The Addams Family Pinball

I took out my old Power Board yesterday and replaced with a new one I had bought last year from PinLED. I fired up the pinball machine and tested the flasher circuits. Same problem was apparent (maybe I should have tested the pinball with this board before replacing components? Another lesson learned).

So today I rigged up a flasher lamp tester and connected it to the +20V  Test Point on the power board and poked the other end in J126 pins 1 through to 6 in turn (these are the “grounding pins” for the flasher circuits) whilst the lamps+flasher test was in progress.  The test flasher flashed for every pin, which implies to me that everything is working as it should at the board level, but at the playfield level it is somehow getting screwed up.

Whilst prodding about under the playfield I also found a connector which had a red/white wire attached to it (the 20V DC line) as well as the black/red and black/brown wires. These are the “ground” wires for the rear flasher circuits. I disconnected this connector and then tested each flasher. Interestingly only one of the flashers of each pair now flashed (implying to me that each flasher pair is fed from a different 20V DC line from J107 (pins 5 and 6) and that
I had now disconnected one of these feeds).

However, interestingly, during the individual flasher circuit test, when it came to the Left Lightning Bolt/Mini Flipper pair of flashers, both flashed, Also when it came to the Right Lightning Bolt/Swamp Flashers, the Right Lightning Bolt and the Mini Flipper flashers flashed – this should definitely not happen! (With the connector connected again, this phenomena was no longer present).

So something appears really screwed up with the flasher wiring which I just don’t understand……yet. Also, in order to test the flasher circuitry at the playfield end requires the flasher bulbs to be removed. As this is not so easy for three of the flashers, I’ve decided to leave this testing until I’ve started to remove the parts from the playfield (for the renovation).

Back to my flasher problem today. As reported earlier I’ve got a flasher problem and having enquired on flippermarkt.de and RGP, based on inputs received, decided to replace the 20V supply components (Bridge Rectifier BR4 and Capacitor C11) and also the ground switching circuits for the affected flasher circuits (Transistors Q39 through to Q42). I also took the opportunity to replace the pin connector for the GI lights (J121) on the board, which had been badly burnt in a previous life.

I haven’t desoldered components for a long time and a double sided board makes the job that much harder. I managed to remove all the components, but in the process ruined the through-hole plating in numerous locations – especially around the transistors. So having replaced the components in the board I needed to do some patch work:

The complete patchworked Power board

The patchwork around transistors Q39 to Q42.The TIP102s were the worst affected

The patchwork around BR4 and C11 - just to be on the safe side!

Some patchwork to the GI circuitry from a previous life - the green cable is new (mine)

With all these new components and patches, I was a bit concerned about putting the board back into the pinball machine. But I did and having plugged all the plugs back in to the board, I gingerly switched on – and the pinball worked – a miracle.

So I went straight to the test menu to test my new flashers. First the flashers – yes they all worked and seemed brighter! I was on a high! So I went to the “all lamps and flashers” test and………….

……….nothing had changed!!!!! I had exactly the same problem as before! Well at least I hadn’t broken the Power board!

But let’s look at the positives……I’ve eliminated the supply and ground switching circuits from the equation.

Or have I?

Plastic Switch Cover

I’ve been looking for some switch covers for some time. These are to cover the ugly microswitch + diode combinations on both of the ramps, at the entrance gate to each ramp. I’ve seen some examples of these being used on a TAF, but haven’t actually located any to-date.

However I read on RGP today that it is possible to make these covers yourself, the instructions being on this website. Basically it uses plastic which is in a liquid state, but if applied to a solid base as a thin film, dries when exposed to air. To make the switch covers, it is just necessary to produce a form of the right size and then apply several layers of the plastic on the form, by dipping it into the liquid plastic letting it dry and repeating several times until the right thickness is achieved.

Despite the fact that “Plastidip” is an American product it is also available in Europe from Plastidip Deutschland GmbH, so I have ordered some to try out.

