Now that the Hot Tip is working again, I have started work on re-assembling the Harlem Globetrotters pinball table back box.
After getting it all painted up, the next step was to get the shell pieces back installed.
Its amazing, how I am able to miss important pieces when photographing the old set up. I took over 40 pictures of the old shell as I took out the boards, mounting brackets and metal sheets, and I never got one picture that showed if two pieces were supposed to connect or not.
oh well, I am doing my best on this and should soon be able to turn it back on and see if it works!!!
Saturday, October 14, 2017
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Hot Tip Finally Working
After my soldering woes, I was getting close to throwing in the towel on the Hot Tip and start looking for a replacement board.
I pulled the board again, scraped some more, plugged the board back in, turned it on. And again - no solenoid action except one that was on continuously until the fuse blew.
I lifted the playfield and thought I might unsolder the solenoid that was having trouble to see if that helped, but when I looked underneath it looked to be in great shape and worked manually just fine. Besides, the only thing that changed was my soldering in the new DIP-Switch.
sigh...
Time to pull the board out and scrape some more, I must still have a short where I accidentally over-soldered the connections.
This time I noticed one of the chips was halfway out of the chip holder, one side was up high and the other down low. I pushed it in, scrapped some more and put it all back together.
Low and behold it worked!
Now that I think about it, it may have been the chip all along and I may not have needed to do the scraping at all.
But, now everything seems to work. In test mode, all of the lights, bumpers, switches, etc. all fire just fine. The game plays, scores count, everything is good except...
Now the flippers won't work.
...sigh...
I checked the fuses again, and traced the wires I could see, but whey would any of that have been messed with. All I did was unplug the circuit board a bunch of times. I was really getting nervous that I had somehow totally broke the table and was getting ready to post a "help me" message to the pinball forum when I had a thought tug at me. I seem to recall something similar happening on the table. I could not pin it down and I spent all evening trying to remember. Then just as I was heading to bed, I remembered!
There was an extra wire on the connection between the head and the body. Although I never touched it, it was worth checking.
Low and behold (again) it was disconnected!
I reconnected the wire and the flippers started working. It appears the table is back to functioning again. But it was past bedtime so I didn't have much time to try out the DIP-switch and see if it worked correctly.
Today I dug back through my posts and found the relevant one. It details exactly the same problem I had. I don't know why the wire was disconnected, it doesn't plug into the boards I was removing, I must have just hooked it somehow during one of the processes. But hey, at least it is up and running!
I pulled the board again, scraped some more, plugged the board back in, turned it on. And again - no solenoid action except one that was on continuously until the fuse blew.
I lifted the playfield and thought I might unsolder the solenoid that was having trouble to see if that helped, but when I looked underneath it looked to be in great shape and worked manually just fine. Besides, the only thing that changed was my soldering in the new DIP-Switch.
sigh...
Time to pull the board out and scrape some more, I must still have a short where I accidentally over-soldered the connections.
This time I noticed one of the chips was halfway out of the chip holder, one side was up high and the other down low. I pushed it in, scrapped some more and put it all back together.
Low and behold it worked!
Now that I think about it, it may have been the chip all along and I may not have needed to do the scraping at all.
But, now everything seems to work. In test mode, all of the lights, bumpers, switches, etc. all fire just fine. The game plays, scores count, everything is good except...
Now the flippers won't work.
...sigh...
I checked the fuses again, and traced the wires I could see, but whey would any of that have been messed with. All I did was unplug the circuit board a bunch of times. I was really getting nervous that I had somehow totally broke the table and was getting ready to post a "help me" message to the pinball forum when I had a thought tug at me. I seem to recall something similar happening on the table. I could not pin it down and I spent all evening trying to remember. Then just as I was heading to bed, I remembered!
There was an extra wire on the connection between the head and the body. Although I never touched it, it was worth checking.
Low and behold (again) it was disconnected!
I reconnected the wire and the flippers started working. It appears the table is back to functioning again. But it was past bedtime so I didn't have much time to try out the DIP-switch and see if it worked correctly.
Today I dug back through my posts and found the relevant one. It details exactly the same problem I had. I don't know why the wire was disconnected, it doesn't plug into the boards I was removing, I must have just hooked it somehow during one of the processes. But hey, at least it is up and running!
