#pinrepair — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #pinrepair, aggregated by home.social.
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I finally had time to put Doctor Who's mini playfield back into the game. It's always bit of a chore as it's a very tight fit. I did stress test the new part with a hammer, but it was still a bit unnerving to see the new bracket getting hit by a pinball over and over again, but so far it seems good. The new opto boards also seem to work as during the testing phase.
The doctor is back in the lineup!
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The doctor is going back to one piece! #pinrepair
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After replacing the beaten up rubber grommet, I had a chance to show the effect a new one has. See how that bounce is just completely gone? This is how they were fresh out of factory.
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Since Doctor Who's mini playfield is getting its spa day, here's the 3rd level mechanism. The 3 Daleks are flyaway targets, a relative of drop targets except they get hang off something and turn horizontally when hit. Not that common mechanism, I think Bally's Speak Easy had bunch of these.
They have a small metal flap to keep them in the "dropped" state once you whack them with a ball. There's a unified release mechanism for all 3 at the side, which is actuated by a roller just below the playfield.
The game has to take the whole mini playfield down one level to reset these, which is why after each jackpot collect it seems to go down and then back up for no apparent reason. The game doesn't know their status, there's a normal micro switch elsewhere and these are purely ornamental, you can score the jackpot even if they were all missing.
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People often diss Doctor Who's mini playfield lift mechanism, mine's pushing 26 years after the initial rebuild and I've never had any issues with that part of it.
Just below the first stage however sits a row of 5 weird looking targets. They're optical, meaning each of them has a IR LED + phototransistor pair, which gets interrupted by the target when it gets whacked by a ball. While the design is very robust, every now and then one of the LEDs gives up the ghost.
The targets are in pretty hard to reach place, which requires pulling the mini playfield out of the game and disassembling the whole front part. When this happens, it gets a full service of regreasing the rails and the gearbox.
Also seen here is my go-to trick for diagnosing optos: just look at them through a digital camera. They always seem to emit at least some visible light even with the modern phones having an IR filter.
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Well there it is. Time to put the game back together. #pinrepair
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The crappy flipper buttons, don't get me started on those! Since the beginning of the time everyone used the kind where the moving part of the button was secured by an e-clip. Then something happened (early enshittification?) and a model where the center was just pushed in place surfaced. It had a small collar to prevent the center from just jumping out of the button frame, but that wore off from normal wear and tear, leaving surprised players with the flipper button center in their hands mid-game!
The Mandalorian seen here is just from the era where the good old model had made its comeback and in this case the button wasn't a total loss, the e-clip had just come off for some reason. Oh and the black ones are relatively rare, I think the Mando is the only one of mine to have those.
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Elvira had this really weird rattle in all the menu button sounds. At first I thought it was the speaker or amp going bad but then...
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I normally have these in stock, but I've had to replace several in such a short notice my spares collection hasn't kept up with the demand.
I epoxied it and sanded it a bit to make it smooth. #pinrepair
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Speaking of Road Show, its DMD has seen better days. I'll probably have to look into having Pin2DMD manufactured at some point, as my last real gas discharge displays are on their way out.
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Speaking of Road Show, its DMD has seen better days. I'll probably have to look into having Pin2DMD manufactured at some point, as my last real gas discharge displays are on their way out.
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Speaking of Road Show, its DMD has seen better days. I'll probably have to look into having Pin2DMD manufactured at some point, as my last real gas discharge displays are on their way out.
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Speaking of Road Show, its DMD has seen better days. I'll probably have to look into having Pin2DMD manufactured at some point, as my last real gas discharge displays are on their way out.
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Speaking of Road Show, its DMD has seen better days. I'll probably have to look into having Pin2DMD manufactured at some point, as my last real gas discharge displays are on their way out.
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The new 3D printed piece is in there and the lock pin solenoid works as intended! Instead of eternal ball search at multiball start, we're greeted with multiball goodness! #pinball #repair #pinrepair
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Contact's upper right flipper started sticking. It has worked so well that I have never needed to do anything about it. On closer examination, turns out someone had used WD40 or similar oil in the plunger, which had now gunked with pinball dust and started causing issues.
Some brake clean later it works again. RIK also got to take a look how different the Williams system 3 flipper mechanism is compared to anything else solid state.
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Mando's right ramp design if a bit iffy. The tiny ramp is so steep it sends the ball flying even at moderate powered backhanded shot and without the cover the ball just flies somewhere on the playfield. The original plastic is not very hardcore stuff and usually breaks within a year or two, mine was lucky to last to this day.
