Pin-bot

The Pin bot is finally ready. It took more time than I first thought, somewhere between 30 and 40 hours. It also ended up a bit more expensive than expected, mostly due to the bad leg brackets and leg bolts. But it’s not big money and the game is certainly worth it.

 

 

One of the red posts at the mini playfield was broken and I didn’t manage to find a replacement. Instead I replaced it by a metal post. There is already a metal post at the right side, it holds the mini playfield to the main playfield. I attached the new metal post just below this one and it’s not too disturbing.

One of the plastics was broken and repaired with duct tape. I glued it together and reinforced it with a bit of Lexan. The edges of the two parts didn’t match as a crack normally do, almost like somebody have tried to melt it together. But it looks better than the duct tape .

 

To top it off I polished the coin door key, now it almost shines as gold.

Pin-bot

I have spent this evening cleaning the vortex ramp. The score label for the skill shot was gone and since it is a skill shot it would be nice to know the score. So I thought it shouldn’t be too hard to make a new label, it took almost two hours… Finding a matching font was quite tricky and I ended up with a font which I had to modify a little bit to get the number 1 as I wanted it to be. I printed it at the color laser and laminated it and cut out the label. But since it is laminated it is quite stiff. I heated it a bit with the heat gun and pressed it against the neck of a bottle which had the same radius as the ramp, this made the label curved and then there was no problem to attach it to the ramp.

Pin-bot

I’m finally ready with the underside of the playfield. I have rebuilt the flippers, cleaned all inserts, replaced all broken lamps and cleaned all working lamps, cleaned all targets, cleaned the eject hole bases, gone through the bumper, slingshot and the eject hole mechanisms, the moving target bank and the drop target bank and repaired a couple of broken cable connections. 

For the back box I have taken out all boards and reflowed the connectors and moved the back-up batteries to an external battery holder. I did some minor touch up of the black at the front of the back box. I have also disassembled the topper and cleaned it inside and out. Six of the eight flasher lamps inside was broken and has been replaced with new lamps.

 

 

 

 

 

Pin-bot

I have been working with the coin door for a while. Initially I just thought I should clean it but the paint was in such bad shape so I ended up repainting it instead. I also changed the labels in the coin reject buttons from the original German pricing to free play labels. The Coca Cola problem was also in the coin door, a lot of cleaning to do at the inside and it was even inside the coin reject buttons. 

 

Pin-bot

Today I have cleaned the cabinet inside and out. Earlier when I cleaned the lock down bar receiver it was very dirty and kind of sticky and the dirt and stickiness continued inside the cabinet down to the area for the coin box. Somebody have probably spilled Coca Cola at the play fields glass and it poured under the lock down bar in to the cabinet. I couldn’t get it all of since it is impregnated in to the wood, but I did the best I could. The Coke was even in the coin door connector, it was like glued together and was almost impossible to disconnect.

 

The inside is now as clean as I can get it and I have also mounted the new leg brackets at the rear end. But the remaining two brackets were also bad and need to be changed as well. Also the leg bolts are scrap with really bad threads. I do not even want to try them in the new leg brackets since they probably will damage the new threads. I need eight new bolts and two leg brackets more. The legs are also an interesting story. When I got the game it was just recently bought by the current owner and one of the problems with the game was slow ball action, even though the leg levelers at the rear was winded out as much as possible. It turned out that the rear legs are about 5 cm shorter than the front legs, so there is no way to get the proper inclination of the playfield. The legs at the game are black but I’m quite sure the original legs were chrome. I had a set of chrome legs at the workshop which I use when I receive a game without legs for repair. They were not in perfect condition, a bit rusty and dull. But after a trip in to the glass bead blaster and some polishing they got quite decent. I’ll trade those for the black legs, length and color doesn’t matter for me when repairing a machine.

 

 This machine seems to have lived a quite hard life and the front of the cabined had a lot of scars from the battles. I couldn’t resist trying to touch it up a bit, the first intention wasn’t to take it this far, but once I had started I couldn’t stop… A closer inspection will reveal that it isn’t a proper repaint job since I haven’t filled in the dents and instead just added the missing paint to make it look a bit better. 



Pin-bot

I ordered the parts needed Monday this week. Unfortunately none of my suppliers had all of the parts so I had to order from two of them. I got the first delivery yesterday and since first of May is a holiday I have spent the whole day in the workshop. I have finished the cleaning and polishing of the playfield. Polished all ball guides and washed the star posts and started the reassembly. I wrote earlier that some metal posts are missing their washers and lock nuts, I have now gone through all of them and 11 of the posts was lose and there is no trace of the missing washers and nuts in the cabinet.

Since I still miss a delivery of parts I couldn't complete the playfield, instead I took it out of the cabinet. This is to make it easier to access the underside for cleaning and checking but also due to that I have to replace two of the leg brackets. The threads are almost gone in both of them, one bracket in the front and one in the rear. I will mount both new brackets in the rear and move the one that is OK to the front. The reason is that the new brackets are much better compared to the old one and they are not likely to fail. It is much easier to access the brackets in the front of the cabinet and in case the old ones fail in the future there is no need to lift out the playfield to change it.