Hi all,

Thought i'd ask if all coils (flipper/bumper/slingshot etc) are all the SAME within the one machine?

I realise coil specs would be different between companies, but would they all be the same within the 1 brand? e.g. Could i pull a coil out of ANY williams pin and throw it into another williams pin without caution?
(same for Bally-to-Bally or Gottleib-to-Gottleib etc).


Also, assuming coils are unlabeled or label fell off, are there certain values of ohms that might indicate what the coil is used for? e.g. 20ohm=flipper, 40ohm=bumber etc.

Hopefully finding some standard info might help a lot of us clarify and burning coil problems when we buy semi-working machines (who knows if someone threw a bally coil into a williams before we got it?)

MM.

Starting with your first question... the answer is NO. Coils vary throughout the machine, and vary between machines of the same manufacturer.

Coils use different wire gauges and amount of turns to make them stronger or weaker than others. Some also have 2 windings on the same coil former, which have different wire gauges and amounts of windings to each other. For example, a common coil is: 23-800. This means that the wire gauge is 23, and there are 800 windings (turns). While an old Bally flipper coil is 25-500 / 34-4500, meaning that the first coil is wire gauge 25, with 500 turns, and the second coil is wire gauge 34, with 4500 turns - all on the one coil former, which will have 3 lugs and not 2.

For info on the wire gauges, have a look at this on Wikipeia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge. The majority of pinball coils use the American wire gauge standard.


You can measure the resistance of any coil, but you will have to allow for a tolerance. ie: a 23-800 might measure 12ohms, while another 23-800 might measure 13.3ohms. (I have not measured any for this example). It is not a definitive indication of what an unknown coil may be, but would at least put you on the right track. Having said that, Gottlieb does list the resistance of their coils in their manuals.


Your best bet is to have a look in the manual for the machine to determine what coil is needed. You can use a Williams 23-800 in a Bally machine that calls for a 23-800 coil... you only need to make sure that the wire gauge and turns are the same.

HTH