The Play field

Hi, welcome to this weeks blog post. As aforementioned in the previous post, I will be doing a post about the play field. The play field is very important to basic game function, and the looks of the machine. As we know this is where the ball lives when the machine is not sitting idle, rapidly bouncing from bumper to bumper and flying through spinners. But with all this play the field slowly wears, creating small divots where the ball may slow down, and overall ruining of the paint job. If your play field looks like it could use some work then read onward.

Our play field looked like this, note this is after the removal of Mylar*.


We are lucky enough to have Finn working with us who is a fantastic artist who has an amazing talent for color accuracy. The first step to allowing Finn to do their job is to clean the field of wear and tear like grime or glue. Most importantly though Mylar. Mylar is something a pinball machine arcade owner would install in their machine to prevent wear and tare. Well in reality this actually causes more damage to the play field because the ball has to hit this tiny ridge which over time divots the wood in that area, as well as causing abnormal wear to the paint. How to with GEO did a good video on removing Mylar linked here. In his video he used a heat gun to melt the Mylar off, however we used air duster to freeze it off. From what Mr. Sandler told me, use the air duster unless it is really damaging the play field then use a heat gun. As you will also notice Geo already removed all the play field components before doing this. With our machine we removed the Mylar with the components still in tact, but I believe this is because there was only Mylar in the front bumpers.

Now whether or not you decided to remove the Mylar we can move on here. We have at this point cleaned the play field with cleaning supplies [put link here].
Now come removing the plastics from the play field in order to have better access to everything and allow Finn to repaint. I was not around when we removed the plastics but I have this photo.
 
As you can see we removed the majority of the plastics but left the components intact. These will be cleaned or replaced later. With the now clean play field Finn can paint till his hearts content. If your thinking "wow that looks scary and difficult how will I not lose pieces." Well organization is key, put all like objects in the same bags. Take plenty of photos, the most important thing is just common sense. 

Okay lets fast forward lets say a week[random amount of time] now we ask, well how do we protect the play field to prevent further damage and having to repaint again. Well you have two options, either clear coat like shown in one of Geo's videos, or you can purchase a play field protector which keeps paint in tact, and speeds up game play. We went with a protector as it keeps things much simpler. Now just put all the plastics back on, and Ta Da you have a repaired and better functioning play field.

If you think I missed anything please let me know. As always leave feedback and questions in the comments. This may be the last post for awhile, as school is coming to a close and I will no longer have access to the machine. Hopefully come September I will be able to post again, but depends on my schedule. If this is the last post for a while, I hope I am not forgetting anything urgent, and best of luck to you! Thanks for reading my blog, see you in September. [Will edit if something changes.]



Note: did not remove the Mylar from here yet.

Time to repin connectors

Welcome back, another week skipped which I apologize about there was not much time to work. Today we are talking about the next thing to fix in the machine which was mentioned in Basic Troubleshooting.
Re-pinning connectors! The oh so joyous task that is so very tedious, and be assured that it is very likely to be necessary on older machines. To correctly re-pin the connectors you will need a couple of things, mainly a crimping tool, I recommend this one from Amazon for $23. Next thing that you will need is a wire stripper. This is not a necessity but oh so very helpful versus using scissors or a blade. And finally the most important item, the actual pin terminals. I am almost sure that we used Pinside to buy the terminals, but I will update if I am incorrect. On a side note, if available you would want to purchase the next plastic connectors to make it look nice and prevent confusion for later on. And a screwdriver to remove the terminals from the connectors, or a professional terminal remover. Now that we have these items we can begin the work. First decide where you want to begin re-pinning. I had started on the rectifier board.
The first step is two take a photo of the connector to know where the wires go in in case you forget.
Quick note, these are not all the same connectors in the photos, as they were done at different times.
 
After this you can start on either the left or right side. I chose the right side. I used my screwdriver to remove it.

Then once removed you want to snip the terminal off of it like so.
Then with your snipped wire.