The replacement was made of transparent polycarbonate. Our design is single piece unlike the original, which has a small flap on top of the ramp entrance, attached to the main part of the plastic with metal parts. Naturally we lost the graphics, but I think I'll scan and print it at some point. To be honest, in most cases you really can't even see the graphics on that specific plastic thanks to all the reflections to the glass and the plastic itself.
But Mando is playable once again.
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Trashed plastics day. Mando has this flat plastic over its right ramp as it's so steep the balls just jump out of it at the apex. I think I'll just draw the shape and CNC it out of polycarbonate. #pinball #repair #pinrepair
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A player reported Striker Xtreme not getting balls out of the upkicker next to the goalie. Looks like half of the upkicker is missing. #pinball #pinrepair
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Last on the board was Viking. A player had reported its spinner being dead. I glanced at it when we were last open, but it was too crowded to take the glass off.
As I spun the spinner manually, I immediately made a note of how it's wire behaved. The spinner itself has a cam-like part at the end, that makes a wire go up and down as it spins. The wire goes below the playfield and actuates a leaf or micro switch. This being a very early 80s game uses a leaf switch. Since the wire was just hanging in there loosely, it was almost guaranteed something below the playfield had failed.
I had already mentally prepared to replace a snapped switch leaf, but fortunately the wire had just come loose somehow and this turned out to be pretty trivial repair.
But in the end I got to wipe the hall of fail board clean again!
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Well, I **HAD** all the machines in play and the hall of fail empty.
Enter Elvira. A player reports the garage lock behaving oddly, they had locked more than 2 balls in there. Odd, is it an opto failure? Nope.
As I raise the playfield, I see the lock mechanism's coil hanging there by its wires. Has its screws fallen off? Nope.
The fucking sad excuse of a coil bracket has cracked and half of it has fallen off. I'm seeing this kind of metal fatigue in Stern games way too often. Naturally since this is unique part, the game will be out of action until the replacement arrives.
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Burned 3 hours today debugging a stupid issue on the best* pinball machine in the world. The symptom was that its goalie wasn't catching the ball. If anyone remembers my last repair on it, it was the magnet that actually holds onto the ball last time, or more precisely the transistor that drives it had given up the ghost. So naturally I went with expectation of something burning the transistor, but the magnet ran just fine.
The game has 2 switches related to the goalie; an opto right before it and a mechanical switch in the magnet core. When the opto is triggered, the magnet starts pulsing, hoping to attract the ball towards it. If it catches the ball, the ball-on-magnet switch is triggered and the magnet starts to hold the ball.
This switch had died and the first spot was right on the switch. But it was naturally not that easy. I eventually had to pull the mechanism to discover the movement had caused a cold joint at the other end too. Fun times. #pinball #repair #pinrepair
(* lies)
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After replacing the coil, its sleeve and sanding the imperfection from the bushing, the left flipper finally moves freely and returns as it should. This means Buck Rogers is back in the lineup; it was the only machine missing, waiting for its turn as the lounge renovation etc. ate away our time.
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Took a stab at one project that has been in the back burner for a while now. Buck Rogers had multiple different problems with its left flipper, it randomly got stuck for no apparent reason, until it finally just stopped moving altogether.
The latter was pretty easy to debug. The flipper coil's end of stroke switch was loose and did not open. This resulted the coil getting cooked when a player cradled the ball.
The issue with it getting mechanically stuck even after the coil replacement was even weirder. Its flipper mech had been rebuilt from fresh parts and apparently the lower flipper shaft bushing had a small defect from when it was molded. There was a tiny protrusion, that caused it to chafe against the pawl, but only when the playfield was in playing position. When it was prodded up, this issue did not manifest itself. Fun times debugging.
But some hours later, Buck Rogers lives again. #pinrepair
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Revenge from Mars' jump ramp has been having issues, typically the symptom being the ramp collapsing from under the ball. It got its wear parts replaced and some other minor tweaks. The difference was very noticeable, now even weaker shots go far enough to register. #pinball #pinrepair #repair
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Viking got a bit brighter, did a lamp check on it and naturally all the hardest to reach ones were dead. #pinrepair
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Jackbot's right flipper got stuck. The problem was surprisingly the same thing as with Sharkey's shootout that got featured in a video earlier. But unlike with Sharkey, the plungers here were so-and-so, I wouldn't probably replaced them quite yet, but they were worn enough to warrant a full replacement on both sides to keep the symmetry. On the more positive note, they feel like new again! #pinball #repair #pinrepair
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Apollo 13 (Sega, 1995) is a curious beast. With 13 balls, it has the most balls in any serially produced pinball machines ever.
