Author Topic: Spongy Flippers / Flipper Chatter - Trampoline Effect  (Read 121 times)

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Offline Steve2010

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Spongy Flippers / Flipper Chatter - Trampoline Effect
« on: July 27, 2013, 03:33:13 PM »
Not sure if the title is the best, but it is what I have seen this issue referred to as.  This is where the flipper bat is in the up position (ie. flipper button pushed in), and the flipper is able to be moved back a bit.  This can be either by applying pressure with your finger, or sometimes if the ball has travelled a bit of distance down with some speed and hits the upper part (ie. near the tip) of the flipper bat in the up position.

With sufficient force, the flipper bat momentarily moves back a bit, then very quickly moves forward.  During play, this is annoying, as the ball hitting the flipper bat "trampolines" back up.  I like the flippers in the up position not to move at all.

I have been rebuilding flippers in most of my games, and had ordered flipper rebuild kits from PBR.  This machines I have cover the period from about the mid 70's through to 1981, so there are two types of kits.

As per the image below, 1 is one of the original coil stops (this one from Power Play), 2 and 3 are respective coil stops and plungers from PBR for the different era of games during this timeframe.






The flippers in the Power Play had the trampoline effect with the old coil stop (1), so I replaced with the appropriate kit from PBR (ie. plunger and coil stop).  I then noticed that the trampoline effect had diminished, but still was present enough to be annoying.  I then removed the PBR coil stop (2) and tried the coil stop from the other PBR kit (3).  The trampoline effect virtually had disappeared, the situation was greatly improved.

By the way, the PBR kit (3) is excellent with respect to the trampoline effect.  The combination of the coil stop and plunger (3) is really excellent.  In my Skateball, tremendous force is needed to pull the flipper back from the up position.


Ideally I would like to find an excellent coil stop match for the plungers used in games for 2.  Using the type of coil stops PBR provides in 3 with the plunger type in 2 (which Power Play needs) improves the situation, but it is still distinctly shy of the plunger and coil stop combination of 3.

What are other's experiences with this?