Put it into the wire stripper at whatever level looks/feels correct.
It should look about like this. (sorry about bad focus)

 Now take your terminal. looking at it we can see two fins on the right side of it in the photo. The one closest to the left side of the terminal is what the wire should attach too, an the other fin is for the insulation to attach to. Very important.

And place it in the crimping tool like so,

from here squeeze the tool until you hear a click or two.
it should look like this if all went well.

Now insert the stripped wire into the terminal like so,

Pull on the handle of the crimping tool all the way until you feel the pressure release. After that the terminal should pop out of the crimping tool. The wire should not leave the terminal. Now it is as simple as putting it into the correct spot of the plastic connector or wafer, either the old one or the new one. Now repeat this for all the pins on the connector. I don't have a perfect photo of a newly pinned connector, will be added later.

There you go! You completed your first terminal replacement of many to come. As you can see the process is not very complicated, and is quite straight forward the only difficult part is the time it takes.

If anything was unclear or didn't make sense feel free to comment down below I am more than happy to help, or to learn something myself.  I can add any suggestions in. Feel free to give feedback as pinball is a learning community. I am not sure what the next blog will be about, I may make a mini post about the play field. Let me know below.

Replacing the rectifier board.

Hello, its been 2 weeks. I was busy last week but here I am with a great blog post. This week I got to learn from a pinball master. His name was Chuck and was a self taught pinball extraordinaire. It felt like there was nothing that he did not know. Well on Thursday the 9th he helped replace the rectifier board in the machine. This is a good first thing to replace if you are dealing with any problems in the game. Replacing the board was not as complicated as I thought. It was honestly very straight forward. Anyway enough talk lets outline what we did.

UNPLUG THE MACHINE FROM THE OUTLET
This is the original board that was in the machine. The first step in replacing the board is unplugging the wafers from the board.The next step is to unscrew the screws that are keeping the cage attached(the metal with all the holes). Then remove the screws that can be seen on the right side of the image. Then remove the screws on the left side (not it photo). After this it if separated from the wall. Set the assembly aside. It is very heavy to be a little careful. If you see in the image there are 4 brown pin looking things. You want to pinch these with some needle nose pliers and pull the board off them gently. After this you are free to begin. Next up is your work space/materials you need. Well a workspace is a simple as a place to work. For materials, you need a new replacement board. In our case we bought a new Rectifier board which works for all Bally machines. We also need a soldering iron to remove the wires from the back. Don't worry about copper wick as the board is junk after replacing it. Okay now we have our work area, soldering iron, and solder and Wire strippers. Now make sure to take photos of all the connections present on the board for reference. Normally don't be too worried as you will be going wire by wire, but good practice.


Now that we have the pictures we may proceed. If I had a picture of the back of the new board I would put that here, but instead I have a front image which still relays the needed info.


 If you notice there are the letter E followed by a number. These are where the wires are going to go. If you check your original board, you will notice they also have the E followed by the number. The trick is to match the wire with the same number. Also quick but important note, you are applying the wires to the back of the board shown above not the front. Start wherever you want on the Original board and cut the wire with about 1/4 of an inch still attached to the Original board. Now use the wire strippers and strip about a 1/2 of an inch of tubing. Now stick the now exposed wire through the matching E X hole. If you can have someone hold the wire, or else fold it under. Now take your soldering iron and solder the connection onto the board. Let it cool then give it the tug test, just a little pull. Assuming it stayed in move onto the next wire. The process is the same throughout. Now some connection have double wires, they work the exact same. They have no specific orientation when it comes to which hole to put it in. Ta Da, you just hatched the new board to the Power distributor. Next step is putting it back in the slot, and re screwing everything. Now at this point you might have noticed I never mentioned the fuses. Well assuming fuses came with the new board you order you have to put them in the correct spots. To do this check the original board for the correct Voltages, as the board we used did not have them listed. Just go down the list and match the fuses with voltages for the slot. After this, plug the wafers back in and turn the machine on. Assuming everything went well, which if you followed this tutorial I am 95% sure it should, you now have successfully replaced a part on the machine. Give yourself a pat on the back. If it does not turn on, make sure you plugged the machine back in. And if it still doesn't work go back and take it off and check the solder connections. This is tedious so make sure to get it right the first time.

