The colour enhancement that LED allows is pretty evident.. ive seen them in STNG and it does look bloody great!!
The notion of less current draw is an interesting one though. The reduced current draw is certainly not at your 240V wall socket where you pay your bills from. The power supply in pinballs is still a straight AC transformer. Its output is determined by the winding ratio between secondary and primary.
In other words, once you apply 240V across the primary winding the secondary will pump out the same power no matter what.
You do draw less current by using LED, but the transformer does not produce less current.. what is not used in the circuit is then lost in the form of heat in the windings, so you in fact cause your transformer to run warmer.
We find this all the time in the neon industry... the transformers should be loaded at 80% of their 30mA output limit. Under this amount and you run your load harder causing a loss of time that the neon will run as the electrode shells run warm, the transformer runs hot also. Anything over this 80% limit and you attempt to draw too much current and run your transformer hard causing loss of life in that.
Straight AC transformers are designed to work within a load limit... LED in your machine will not save you any $$$'s - you have to change your transformer to do that. It is also feasible that if using ALL led you will burn your transformer out... but this is theorising and i cannot of course prove this.
Now... were your power supply a switch mode type, then yes.. it churns out what is required dependant on load... but your AC winding transformer will always convert X to Y no matter what you do, unless you change the winding ratios
the comment about the heat may be true with neon transformers (high voltage secondary winding) but this is not the case with a transformer that has a secondary winding lower than its primary winding.
the later transformer will draw x milliamps when there is no load but the more you load the secondary winding the more current the primary windings will draw from the 240v ac supply.
I just set up a transformer infront of 2 people (1 from this forum) with an amp meter in series with the primary side. With no load the primary side was drawing 250ma, as soon as i put a 50watt lamp on the secondary side the current draw on the primary side rose sharply to 750ma then dropped back to 640ma. as soon as i disconnected the 50watt lamp from the secondary side the current on the primary dropped back down to 250ma.
the transformer that was used for the test had a secondary winding rated at 24Volts, and the maximum load it can take is on the scondary is 27 amp (around 648 watts)
with a wire wound transformer (that has a lower secondary voltage than the primary) the more you draw on the secondary the more you draw on the primary.
The more current you draw the hotter the transformer will run.
My old boss at hawko will back me up on this. Hawko manufactures there own wire wound transformers. They buy the E & I pieces, copper wire, & spools. Then they start by winding the thin primary winding, next the thicker secondary winding is wound on (the higher the va the thicker the secondary winding). the E & I pieces are then put on the spool, then it is dipped in isonol. it is then baked in an oven for about 6 hours to dry the isonol. And last, the terminal blocks and thermal circuit breaker is fitted to the transformer.
if need be i can video the test and up load to youtube
