a sliding switch.  So when you release the plunger, whatever rate or speed it would count as one button press.

Obviously we would have to go into specific detail here, to get my meaning, but I would resemble the mechanism to a sliding drawer with a contact along various sections of the plunger enclosure.

So you could have a soft touch or hard on the plunger to have the same effect.

The enclosure you have to be plastic so not to conduct or bridge of your switch.

Thats how I will do it when my sub mini virtual pinball cabinet is completed.

Thanks for the link.

[SavannahLion]

Hhmmm... I'd imagine several ways to go about it.

One would be some sort of laser (ie a mouse laser, or a doorway alarm, etc.) that sends a beam across a point where the actuator breaks the beam. A small circuit to prevent the laser from being seen as "pushed" in when in a rest state. Pull the plunger back, the circuit/laser resets, release the plunger, breaks the beam and triggers a button push.

Another would be to rotate the switch around 90 degrees and move it lower. So the mere act of the plunger moving past (instead of against) the switch would trigger the switch.

Lastly, how do auto plungers work?

[mountain]

The WIKI has a link to this site.
http://www.johnsretroarcade.com/hardware_pinball.asp#overview

I built this circuit into my CP and it works great. The only way to go in my opinion.

[mountain]

Almost forgot.

Instead of putting a leaf in the path of the plunger, I almost reversed this idea. I was going to mount a large fender washer between two E clips on the plunger (incorporating the one that holds the spring in place) When the plunger is pulled it would trigger the switch launching the ball when let go. This will work with most pinball apps. The longer you hold down the switch, the harder the ball is launched.

It seems I like to wire stuff and make things more difficult so I decided on the circuit.

[ahofle]

To me one of the biggest issues with doing a plunger right is that it has to be an analog control, and pinball emulators (that I've used at least) don't have this.  Visual Pinball uses a single key down and times how long you hold it to determine shot power.  Pulling it back a half an inch and holding it for 2 seconds would yield a harder launch that pulling it all the way back for 1/2 second (which is of course inaccurate).  It would be nice if you could map to a pot somehow and actually record how far you bring the plunger back to determine the launch power.