33 replies to this topic

[Phil Cline]

I used to build meters and zappers of my brother's design and have decided that if there is enough interest that I may start up production again with the meters first and then move on to the zappers. The zappers take lots more expensive parts so before I plunge headlong into them again I would like to get a feel for the demand.

The gaussmeters will be $225 plus shipping and I should be able to get up and running on those quickly. If you are interested just email me.

I will post a photo as soon as I have a unit completed. You will notice a striking resemblance to the probe on our meters and the one Les Wright sells or sold. That is because he "borrowed" our design. We did it four or five years before he did. Actually my cousin's design, to be more precise.

However I do have one of the zappers my brother was building that is new and ready to go. He got sick and he lost interest in doing them and concentrated more on getting over lymphoma. He is better now but he said that I should build them because I did originally. The zapper is exactly the same as the one Ron Hershman uses at his shop for his ceramic magnets in his motors. I built motors for him for a long time so I should know. With a steel slug or an armature between the magnets you will fully saturate any ceramic in use today. It won't do anything for the original old 16D white and red Parma magnets. Nobody including Alpha or Koford or Pr -Sot can either even with their big units. That material is just crap!

If anyone is interested in the zapper it is $325 plus shipping. There may even be another one of those I will have to check though. I accept PayPal. Call or email Ron Hershman if you care to. He will assure you that I am on the up and up.

Thanks,

Phil Cline

[HarV Wallbanger III]

I sent you a PM, it will show in your email as from slotblog

[Zippity]

How will your products compare with those that already saturate a very small market?

[Phil Cline]

I don't know. In the US the market is not that small or saturated.

Phil Cline

[chaparrAL]

Is your zapper cap discharge or a regular old pokey?

[Zippity]

I don't know. In the US the market is not that small or saturated. Phil Cline

Then it will be interesting to see just how many orders you receive, won't it?

[Horsepower]

Good luck, Phil! Always good to see another quality builder in the fray.

I'd love one but since I have a Trix Trax and my building is about zero due to a problem with my paws, I can't help you there. I WILL spread the word where possible, though!...

[Guillermo Suar]

Are you talking about the units that John Acello used to sell?

[Phil Cline]

Then it will be interesting to see just how many orders you receive, won't it?

I am not sure how interested you would be or why it would be of any concern of yours. I am trying to fill a need for real test equipment and tools that work. You must be a rep for somebody or it really shouldn't matter. Not sure why the attitude for someone who doesn't know me or hasn't seen the products.

The market isn't "saturated" with good products. It is saturated with some pretty sad stuff!! Most of the stuff sold to slot racers from power supplies to gaussmeters are junk or at best marginal in design. Oh well. Typical racer I suppose.

I knew there was a reason I don't miss racing any longer. What slot racing needs is more people to run off the somewhat dwindling numbers of racers. It is just like what ham radio people did a while back.

Phil Cline

[Phil Cline]

Is you zapper cap discharge or a regular old pokey?

It is capacitor discharge. I can send a copy of the manual as a PDF if you want to see it. Of course you will need Adobe reader.

[Phil Cline]

Good luck, Phil! Always good to see another quality builder in the fray.

I'd love one but since I have a Trix Trax and my building is about zero due to a problem with my paws, I can't help you there. I WILL spread the word where possible, though!...

Thanks! At least there are some nice racers still out there.

[Phil Cline]

Are you talking about the units that John Acello used to sell?

These were only sold by me or my brother or Ron Hershman. They are now going to be from me. Sorry for the delay in answering.

[Horsepower]

Phil, if it isn't too much of a hassle, maybe you could post a picture of the zapper?...

[Rick]

Are you talking about the units that John Acello used to sell?

Being that John Acello is a good friend, and not a member in Slotblog, I would like to set the record straight. John has not and does not knock off anyones elses products, much to the contrary in respect to his products. He makes the finest Gauss and Resistance/Inductance meters offered by anyone. They have become the gold standard to compare to.

Being an electrical design engineer, he is well capable of making all his products of his own design...

[Zippity]

I am not sure how interested you would be or why it would be of any concern of yours.

It was your arrogant and condescending attitude in your first post that got my back up.

Good luck with your sales.

[John Acello]

Being that John Acello is a good friend, and not a member in Slotblog, I would like to set the record straight. John has not and does not knock off anyones elses products, much to the contrary in respect to his products. He makes the finest Gauss and Resistance/Inductance meters offered by anyone. They have become the gold standard to compare to. Being an electrical design engineer, he is well capable of making all his products of his own design...

Well, Rick, I humbly accept your opinion of my products, but there is an inaccuracy in your comment: I am now a member of Slotblog and joined specifically to address the situation where a gauss meter competitor on eBay used my name in this thread to ask whether I might be the "borrower" of someone else's design and also suggesting that I "used to" make the meters. Useful in creating a competitive advantage. Rather poor form, not to say bordering on libelous.

I still make the meters but chose to sell off eBay. Strictly by word of mouth now with infrequent sorties into eBay. eBay does not, and probably cannot check the validity of the claims made by a seller. For a product such as a gauss meter, the typical buyer does not have the technical knowledge to ask the right questions of the seller and therfore can be at a disadvantage.