Watch this space…

Having ruined my new apron (see post from April) I have decided to attempt to repair the screen printing which I damaged. In order to do this, I’m going to use waterslide decals, which can be printed on my inkjet printer. I’m sure that I could use an easier solution (such as the stick on decals which are available – and which I already have) but having seen such decals live, I hate the way they look. Take a look at this picture, for example:

A renovated TAF with stick on apron decals

Just look at those stick on decals and those edges – yuck!

As I intend to use the waterslide decal on just the Addams Family lettering, I need to match both the purple and white colours. So back to my colour grids from last month. The first thing I noticed was that the purple colour appeared to be a mixture of just cyan and mauve. So I printed a grid of cyan versus mauve with 0% yellow:

Cyan vs Magenta Colour Grid (0% yellow)

From this, I decide that the best match was with 100% Mauve and 65% Cyan, however the colour was not quite right, so I printed a new colour grid with 100% Mauve and 65% Cyan as the base colour, with different shades of yellow (0 to 40%) and black (0 to 19%):

Colour Grid with 100% Magenta and 65% Cyan

From this grid (yes the colours are all different), I selected the 30% yellow and 5% black option. Now onto white.

For white, I assumed that the white colour had been discoloured due to the black gloss paint under the screen print and due to a “yellowing” with age. So I printed out a grid of yellow versus black – and got some great colours of gold but nothing like the colour I was after. So I took a photo of the apron with white printer paper on it (yes, I used the printer paper with “golden” colour grid):

Apron with white printer paper

I then adjusted the levels of this photo to get a part of the white paper near to the “white” on the apron to have a white CMYK value (all 0%) and then measured the CMYK value of the apron “white” close to my “true white” spot:

Manipulated photo

The value I finished off with for the “white” was Cyan=40%; Magenta=20%; Yellow=35%; Black=0%.

Having printed this out, I still wasn’t happy with either colours so fine-tuned them:

Fine tuning purple and white

I finished choosing the following colours:

Purple: Cyan=64%; Magenta=100%; Yellow=30%; Black=5%
White: Cyan=40%; Magenta=20%; Yellow=35%; Black=24%

Which resulted in the following decals:

Apron decals adjusted for colour

Now these may look strange, but I cut out The Addams Family logo from the paper and tried it out “in situ” on the actual apron (by simply placing it over the current logo):

Apron with "new" TAF decal

New TAF "decal" up close

Not bad! Although I will have to wait until I print the logo onto the waterslide decal paper to see whether I need any further adjustments.

I’ve recently bought a few bits and pieces for cleaning the playfield, following things I’ve read on RGP and flippermarkt.de. These include:

3M Finesse-It – for cleaning the playfield (a lot of restorers swear by this stuff)
2000 grade sandpaper – for polishing the playfield/apron having sprayed it
A magic eraser and Bref Power Fettlöser (fat remover) – to help clean the playfield

I’ll go into detail on how I use these items once I’ve used them.

Watch this space!

I also bought some TAF “goodies”, including a TAF decal and some rare promotional plastics, just for the hell of it!

TAF decal and TAF Promotional Plastics

I had to order some components from Best Of Pinball today for my Flasher problem. Last month they actually had sent me an email offering to mount the bookcase rubber onto the bookcase for me (see the problem reported in January). So I thought I’d take this opportunity and return the pieces to be assembled for me.

However, at the last minute, I thought I’d actually give it a go myself. Yes it was one of those “without thinking” moments (which actually ruined my new TAF apron) but still I went ahead with it. Fortunately this didn’t go wrong this time and I actually mounted the rubber onto the bookcase successfully. I then took this assembly and mounted it onto the new bookcase base to ensure  the rubber stays in place, securing the whole thing with electricians tape, until I come to mount the new bookcase into the machine.

As reported in April, I have a flasher problem, which is proving to be a challenge. It turns out that there are 5 separate flasher “circuits” each with at least two flashers connected in parallel.

