Replacing incandescents with LED

[milewis]

Has anyone replaced or considered replacing the old incandescent bulbs with LEDs?

My mom found two mid 70s machines (a Diiachi and a Sanyo) in the trash and picked them for me. They have some water damage to deal with, but everything is there and they are cleaning up well. The Diiachi machine is missing the lights and the light mounting pieces. the switches for empty balls and for jackpot are still there though. I was thinking about adding some LEDs and a microcontroller to run the circuit and lower the voltage from 9 volts to 3 volts. This would also allow me to add blinking of the lights or possibly tri-color.

The machines are both a litle too far gone to ever be perfect, so I figured they would be good candidates for conversion. I'll be sure to post pictures of the conversion and would be more than willing to share the schematics and code with anyone who would like them when they are complete.

[hanabi]

Hello


Welcome to PachiTalk!!

That sounds like a fun project and I look forward to following the progress

Congratulations on saving 2 pachis from the trash too!!

[Card Shark]

I would PM Emmadog. I believe he has added LEDs to several machines. Good Luck with the project. I will be looking forward to hearing how it turns out.

PS:

​Welcome to Pachitalk!

[mxfaiman]

to Pachitalk!

I have added LEDs to the incandescent bulbs in the circuit. Fairly easy to do. But if you put in LEDs you have to label the + and - sides. I put in the LED and soldered a resistor to one side to drop the 9v in the circuit to 3v.(I actually use 6v instead of 9.) Works great. I have yet to have an issue with one of the machines I did that to. Below is the back of one of my machines.

73_nish_rear_max.jpg

Here are some close ups of the circuitry.

battery holder, pedal car, pachinko 009.jpgbattery holder, pedal car, pachinko 011.jpgbattery holder, pedal car, pachinko 014.jpgbattery holder, pedal car, pachinko 030.jpg

[CarlW]

Here are some screw in, bulbs that fit in the same bulb socket as the regular flash light bulbs...

15pcs White E10 3V 6V 9V 12V Led Bulb for DIY LIONEL,WL i | eBay

[pachiwall]

I have considered converting to LED's also. As for cost...I eventually buy LED's in bulk and calculate what resistor to bring my source voltage down to LED voltage. As far as "too far gone to ever be perfect"...since most are common, and will rarely have historical or BIG CASH value, I rarely consider how what I do will affect value. There are RARE, or HISTORICAL machines...most of us will never have them. I have a few that I don't stray from original...like it matters, they still aren't for sale! Do what you do! And post pics!