[Horsepower]

John Acello... makes the finest Gauss and Resistance/Inductance meters offered by anyone. They have become the gold standard to compare to.

Here I thought the R-Geo was the best! Mine still works fine!

[Rick]

LMAO, we have a deal, he doesn't make zappers and I don't make guass meters. And yes R-Geo are still the best out there. TYVM!

[Phil Cline]

John Acello is a new name to me. I may have lost valuable points with that statement. But that would not be the first time. Nor do I care! I would actually be very interested in a conversation with him. Not to pick his brain but just to hear what he thinks about the current state of slots!!! If he makes good stuff then I applaud him!

When a racer buys a product and it is better than another he tried, that is a good thing! But if you have a Harbor Freight DVM and that is all you have ever had they seem very nice. But get a Fluke or an HP 6-1/2 digit and you will wonder what you were thinking.

I will not enter into a pissing contest with people that have disregarded what I have to offer. Thye have their agenda! My brother and I started this entire segment of the slot market as far as CD zappers and affordable digital magnetic field strength meters are concerned. Not to mention inductance.

We built a lap counter in 1980 that was entirely digital and didn't use a computer (CMOS 45XX and 40XX logic).That counter was in service until at least 1990. We lost track of it. The track owner Larry Spencer had just opened up the raceway and he said his old clunk-clunk counter sucked and didn't work (another geared toward slot racers product!) He had a Tri-State race scheduled. My brother designed the circuit and I laid out and etched the PC boards and drilled and stuffed them and we installed the thing and we had two weeks notice!!! It worked flawlessly!! Ask Richard Akard or Rande Marshall!! They will confirm this! (Rande has won the USRA Nationals Group 7 pro main (should have won it in Georgia on the Purple Mile but didn't.Long story!) Have you won it?? Didn't think so!!

Computers back in 1980 (before IBM PCs and clones) had slow clocks (typically about 1 or 2 MHZ) and were all reliant on programming timing loops that were not nearly as accurate as a good timebase divider and a crystal controlled clock! Yes, of course milli-ohm meters and gauss and inductance meters have been around but not geared to the slot industry!! And certainly not affordable to the average racer. Zappers (Simco... yes I am that old!) have been around for a long time and with the Arco (Champion of Chamblee. Bob Kennedy ring a bell? Probably not. Ask Ray Gardner?) mags of the day and the Muras, those zappers were quite good. At least as far as the materials they used for slots then were concerned.

The newer stuff isn't all that much different. The HCi is higher due in most part of the particle size control and such. The Japanese manufacturers like TDK and so on have that down. It is important!! But I find it really funny that I hear the same crap now as I did 25 years ago in the slot circles. Might be because they are the same people! If you are interested in a product I am offering just email through this site.

If John Acello wants to speak with me that is a welcome thing. But the guy that claims he is a good friend won't get him in contact with me. Just a hunch though! By the way. A good inductance meter for instance can measure the difference between .3 and .4 microHenries with three digits past the decimal point on a 1 uHscale. Ever heard of microwaves? That **** matters at 40 GHZ!! Not at the measly frequencies at which even a group 7 armature commutates!! A good milliohm meter is actually a picoohm meter or even smaller.

By the way, does he have a method of measuring the resistance at a given temperature? Our meters didn't but it was a consideration. And if you don't see a significant rise in resistance after holding the arm for a few seconds then it ain't accurate. The ain't was to keep in line with the guy that thinks I trashed his buddy!

Thanks for your time listening to this rant!

BTW your gold standard is more like antimony. Not saying that John A's stuff isn't good in the slot realm. It likely is very good, but you have no clue what truly good really is. You deal in slots. It doesn't have to be good. Determining the effect of the Er of a PC substrate with a chip varactor or the width of a stripline has to be good! Slots don't! They have to be a bit better than adequate! With CNC winders the resistance shouldn't vary by 1 mOhm if the blank was right and the tension was adjusted properly. Oops! So much for that! Resistance is only important if you run scramble wound stuff or are looking for a bad weld. Or it should be! The holes aren't centered in any lamination blanks! Or did you guys know that was a concern! They all look the same after you grind them to OD, don't they. Ask your favorite arm maker to send you a lam and take it and have it measured for concentricity! Better yet, don't! It will just piss you off! BTW on a totally different note. Anyone ever heard of magnetic moment? Thought so!

Again! I did not wish to enter into a pissing contest. If you are interested in a product let me know. Otherwise don't!

Phil Cline

[Guillermo Suar]

John,

I never intended to say you were the borrower. Let me explain myself. I thought that the one offering your meters was your cousin and I was being accused of being the borrower. I did not know the initiator of this thread and I erroneously assumed he was your cousin. My intention was to ask if the units offered for sale were yours and not the other way.
You probably know this, but in case you don't, I was the guy selling a similar meter on eBay. We had quite a fight for some time and like you I stopped selling on eBay, and I'm actually only selling when somebody contacts me.

I apologize for the misunderstanding, and I would like to use the opportunity to tell you that I did not borrow anything either. In a matter of fact my first model was a TrikTrax style matcher, and after selling a few, somebody contacted me and asked me to build a model with a wand. After that I started selling on eBay.

