The Aussie Pinball Arcade
Aussie Pinball Forums => Archived Threads => Homepin => Topic started by: Homepin on March 05, 2015, 01:23:42 PM
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The replacement coils project has been fully approved by A. Hankin & Co. They will be wound on our own Homepin coil formers that we manufacture in house.
Here is the label for the first coils (subject to change):
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/Hankin_ES100_Label1.jpg)
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This is great news my hankin coil collection is bare
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Great News, Mike. I have a small ox of NOS Hankin coils somewhere with the distinctive white wrapper.
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The coil wrappers arrived a couple of days ago:
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hanklabels.jpg)
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I have an "Orbit 1" in for repair. Guess what it needs ?
ES100 coils.. *%*
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I have an "Orbit 1" in for repair. Guess what it needs ?
ES100 coils.. *%*
The first batch will be finished this Saturday.
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First new Hankin pinball coil for 30 years.....we have started finishing them and they will be ready to ship Monday.
We haven't fitted the sleeve to this first one yet but they will be supplied with new Homepin sleeves.
The three types are shown in the second picture.
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hankines100.jpg) (http://www.homepin.com/pics/hankincoilswound.jpg)
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Congrats Mike, nice to see - sadly I no longer own a Hankin, but nice to see this former Aussie Manufacturer resurrected!
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Fantastic. I have a few coils from the old days, but not the ES100 - which was the most common Hankin coil.
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Bought a few second hand ones 6 months ago. These would have been much better @.@
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Finishing the Hankin coils. There is a LOT more work in making a simple coil than is probably appreciated by most people.
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/coilfinish1.jpg) (http://www.homepin.com/pics/coilfinish2.jpg)
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I know people say stern are charging too much for games now, but looking at homepin's ops, everything seems very labour intensive. I guess it would be great to have equipment to automate a lot of processes but not economical given the numbers. Also contracting out may enabling dealing with orgs with access to automation, you then pay for it anyway. So take away the Chinese costs advantage, pinball manufacturing and margins may not be that great??? I dunno. Do you envisage Mike once business ramps up and becomes accepted by other manufacturers, that a lot of the labour intensive stuff you have presented to us can or will be automated to achieve mass production. And being in China will that also lower costs further making pinball more affordable? Thanks
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Very valid questions. The problem I face here every single day is that of volume. Suppliers simply are not interested in making or supplying smaller quantities.
Yesterdays example is T-Moulding. We are halfway through developing our new lowboy upright video game and I need 15mm black T-Moulding, nothing special (you would think) but the 5 factories we contacted (and visited two of them) do not stock anything. It is all made to order and the minimum orders are massive.
In the end I had to pay for a die to be made (not expensive for a single colour moulding, about AU$200) but then I had to order 5000mts of product - each machine will use about 5mts so I doubt I will be reordering any time soon.
This same problem goes on with anything you want made or done - quantity, quantity, quantity.
Pinball, worst luck, is mostly lots of different parts but all in small numbers!
This is one reason we do as much as possible in-house. I got tired of having to wait for small tooling from one place every time we needed something so it was easier and much faster in the end to buy a new milling machine - that was one of the best things I have bought here.
I know people say stern are charging too much for games now, but looking at homepin's ops, everything seems very labour intensive. I guess it would be great to have equipment to automate a lot of processes but not economical given the numbers. Also contracting out may enabling dealing with orgs with access to automation, you then pay for it anyway. So take away the Chinese costs advantage, pinball manufacturing and margins may not be that great??? I dunno. Do you envisage Mike once business ramps up and becomes accepted by other manufacturers, that a lot of the labour intensive stuff you have presented to us can or will be automated to achieve mass production. And being in China will that also lower costs further making pinball more affordable? Thanks
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Here is one of our coil winding machines winding the secondary for our EL transformers but the same thing applies to wind other coils such as these Hankins:
https://youtu.be/791MhDiOLiA
After the termination of the leads and adding the diode we confirm the inductance of the coil both static (with NO iron plunger inside) and active (WITH the iron plunger inside).
You can see how much it changes between the two states and this is the most accurate test to confirm the coil has been wound correctly.
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/coiltestin.jpg)
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/coiltestout.jpg)
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So how many Henrys does it take before needing to change a coil?
(Geek humour :D)
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We have moved on to finishing the ES110 flipper coils.
You can see the massive difference in the inductance of the hold winding when comparing to the pictures I posted earlier of the standard ES100, single winding coil.
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hankin_flipper_coil_test.JPG)
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We are finally getting finish, packed coils off the line. A few pictures showing our packing.
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hcoil3.jpg)
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hcoil4.jpg)
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hcoil2.jpg)
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hcoil1.jpg)
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Wooohooo, I bought my first homepin product just now and can't wait to try and assembly the rectifier for my si. Thanks Mike
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Gotta hand it to Mike and the team at Homepin.
Loving your recent packaging decisions. Look fantastic.
Think I'll order one or two coils based on the packing alone.
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Gotta hand it to Mike and the team at Homepin.
Loving your recent packaging decisions. Look fantastic.
Think I'll order one or two coils based on the packing alone.
Agree - it is noticeably different to receiving them loose.
Packaging really does make a difference in marketing. Apple clearly know that. It sends the message 'if its packed that nice, it is a quality product'.
Now you just need the pinball machine, so that you can look forward to buying/receiving spare coils.
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Maybe even look forward to some nice boxed Zacc replacement coils down the track?? && &&
Hey, I can always dream!
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One electronics assembly room is finishing the run of Hankin flipper coils today (ES110).
Fortunately while I was editing the pictures I just took I picked up that the wrong label was being applied to the coils (my error).
Luckily we had only wrapped about 20 coils at this point! I called myself a "BenDan" in front of the staff (Chinese for "idiot") - they laughed!!!
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hc10.jpg)
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hc11.jpg)
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hc12.jpg)
(http://www.homepin.com/pics/hc13.jpg)