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Heads Up For Stern owners

Just tried wedging down the flipper button on my SST cab for about 10 mins.

MOSET is fairly hot to touch, but certainly not at 100 degrees as my skin didnt come off :rofl:

No IR thermometer sorry
 
lukewells said:
Just tried wedging down the flipper button on my SST cab for about 10 mins.

MOSET is fairly hot to touch, but certainly not at 100 degrees as my skin didnt come off :rofl:

No IR thermometer sorry
Click to expand...

Nice try but I don't think SST is a new enough machine... :rolleyes:
 
Just had a quick look on pinside and found this:

Both of my flipper transistors failed within 8 months in my NIB game. Replace it with the beefier transistor (IRL450N--about $2 each from various sources), and it will be no problem. In fact, I highly recommend ordering a few extras and replacing both transistors (q15 and q16?) at the same time. Save you the hassle later.
Big Daddy has 5 for $9: http://www.bigdaddy-enterprises.com/electronics/e_transistors.htm Pinbits also has them, etc.
Mine fried simply from holding the flipper up for a minute or so. Once during multiball, once when explaining rules to a friend during a game. Stern used sh!tty transistors, is all.

Another post:

At some point, they upgraded the 22NE10L transistors to 40NE10L, but it didn't fix the problem. I had one of the 40NE10L ones fail in my Tron, and I would guess your TAV has the newer ones as well. Has anyone had an IRL540 fail after replacing it?

And from LTG : )

There are some crappy electrical components out there. Not the pinball manufacturers fault. We are seeing higher than normal failure rates than we used to for new products.
LTG : )
 
I suspect it is more likely that they are using fakes as I have not seen any issues with the STM parts before.

@TYHO - can you confirm the part number of the one you replaced (or what the one that you have not replaced and is still on your board is)

And if someone who has had 1 failure would be willing to remove the other flipper transistor that has not yet failed, then we can test it's failure point using a high current bench supply and a DC load, and we could also do the same with a known genuine part from a reputable source and compare the results to see if the Stern souced ones are dodgy.
 
Right,here we go......

Manual quotes MOSFETS STP22NE10L

Reality is different

As soon as I took my board out I realised that the one in my MOP(NIB) had been "reworked",as the majority on the Mosfets fitted were
P40NF10L
But Q15 and Q16 which presumably the factory had reworked were different.

So Q16 is an IRL540 that I put in,the factory reworked Q15 is a BUK9529100B

So I doubt that many different makes would be crap - I think the BUK one is a 46A one!!

Not to bothered about the reworked board - esp as at least a higher rated Mosfet was put in
 
Interesting.... so many other factors could be involved. If the coil resistance was a bit off (~3 Ohms) or the voltage a bit high (~60VDC) then current could swing up to 20A continuous. Or maybe the pulsing on a hold is a bit off. Increasing to a 2ms pulse every 12ms would require the MOSFET to dissipate 110W. If the pulsing was fudged completely the MOSFET would be generating over 650W! That's a lot of heat to get rid of...
 
lukewells said:
Just tried wedging down the flipper button on my SST cab for about 10 mins.

MOSET is fairly hot to touch, but certainly not at 100 degrees as my skin didnt come off :rofl:

No IR thermometer sorry
Click to expand...
As a rule of thumb - human pain threshold sits at about 70 Deg C - so if you can touch a component and hold your finger on without significant pain it's <70 and anything else is above. I use this when choosing heatsink size!!
 
DrPinball said:
As a rule of thumb - human pain threshold sits at about 70 Deg C - so if you can touch a component and hold your finger on without significant pain it's <70 and anything else is above. I use this when choosing heatsink size!!
Click to expand...

Hahaha I love that approach to deciding whether a heatsink is sufficient :)
 
TYHO said:
Right,here we go......

Manual quotes MOSFETS STP22NE10L

Reality is different

As soon as I took my board out I realised that the one in my MOP(NIB) had been "reworked",as the majority on the Mosfets fitted were
P40NF10L
But Q15 and Q16 which presumably the factory had reworked were different.

So Q16 is an IRL540 that I put in,the factory reworked Q15 is a BUK9529100B

So I doubt that many different makes would be crap - I think the BUK one is a 46A one!!

Not to bothered about the reworked board - esp as at least a higher rated Mosfet was put in
Click to expand...


OK so we know they used 22NE10L's without any abnormal failures for YEARS

The fact that Chris's New in box MOP has re-worked (uprated) transisors, indicates that Stern must know that they are experiencing an abnormal failure rate and they attempted to fix the problem by putting in significantly uprated transistors.

As this is not curing the problem then we know something else is wrong.

As previous I am sticking with these 2 suggestions :-

1) The parts are fake or substandard (we can test this if someone who has had a failure is willing to remove the other still working one)

2) They have messed up the PWM in code and the duty cycle has (accidentally?) been significantly increased? Or (not familiar with SAM2) have they possibly moved the PWM from software and done it in one of the FGPA's as a hardware solution and possibly there the problem lies?
 
lukewells said:
Or (not familiar with SAM2) have they possibly moved the PWM from software and done it in one of the FGPA's as a hardware solution and possibly there the problem lies?
Click to expand...

Could you shed a little light on SAM2 and FGPA for the uninitiated, please?

Basically, WTF? ;)
 
lukewells said:
OK so we know they used 22NE10L's without any abnormal failures for YEARS

The fact that Chris's New in box MOP has re-worked (uprated) transisors, indicates that Stern must know that they are experiencing an abnormal failure rate and they attempted to fix the problem by putting in significantly uprated transistors.

As this is not curing the problem then we know something else is wrong.

As previous I am sticking with these 2 suggestions :-

1) The parts are fake or substandard (we can test this if someone who has had a failure is willing to remove the other still working one)

2) They have messed up the PWM in code and the duty cycle has (accidentally?) been significantly increased? Or (not familiar with SAM2) have they possibly moved the PWM from software and done it in one of the FGPA's as a hardware solution and possibly there the problem lies?
Click to expand...

Stern don't make the boards in house so I'm guessing fake is most likely.

I've had a Tron LE and a friend with a MOP LE and ACDC Premium all go when holding the flipper up for too long (about 2 minutes) and then dying. It's either SAM board design or components, I'd lean towards something in the design of the board.
 
lukewells said:
2) They have messed up the PWM in code and the duty cycle has (accidentally?) been significantly increased? Or (not familiar with SAM2) have they possibly moved the PWM from software and done it in one of the FGPA's as a hardware solution and possibly there the problem lies?
Click to expand...

I would be voting for this as the cause myself. PWM control has been known to cause issues on other games over extended periods. It's like the settings are ok for 30 secs continuous use but then need to be amended as the time gets longer and the MOSFET and coil start to heat up. I guess that sterns PWM flipper control is fixed in the fpga. The values from sega whitestar days used to be 40ms pulse on then 1ms on every 12ms
 
So am I okay to go ahead and replace my blown BUK9529 transistor with an IRL540n on my Avengers board?
 
Last edited:
DrPinball said:
As a rule of thumb - human pain threshold sits at about 70 Deg C - so if you can touch a component and hold your finger on without significant pain it's <70 and anything else is above. I use this when choosing heatsink size!!
Click to expand...

I used that method in a former life when i was testing Intel and AMD chips..
 
chris b said:
one easy way to stop this just activate coin door ball save in the menu open the coin door let the ball drain go make a cup of tea on answer the phone shut the door again game then puts ball back in shooter lane to carry on again
Click to expand...
Many a dinner has been ruined because I didn't know about this feature, cheers!
 
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