There is nothing secret in building these meters. All the necessary information can be found on the web if you know what you are looking for.

If you at any time have the opportunity to check one of my meters you will probably see that there is no much in common more than both use a wand with a Hall Effect device inside and are powered by a 9V battery.

I have nothing against you and I really would hope you didn't have anything against me, but seems to me this is not the case. I don't expect you to be my friend, but I don't think I'm your enemy. We were just competitors on eBay.

I really thought you were not selling anymore and because of that I said "used to sell". I intended nothing libelious. Anyway, I also apologize for my poor selection of words in how I asked the question, but unfortunately for me, English is not my first language and this would not be the first time I've been misunderstood.

[idare2bdul]

Some of you guys are going to get, "Does not play well with others," on your report card.

I think you did come off a little cocky in your post, Phil. I'm sure you will have a quality product. There are a few other companies and each one seems to have satisfied customers and I'm sure some have complaints as well.

Good luck to all you guys that make products for us slot addicts.

[John Acello]

Well hello, Phil... I am the new name and I have no issue with you. In defense of Rick, I think that he was correcting the inference of the person wondering, by question, if I was the guy "borrowing" you or your brother's designs. That's all. So rest assured that I haven't copped any of your collective's stuff. I prefer to figure my own stuff out. He was responding to someone else's comment about me and apparently stomped on a hot button.

Now for the rest of the note. Great vocabulary and questions. Slot racers don't need pico-henry resolution nor pico-ohm resolution. And resolution doesn't mean accuracy or stability. What I do is put a stable, repeatable, and accurate product out there at a good price. The caveat on "accuracy". When I first developed the inductance part of my armature meter, I scaled it to give comparable readings to those reported by your meter, even though those readings were about 15% off. This was soley to avoid confusion around values, as the absolute value (within reason) was not as important as the difference between readings of each stack.

Actually, I never knew people measured arms that way until I saw your meter at Port Jefferson. Being an engineer, I tried rolling my own and put resistance and inductance measurement in a 2.75 x 5 x 1 box. People saw it, it was stable and repeatable, and as good as your typical DVM in accuracy. (Intentional inductance mis-scaling excluded). They like it and have made several hundred so far. CAD layout, plated through holes with silkscreen and solder mask, yada, yada.

Oh, by the way... my meter will show the rise in resistance after holding a few seconds, but that isn't accuracy; that's resolution and stability. And I warn the user to be careful of the effect.

The concept of good in the slot realm is exactly what was sought. No, I didn't go for a 4 wire system (even though my board is designed for it) since the mechanical interface cost would go up slightly. But I do have a very stable two wire interface. The inductance meter is good for ceramics and cobalts, is accuracte and stable and cheap. Talking someone into spending more than they need for something they really don't need is not good for the sport and in my opinion, bad form. So, what would you do with the knowledge out to the sub-millihenry. Even stack readings is the critical parameter and for that you need stability and repeatability.

And oh yeah, I do understand the notion of magnetic moment and that is why I tell people that an armmeter is only a piece of the puzzle. I even tell them that we can pick a bunch on arms with the same meter and with the additional armature "clues" I will probably, on average, be faster using the same setups. This is not a driving statement. Mediocre at best there.

And strip lines, and varacters and PCB effects, know that, too. You don't have to prove anything to me. I would love to chat with you and even trade ideas. And I do agree that there is a lot of mediocre stuff out there. My strong preference is to stay out of your pissing contest. I merely wanted to set the record straight with regard to a question posed by Suar which in my opinion was meant to discredit me. Maybe I was wrong there, but my experience suggests not. I have no issue with you and respect you (or your brother or both) as doing pioneer work in slot elctronics. We okay?

[John Acello]

Hello Guillermo,

I accept the apology. I must admit that I did feel good about what I perceived as your MO was on eBay. That is now behind us and had I seen this before my post to Phill, would not have repeated my original notion. The slot racing community is way too small for us to be chewing on each other. I appreciate the response and I consider the matter closed. Looking forward to doing some retro racing and maybe we will cross paths.

As for the borrower issue, Les had someone else doing meters before either you or I. Those he left for better products. As for similarity in probes, how many ways can you use 1/8" x 1/4" tubing? That's about the only solution short of custom extrusions.

Anyway, Ciao, Guillermo, and thanks.

[Guillermo Suar]

... Looking forward to doing some retro racing and maybe we will cross paths.

Thanks, John. I wanted to set this straight and I'm glad you understood my position.

I'll be in the Sano retro race in Chicago this year as I was last year. I hope to see you there.

[Cheater]

John and Phil, welcome to Slotblog.

Thanks to all the posters in this thread for keeping in mind Slotblog's requirement of civil discourse. This thread seemed to have the potential to get ugly but thankfully it has remained civil.

Phil, your original post would have been more properly placed in the Swap Shop forum, as you are offering products for sale. That forum would have been a better location for your advertisment, but now that we've had some fairly interesting discussion, we'll leave it here in General.

I would suggest that you should make a post in Swap Shop as well.