The 13 ball multiball is bit of a gimmick, but everyone seems to love watching it start. Then there's the maintenance aspect of things, as it naturally needs 13 new balls when it's time to replace them, instead the typical 3 to 6.
Here's the full procedure of replacing Apollo's balls, which includes getting the extra 8 out of the upper lock mechanism manually and then starting a new game so the game reloads them up there.
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Typically drop targets are in a bank and await to be dropped to score points. Some games however use them in untypical ways, such as gates or just obstacles to be defeated before getting access to other playfield parts.
Playboy (Stern, 2002) is one such game. It has a single drop target in the middle of the playfield and its main objective is to block the main ramp that would be otherwise repeatable to ad nauseam.
As you'd probably guess by now, this means the poor drop target is going to get the shit kicked out of it by abnormally high amount of hits. Either the flat part falls off, or the bottom breaks and no longer limits how far up the target can go, so it jumps out of its mechanism and gets stuck. This is very easy to diagnose visually.
The target also has a decal, which usually has purple back. I've had some issues sourcing it, so I just scanned it and nowdays print one with a label printer. The printed one lasts longer than the original.
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Boxful of things that can be pressed and another boxful of things that go flip. #pinrepair
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Some of you may remember that this Who Dunnit? has the 3D printed rightmost slot reel after the old one melted after a stepper motor failure.
Most importantly, the 3D printed reel has worked great! No structural issues and it looks very convincingly like the real thing when it's in the game. It however has a slight annoyance: I used a normal screw to attach it and eventually it starts slipping from the motor's shaft.
Today we put a stop to that and dremelled a groove into the shaft so the rather violent start and stop cycles won't make it slip any more.
Here's the model I released earlier: https://www.printables.com/model/1226743-who-dunnit-slot-machine-reel-03-9410-compatible
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Who Dunnit looks a bit naked without the slots mechanism. #pinball #pinrepair
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Had a fun game night at local hobbyist's mancave today. Shrek however crapped its upper left flipper mid-game, which was a head scratcher for a second as it wasn't the transistor, fuse, coil power in general, mechanical nor the flipper button itself.
Eventually it was spotted that the coil wire had snapped. One quick soldering job and the game was back in action.
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Today's cosmetic fixes includes the Mando's ship gun that fell off last Wednesday. These tiny parts are a bit challenging, as there's always a chance they get hit by a ball, so they always need some kind of reinforcement.
I drilled a hole in both, the gun and ship and then epoxied a small nail between them. Feels pretty solid. Let's see when the other side falls off.
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Ha, gotcha! It has a bad LED in it. It's supposed to have 6, but only 5 light up fully. I wonder why does it light up at all. #pinrepair #arcaderepair #electronics #repair
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An airball hit Mando's ship and knocked the other gun off it. It's pretty flimsy originally, I'll probably have to drill a support inside it before epoxying it back together. #pinball #pinrepair #arcaderepair
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I've seen these failed QR code readers elsewhere, but this is the first one to fail of mine. I'm tempted to take it apart to see if there's some obvious failure. Anyone else diagnosed this issue? #pinball #pinrepair #arcaderepair
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Godzilla was reported to have a dead bumper. Usually it's a case of a broken wire but this one was mechanical. It didn't take too long to see a situation where the bumper's skirt was stuck in a way it needed a ball hit from another angle to release it. Bumpers are usually pretty reliable and this exact failure has before only happened when something has fallen off the mechanism.
The skirt has a stick, that actuates a plastic part fittingly named spoon, which again presses against the switch contact. The stick was getting stuck on the spoon's side and looking more closely, the stick wasn't at the center at rest. Could be the switch has been worked on before and it wasn't checked when it was reassembled or something.
A quick realignment later it seems happy again.
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My Who Dunnit project is nearing completion. I printed the first production version of the reel and applied the decal to it. I intended to buy a set of decals, but this one peeled off intact. I had feared I'd never get it to look good, but this filament saved my day, I tip my had to Formfutura for their clear HDglass PETG. #pinball #pinrepair #arcaderepair #3dprinted
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I encountered an odd problem with Jaws. I booted the game up to check it before cleaning and I had an operator alert about the shark fin being disabled. The game asked me to run the test to enable it, I ran it back and forth couple of times and could not immediately see any of the position optos do anything funny.