There you go, a tutorial on how to replace the rectifier board. Remember to leave comments and feedback down bellow. And feel free to ask questions, pinball is all about learning together. If you think I did something wrong, feel free to comment it and I will add it in.

Basic Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting, whether its your WiFi, your phone, or cable box troubleshooting usually begins with unplugging it and plugging it back in. Well in the case of pinball machines, that is usually not the case. Instead pinball machines prefer to focus on a self diagnostics test. On what I believe to be all or most pinball machines have a self test button located on the coin door. [I do not have an image but it will be updated with one.] This button sends the machine through different tests with every press, or sometimes with just one if it automatically runs through. In order to properly troubleshoot everything it is highly recommended to have your pinball machines manual. This is because your manual tells you what each self test is and what you should look for to see if something is broken. For example on my machine if I press the self test button 3 times it activates the solenoid driver test. If I didn't have the manual I would have been concerned when all the solenoids start making a crud ton of noise and sounding like something is going horribly wrong. So beside the self test button the number 1 thing for troubleshooting is the manual, as is gives all the details of your machine. Okay, so now you have gone through all the self test stages according to your manual, now what? Well if everything worked as the manual said it should, then Congrats it looks like your machine is in working condition in respect to minor details. But you encountered a solenoid that doesn't work, or a strip of lights that supposed to be on but isn't. For the solenoid try and find a tool to run a current through it to see if you can manually set it off. If it works when you apply the current that means that it is a problem in the back box. In order to fix this problem, as far as I know, is to replace all of the wafers connected to the solenoid board as it is difficult to pinpoint what wire specifically it is, also it is just overall better to just replace the wafers as they are more often than not the larges liability for breaking. As I am not experienced in this repair I highly suggest you google how to strip the wires and replace the pins[insert link here]. The same goes for your lights that are off, unless the lights are dead which should be checked first, you are going to have to replace the wafers and connections in the back box. After doing the replacement rerun the self test. If all went well everything should work good as new.

In the next blog post I will be detailing the cleaning of the machine and how to make sure all the connections are clean and working along with giving the cleaning supplies recommended. Feel free to give feedback and ask questions I am more than happy to help.

The Machine

If you have opened up the back box of your machine, and assuming it is not electro-mechanical , it might look something like this.

These are the main components in the machine that make the machine work. In the first image the top bored is called the MPU board. This is where all the points and scoring happen. The MPU runs the machine with anything processing related. The board below that is the Lamp drive assembly, this drives all of the lamps in the playing field, like what lights should turn on when I hit a certain area or score. The second image is the solenoid drive assy (short hand for assembly). This drive all of the moving parts in the machine. Ever wonder what makes knocking sounds, or makes chimes go off, or maybe even how the pop bumpers work? Well all of that is done here, sending signals to the solenoids activating them and giving you an enjoyable playing experience. The last picture is the rectifier board, or the PSU i believe. This is what powers all of the boards listed above, and without it nothing would work. On Bally machines, which is the brand of the machine being worked on, the rectifier board is often troublesome causing fuses to blow and wafer connections to burn out. All of these boards work together to bring you a playable pinball game.

Although this all may look extremely complicated if your are completely new to this line of work, it can be easily simplified and understood just by understanding what parts do and how they should act, which is what the next blog post is about, Troubleshooting. Along with the different portions of the play field on this particular machine. Feel free to give feedback and ask questions I am more than happy to help.

Introduction

Hi, My name is Vincent and I am a high school student. One of the teachers is a pinball enthusiast, and has allowed me to work on fixing up one of his pinball machines. The pinball machine I am currently fixing is a Bally 8-ball pinball machine from 1977. This is my first time working on a pinball machine so I am learning as I go. The plan for this blog is to create a guide to repairing pinball machines to a working condition. Feel free to ask questions as I might be able to answer them and don't forget to leave feedback.