Button life cycle

[Benevolance]

My cabinet has been playable for about eight months and it's seen near daily use. One of the buttons is starting to go and needs to be replaced. Not the microswitch, but the physical button press mechanism.

This button has probably seen an abnormal amount of use; it's mapped to the 'A' button, which for NES rpgs is usually the only button you need to press. And I pretty much just play NES these days.

But it made me curious: how long buttons last for most people?

[Ginsu Victim]

Hell of a lot longer than 8 months.

[massive88]

Happ microswitches are tested for 10,000,000 cycles, I would still expect the microswitch to fail first.

Sounds more like you got a bum button, abnormal I would think.

[Ginsu Victim]

One of the buttons is starting to go and needs to be replaced. Not the microswitch, but the physical button press mechanism.

Describe this.

[TOK]

Pull it apart and clean it. If still bad, replace. $2.00.

[DJ_Izumi]

Sometimes part's just fail early.  That's what warrenties are for.

[Namco]

Take it apart. Probably some plastic chaff from the molding process. Rub a bit of white lithium grease in the wall of the button and you should be good.

[Jack Burton]

Physical button press mechanism = a spring.

Spring is no longer springy? 

You gotta be shitting me if you're saying you wore a hole through the bottom of the plastic of your button. 

[Benevolance]

Basically, this button wasn't triggering the microswitch with consistency. You'd press the button, and sometimes it would stick in the down position. Other times it wouldn't trip the switch; like, you'd press and instead of feeling that point of resistance when the switch triggers, there'd just be nothing. The first few times I'd open the CP up, wiggle things around from the inside, and it'd work again for a while.

I already replaced it; I bought more buttons than I needed when I made my order. But I was more curious if others had this happen. Namco probably has the right of it and I will give his suggestion a try and see if it operates smoothly after that.

If not, well, it's $2. It'll obviously set my retirement plans back by a few years, but...

[Kayden]

I had this same problem and it turned out to be little burs left over from the casting process.  I shaved them off with a strait edge razor and spun some sand paper around it and now they're silky smooth.