As you can see from the video, the solenoid that kicks the shark fin up is pretty violent, these games suffer from so many solder cracks in connections thanks to the lead free solder used, although I assume the materials have become better from the early lead free solder that developed cracks if you looked at it wrong.
I examined the board with a magnifying glass, it appears to be intact. I'll chalk this one up as a fluke and come back to it if it starts acting up more frequently.
#pinrepair #arcaderepair #electronics #pinball #arcade #retrotech
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Mister Bond is no longer dirty, he's actually so shiny you can see the perfect backbox reflection off the playfield! #pinrepair #arcaderepair #pinball #arcade
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The lamp tests have become a lot less eventful when the games went natively to LEDs and there's virtually no lamp sockets to mess up things either. #pinball #arcade #arcaderepair #pinrepair
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Who Dunnit is having bit of a crap day. Last Wednesday a player reported the rightmost reel in its slot machine behaved oddly. I made a note it didn't seem to find its zero position and it rotated somehow oddly, so I just disabled them as the game doesn't need this mechanism to be played.
Today on investigation I found that the whole reel is somehow wobbly. I pulled the whole mech to investigate and sure enough, the motor is bad and it has probably ran so hot at some point it warped the plastic reel.
The reel itself has pretty simple geometry, I'm contemplating on just modeling it in CAD and printing it out of translucent filament. I already have some improvements in mind on its design. The decal is apparently easily available, as is the motor as it's just pretty standard stepper.
#pinball #pinrepair #arcade #arcaderepair #slotmachine #repair
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I investigated the Elvira's opto issue further. As I suspected, it has a design flaw, similar to the ramps; the hole for the opto switch's LED to shine through is misaligned.
1st pic: The two holes seen in the ramp that's attached to the playfield back board are for the solenoid that keeps the ball there and its opto switch. They're so close to each other that the opto has to be pushed all the way to the right so it won't touch the solenoid's plunger and thanks to this, it's nearly impossible to have it perfectly centered in the hole.
2nd pic: The opto's hole in the ramp is bit offset from the ball's path, so I did what I did with the right ramp earlier and drilled the whole 1mm larger. Now the opto was relatively easy to align
3rd pic: Now the opto board doesn't touch the plunger, so it probably won't start to move again in the long run. Still, this is a bit iffy design, which appears to be the theme in this gameplay-wise excellent game.
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My NBA Fast Break's shot clock (the two large 7-segments at the back) was partially dead when I bought the game. I couldn't source the exact same 7-segments used in this game (those are huge, I think 1.8") so I got the closest I could find and built a custom PCB to hold them. I wasn't sure if that'd hold, but it has now been there like a year and it's still working. Plus I like these tad bigger 7-segments compared to the original ones.
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I let it run in the test for a while and could not repeat the issue. Before it had like maybe 1 in 10 chance to get stuck in up position. Naturally the test alone won't recreate the conditions it receives when played, but I'm hopeful. I'll order the worn out part next time I'm ordering stuff from a store that carries it. Or it'll be one of those things that got hacked and it works another 10 years.
Can't believe RFM turns 27 years this year! I still remember seeing one freshly unboxed in the summer of '99!
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I suspected the solenoid, but it was this sliding surface that was deep grooves in it. The mechanism has enough play to cause it to stick because of them. I'll replace it, but as I don't have a spare at hand, I'll dremel down the worst of it and see if it lasts until a spare arrives. #pinball #pinrepair #arcaderepair
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I pulled the receiver side of the optical ball trough and I see someone else has also worked on this, there's some flux around the connector pins. The weird flickering issue with the switches disappeared when I wiggled the connector, so I have a strong suspicion about these insulation displacement connectors, virtually every other connector in the game uses individually crimped ones, including the other SPI bus on the same node board where this one terminates to.
The wiring harness got all new connectors and from a quick test game, the game no longer freaks out randomly during multiballs.
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Last time I had to deal with this issue with vice grips, but this time there was not enough screw remains left to get a grip. Alternative approach was to use the Dremel tool to cut a slot at the end of the screw and use a flathead screw driver to get the remains out.
After checking the coil stops (a really weak part in this platform!), I used better quality screws to put this thing back together. I really need to check my other Sterns, I think most have the factory screws replaced with something that isn't made of wet toilet paper, but fishing these screw remains is so annoying I might as well replace the rest too.