Sunday, October 8, 2017
Another New Table - Meet the Williams Argosy ElectroMechanical Pinball
After playing with the United Brazil Bingo Pin ( link ) I decided that I wanted to try an EM pin.
EM = ElectroMechanical,meaning the pinball machine was made before electronics became available and so it was all done with pure mechanics. Wheels and gears to keep track of targets, scores, balls, money, etc.
Its an interesting mechanical problem and toying with one seemed like it would be a lot of fun. So I kept a lookout for one. This last weekend one popped up. It was an estate sale and there wasn't a lot of info but it was definitely a EM pin so we thought we would go down and take a look.
It turned out to be an Williams Argosy and it was in great looking shape! the backglass was perfect
and the playfield showed almost no signs of wear. It turned on, lights came on, made noise, the wheels clanked but it would not play.
Since it didn't work. We negotiated a price and I think both parties came out happy.
They got some money and I got a pin that looks to be in good shape, hopefully it is something easily fixable!
EM = ElectroMechanical,meaning the pinball machine was made before electronics became available and so it was all done with pure mechanics. Wheels and gears to keep track of targets, scores, balls, money, etc.
Its an interesting mechanical problem and toying with one seemed like it would be a lot of fun. So I kept a lookout for one. This last weekend one popped up. It was an estate sale and there wasn't a lot of info but it was definitely a EM pin so we thought we would go down and take a look.
It turned out to be an Williams Argosy and it was in great looking shape! the backglass was perfect
 | |
| Argosy Pinball Backglass |
Since it didn't work. We negotiated a price and I think both parties came out happy.
They got some money and I got a pin that looks to be in good shape, hopefully it is something easily fixable!
Harlem Globetrotters Soldering
Now that the box for the Harlem Globetrotters pinball table is painted and looks good, I am starting to put everything back together.
As you may recall I pulled everything out of the header ( link ) and painted it.
Time to put it all back in. As I re-assembled the light-panel (The wood with the lights on it) I noticed one of the LED displays had what appears to be burned out resistors on its little board:
Another soldering disaster!
While I was able to get the resistors out of the board, I managed to deconnect the tiny traces and ring that the solder is supposed to connect to - why is my soldering so bad???
I spent all evening soldering them back in, using a meter to verify I have connectivity but I have no way to test them until I get it all put back together.
Looking at my soldering iron, I am going to try and lower the temperature on it. I have it set all the way up, under the theory that hotter means faster but it could be its just too hot and is screwing things up. We will see if that helps.
In the meantime the Harlem Globetrotter table awaits reassembly as somehow I managed to lose one of the back pieces of sheet metal. Not a big deal but it means a wait until I can go back to the store for more.
As you may recall I pulled everything out of the header ( link ) and painted it.
Time to put it all back in. As I re-assembled the light-panel (The wood with the lights on it) I noticed one of the LED displays had what appears to be burned out resistors on its little board:
 | |
| Burned out resistors |
While I was able to get the resistors out of the board, I managed to deconnect the tiny traces and ring that the solder is supposed to connect to - why is my soldering so bad???
I spent all evening soldering them back in, using a meter to verify I have connectivity but I have no way to test them until I get it all put back together.
Looking at my soldering iron, I am going to try and lower the temperature on it. I have it set all the way up, under the theory that hotter means faster but it could be its just too hot and is screwing things up. We will see if that helps.
In the meantime the Harlem Globetrotter table awaits reassembly as somehow I managed to lose one of the back pieces of sheet metal. Not a big deal but it means a wait until I can go back to the store for more.
Hot Tip Wounds
When my son arrived for vacation, the only pin I had in working condition was the Hot Tip, and it had a problem. The DIP-Switches on the motherboard had broken and I was trying to manually set things by sliding the tiny sliders with a pair of needle nosed pliers.
Once he was gone I decided it was time to replace the switches. It seemed easy enough, unsolder the old switch, solder on the new switch.
The old one came off easily enough, and I soldered the new one on:
However when I turned the system on, it groaned (hummed) and made weird sounds and woudl not work.
....sigh....
so I reflowed the solder intro each socket. No change...
so I reflowed and added more solder. this time (or perhaps the first time) I noticed that it looked like I had melted the green stuff and there might be a connection under it:
Arrgghh.. another self-inflicted wound!
