Star trek, the next generation

I have been working with the Star trek for a couple of days. This far I have disassembled most parts on the upper side of the playfield and a lot of parts from the lower side.

 

 There are a lot of mechanisms on the lower side of the playfield at this game and the most complicated part is the snake like ball guide. It has four inlets, three ball popper mechanisms for ejecting balls back at the playfield and two diverters to guide the ball to the ball popper where it is needed. The game stores balls by the poppers to have them ready to eject as soon as a ball drops in to the guide, this is to make it look like the ball travels with warp speed from one point of the playfield to another.

I do not think that the ball guide ever have been cleaned before, there is an awful lot of dirt inside it.

 

Before disassembling the game I played it quite a lot to see what kind of problems it had and while doing so I didn’t manage to get the ball in to the Borg ship and the cause was a stuck diverter. This one should be retracted when power is of, but it is stuck in the out position. So there was no way to get the ball in to the ship. I haven’t yet taken it apart so I’m not sure of the cause, but most likely the actuator arm is to tight against the bushing in the base plate.

 

 

In the deepest guts of the lower side I found a broken ball guide. It is the one below the Neutral zone hole. It has been repaired before with brass or bronze solder. A friend of mine helped me to repair it again, this time with silver solder which makes a more reliable solder joint.

 

The upside of the Neutral zone hole was a bit worn and to protect it I gave it a Cliffy protector. The ball guide at the underside was polished before reattached and the copper stand of the center target was polished as well.

 

 

Both lower flippers was cracked and more or less held together by the rubbers. I will replace these and also the third flipper. The new flippers will have super bands. These are quite tough to stretch when installing and it’s safer to install them while having the bat outside the playfield, this is to avoid damaging the flipper bushing.

 

I have also cleaned and polished the playfield and all targets. Now it’s ready for a first coat of wax and more reassembling.