Use of extension cords and quality?

[PinNova]

I know the use of extension cords is quite common for home pinball/arcade purposes. Question is, what duty/gauge and length is optimal? Obviously, a wall outlet for each machine is best, but if not available how many pins can (should) be run off one extension cord?
Now, arcade games with original crt monitors, I assume they are more demanding than a pin, perhaps they should have their own extension cord?
I've heard stories of long cords causing reset issues etc on some pins, if this is a concern what is the max safe length to use?
Let me know your thoughts and what you're using in terms of duty,length of cord and how many games it's serving.
Thanks for the advice.

 

[Menace]

Generally the use of extension cords is frequent, and as long as you use a good quality / large gauge wire cord you will get the best results given the conditions. Basically you want to use the largest AWG with the shortest length possible. The problem with using cords is the longer the cord, the higher the resistance will be, which ultimately creates a voltage drop across the cord. If the voltage drop it too great, you are at risk for game resets.

So, the larger the gauge of wire the less resistance the cord will have reducing the voltage drop. Make sense?

I'm currently running my entire lineup of pins and vids off 2 long extensions and I have zero reset issues, but I'm using very large / high quality cords. (12 awg commercial stuff) Oh, and pins draw more than classic vids with or without crt's.

Hope this helps.

D

 

[Monkeybug]

Don't scrimp on the extension cord. I was once chasing everything on a WPC game that was resetting. The last piece of the puzzle was a cheap extension cord that was dropping the voltages on me. Not sure if that was the only issue, but it was one for sure.

 

[flyer666]

if your going to you use them...get 14/2 gauge wire no power loss with this gauge

 

[Menace]

if your going to you use them...get 14/2 gauge wire no power loss with this gauge

That's not entirely true, as it all depends on the length of the cord. Say for instance you had a 14awg cord that was 100 ft, your wall voltage was 120 and you had 4 pins connected to it so assume a 12 amp peak load, you'd be looking at up to 3-4% voltage loss from one end to the other. (About 4 volts) While that may not seem like much, if you have a source voltage that is lower and games that are sensitive to low voltage conditions it's enough to cause issues.

Using the same parameters as above on a 12awg cord, you drop the loss to under 2%, so in these instances size DOES matter. :lol:

D