I ended up scraping it away with a knife. But I have been unable to test it as all the fuses are blown.
I replaced them but the one that runs the solenoids keeps blowing, but I noticed one of the solenoids was stuck in the on position and it finally went back, but that was my last fuse... so back to the store to buy another batch of fuses and see if that was the problem or not....
Once he was gone I decided it was time to replace the switches. It seemed easy enough, unsolder the old switch, solder on the new switch.
The old one came off easily enough, and I soldered the new one on:
 | |
| The new dip-switch |
However when I turned the system on, it groaned (hummed) and made weird sounds and woudl not work.
....sigh....
so I reflowed the solder intro each socket. No change...
so I reflowed and added more solder. this time (or perhaps the first time) I noticed that it looked like I had melted the green stuff and there might be a connection under it:
Arrgghh.. another self-inflicted wound!
I ended up scraping it away with a knife. But I have been unable to test it as all the fuses are blown.
I replaced them but the one that runs the solenoids keeps blowing, but I noticed one of the solenoids was stuck in the on position and it finally went back, but that was my last fuse... so back to the store to buy another batch of fuses and see if that was the problem or not....
Monday, August 28, 2017
Learning spray-painting the hard way
After my first attempt at spray painting, I opted for a much larger gun. Specifically the 47016 gun. According to the web page it:
- Sprays enamels, lacquers, metallic, and urethanes
- High versatility for automotive and hobby projects
- Ideal for spraying base coats and primers
Sure sounded ideal. So I picked it up along with my can of Killz Primer.
The Killz website says I can spray at 2,500 psi to 3,000 psi which is far more than my air compressor can deliver.
The spray gun said it was supposed to run at 50 psi, so I set the compressor output at 50 and gave it a try. At first it seemed to work, then soon I got blobs of paint on the tip and the end result of all of this was total crap. The carefully smoothed surface became a mess of blobs and mottled paint:
I obviously need a LOT more experience in painting, but I don't have time to experiment on the cabinet. I want to get it working!
Out came the rattle-can
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
preparing the Harlem Globetrotters Pinball cabinet
After finishing up the Steampunk-Inspired lamp, I have turned my attention back to the Pinball tables. Specifically, getting the Harlem Globetrotters table topper fixed up.
While the topper wasn't in terrible shape, there were bad edges, dents, the paint was faded and the box was covered in lead-based paint. So it definitely needed some work.
Plus this was a chance to learn a couple of things:
After gagging from the smell! I learned two key pieces of information:
But at last I had it good enough for a first coat of primer.
I pulled out my handy-dandy portable spray booth, set it up in the garage, loaded the top in it:
Got out the 3/4 Oz. Quick-Change Airbrush Kit I purchased:
and started in!
I quickly discovered that the 3/4 Oz. airbrush was far far too small for this use. It is probable that I cannot get it adjusted to its maxiumum abilities but it is not even close. At its best, all I could produce was a light paint spray about 1 inch wide.
The good news was I was able to learn a bit about using a spray gun, the bad news was I need to purchase one 2 or 3 times this size.
While the topper wasn't in terrible shape, there were bad edges, dents, the paint was faded and the box was covered in lead-based paint. So it definitely needed some work.
Plus this was a chance to learn a couple of things:
- how to do wood repair - specifically how to use Bondo (which is the recommended filler from a lot of repair gurus)
- How to spray paint. I have never used a spray gun - I have always used rattle cans (or a roller) for painting.
After gagging from the smell! I learned two key pieces of information:
- Bondo sets up quickly! I was only halfway through my pile of goop when it started hardening and would not spread easily on the wood.
- A thin coat is all you need! I laid it on thick, thinking it was like the stuff you put on sheetrock - easily sanded off - hah! I had to sand for hours to get rid of the big ridges and blobs I left all over the wood...sigh
But at last I had it good enough for a first coat of primer.
I pulled out my handy-dandy portable spray booth, set it up in the garage, loaded the top in it:
Got out the 3/4 Oz. Quick-Change Airbrush Kit I purchased:
I quickly discovered that the 3/4 Oz. airbrush was far far too small for this use. It is probable that I cannot get it adjusted to its maxiumum abilities but it is not even close. At its best, all I could produce was a light paint spray about 1 inch wide.
