RE: Star Wars thumb trigger repros (question regarding)

My vote is #2: The anodization process makes the surfaces on the aluminum
harder and the oxide surface is more abrasive than pure aluminum, certainly
much more so than plastic.

So, that can mean that #3 is also true, if they put in the aluminum
buttons..

Thanks,

Chris Brooks

  _____

From: Clay Cowgill [mailto:c.cowgill@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2009 12:27 AM
To: vectorlist@vectorlist.org
Subject: VECTOR: Star Wars thumb trigger repros (question regarding)

Hey everyone.

Just wanted to run this by the list and see if anyone else has noticed any
problems...

I have a set of the annodized aluminum thumb trigger replacements that I put
in Ground Kontrol's Star Wars a couple months ago. This last weekend I went
back to replace all the microswitches in the flight yoke since some seemed
to be failing-- only to discover that what had apparently happened was that
the mounting holes that the thumb triggers fit through had essentially
'egged out'. The holes in the handles had worn away such that they were
oval and no longer held the thumb button actuators tightly enough to ensure
direct downward pressure on the microswitch below.

Anybody else seen this? I have a host of theories that all seem a little
thin:

1) The holes were actually worn open by the original plastic actuators and I
didn't notice before.

2) The zinc alloy in the handles of our flight yoke is particularly soft and
lost the battle against the annodized aluminum particularly quickly.

3) The amount of play time on Star Wars at Ground Kontrol is such that a
couple months in there is equivalent to a decade or two of 'collector use'
and it just hasn't been noticed on home-use machines.

#1 doesn't quite pass the sniff test for me since I never remember seeing
that on any other machines-- which I'm sure had as many hours on them as our
machine has had since. #2 is possible, although it's a little strange that
four different metal pieces would all wear down like that (I'd think that a
'bad batch of metal' would be more likely limited to a particular part they
were casting at the time-- not four different molds with parts that all
wound up on this one machine). #3 *seems* the most likely to me, but I'm
just guessing at this point.

I'm thinking I might just make some plastic thumb buttons instead (I've
already done plastic finger-triggers) to be on the safe side. I'd be
curious to hear from anyone else about it though.

Thanks,

-Clay

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Received on Tue Jun 2 06:42:42 2009