The good news was I was able to learn a bit about using a spray gun, the bad news was I need to purchase one 2 or 3 times this size.
Monday, July 31, 2017
Steampunk-inspired lamp - Finished!
With the shade holders put into place, the steampunk-inspired lamp was finished!
A couple of pictures of it in all its glory:
if you are interested in following the story of this lamp, check out the full thread here.
A couple of pictures of it in all its glory:
if you are interested in following the story of this lamp, check out the full thread here.
Steampunk Inspired Lamp - shade holders
Since finishing the topper on the steampunk-inspired lamp. I am down to a single issue: holding the lampshades on.
It originally looked like this:
I originally thought about just pulling in the cord but I was worried about longterm "floppyness" so I tried using epoxy to glue the shade to the end of the pipe.
That worked but when I accidentally bumped it, it broke loose.
I do not have a welder and I think the bulb-socket housing is plastic anyway. So I wanted to create something in keeping with the steampunk spirit.
My solution was to spend $1 and get a piece of sheet tin. I then cut it
into short strips. Then popping them into the vice, I bent them into rough "S" shapes:
Using some screw-on pipe squeezers (there is probably a accurate technical term but I don't know it) I connected 3 of my strips to the pipe:
Another 2 on the larger end where the lampshade actually is, then some "hammered metal" paint and misted with black to get it down to the proper look and it is locked on and solid!
The lamp is complete!
It originally looked like this:
 |
| Lampshade holder issues |
I originally thought about just pulling in the cord but I was worried about longterm "floppyness" so I tried using epoxy to glue the shade to the end of the pipe.
That worked but when I accidentally bumped it, it broke loose.
I do not have a welder and I think the bulb-socket housing is plastic anyway. So I wanted to create something in keeping with the steampunk spirit.
My solution was to spend $1 and get a piece of sheet tin. I then cut it
 | ||
| Cutting the tin |
into short strips. Then popping them into the vice, I bent them into rough "S" shapes:
 |
| Bent tin holder |
Using some screw-on pipe squeezers (there is probably a accurate technical term but I don't know it) I connected 3 of my strips to the pipe:
 |
| locking down the pipe strips |
Another 2 on the larger end where the lampshade actually is, then some "hammered metal" paint and misted with black to get it down to the proper look and it is locked on and solid!
The lamp is complete!
Friday, June 30, 2017
Steampunk-inspired lamp - topper
Despite problems with the switch, the steampunk-inspired lamp construction is going well.
The rest of the parts have come in and I am able to see if my idea bears fruit. If you recall, the original idea included a pipe-cross at the top and some kind of support for the lamp-shades themselves although the details were a bit sketchy.
With the pipes in, I was able to put the pieces together and test-fit the topper
Once it was apparent it was going to fit as indicated. The problem of running the wires through the pipes raised its ugly head. It took some real work to get the electrical wires threaded through the pipes:
Then it was a matter of holding the pipes together with one hand, fitting them into place with the other hand, holding the screw with the other hand, screwing in the screws with the other hand, guiding the wire through the hole in the support wood with the other hand..lol, thats a lot o fhands but eventually I got it done.
Now its just a matter of getting the lamp shades on the the pipes, getting the switch to work and wiring it all up!
The rest of the parts have come in and I am able to see if my idea bears fruit. If you recall, the original idea included a pipe-cross at the top and some kind of support for the lamp-shades themselves although the details were a bit sketchy.
With the pipes in, I was able to put the pieces together and test-fit the topper
 | |
| Test fitting the upper mechanism |
Once it was apparent it was going to fit as indicated. The problem of running the wires through the pipes raised its ugly head. It took some real work to get the electrical wires threaded through the pipes:
 | |
| threading the wires |
Then it was a matter of holding the pipes together with one hand, fitting them into place with the other hand, holding the screw with the other hand, screwing in the screws with the other hand, guiding the wire through the hole in the support wood with the other hand..lol, thats a lot o fhands but eventually I got it done.
 | |
| Topper is in place |
Now its just a matter of getting the lamp shades on the the pipes, getting the switch to work and wiring it all up!
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