The flashers flash by being “turned on” (having 20V applied to them) very briefly. As they’re 12V bulbs they therefore “flash” very brightly. The flashers always have 20V applied to one side of them and the other is left floating (ie not connected), meaning that no current can flow, so that they remain off. However, when turned on, the floating side of the flasher is effectively grounded through a power transistor (TIP102). This power transistor is turned on using a signal transistor (2N5401). Simple.

So now to my problem: when I test the flasher circuits separately using the testing procedure, each circuit flashes as it should. However, when I test all bulbs and flashers simultaneously, the Train/Upper Left Ramp flashers (which are connected) flash very dimly as do the Telephone/Upper Right Ramp flashers. This is also the case during game play. Interestingly though, during game play I’ve noticed that when the Telephone lamp flashes, sometimes the Upper Right Ramp flasher doesn’t appear to flash as brightly. As these two bulbs are connected in parallel, this is very strange.

The two problem flasher circuits are connected to the same pin of J107 on the WPC power board (pin 6), so in theory, it could be, that when all the flashers and lamps are activated, that the 20V supply on this pin is less than the supply on pin 5 (to which all other flasher circuits are connected). However these two pins are connected together on the power board, so that can not be the problem.

To see whether there was a problem with the resistance of these two flasher circuits, I briefly shorted their corresponding pins on J126 to ground (thereby by-passing the “grounding” circuitry) and both flasher circuits flashed as expected. This implies to me, that the problem is actually with the two grounding circuits not grounding completely (although I find this hard to believe).

So I’ve decided to replace the Bridge Rectifier (BR4) which provides the 20V supply to the flasher circuit and its corresponding capacitor (C11) as well as the TIP107 and 2N5401 for both “grounding” circuits.

Hopefully with these updates the supply to the flasher circuits will be good as new!

The plastics for the bookcase, telephone and bearkick ramp are attached with metal angle pieces to their corresponding plastic supports. So I will have to acquire these brackets also if I don’t want to use the old ones, which I don’t.

A few enquiries on RGP and flippermarkt.de revealed nothing other than a recommendation to get such angle pieces from the local hardware store. So I went looking.

I found two potential solutions: angle strips one out of aluminium and one out of plastic, which I could cut. As they didn’t have my required size (15mm x 15mm) in aluminium, I opted for the hard plastic version.

Plastic angle 15mm x 15mm

I saw some display foil for the dot matrix display (DMD) advertised on flippermarkt.de. The idea of this foil is to reduce display glare from the pinball glass – even with the fantastic new glass with minimal reflection (which I still haven’t got), the DMD reflection can still be seen and so could disturb, so I acquired one.

It turned up today and my first impression was one of disappointment. I guess it’s just a polarising sheet preventing light from travelling in the vertical plane. However by testing the foil – by putting one end at right angles to the other, which due to the polarising nature should block all the light – some light was still seen to shine through.

Still, I will need to test the foil in situ on the machine itself to see whether it actually brings anything. Unfortunately I don’t have my glass mounted on the machine at the moment, so this test will have to wait.

Marked Thing Box

My Thing Box is marked. It always was. So I have three options: either I cover it in one of the several available sticker sets, I mod it like this or I simply get a new one.

As I’m trying to keep my TAF as original as possible (with only a few slight improvements) at this stage I’ve decided to go for a new box.

To remove the marked box meant me having to remove both the telephone plastic assembly and the acid plastic assembly. From the two, the acid plastic assembly was the most dificult to remove as to do so (without removing the plastic ramp) meant using a ratchet spanner within a very confined space (I did this as I want to continue playing pinball even with the box removed). As they say – “lazy people take most pain”.

Having removed both assemblies it was a simple matter of taking out three screws to remove the box (for some reason there were only three screws holding my box down, although it was designed for four).

Incidentally, in removing the acid plastic assembly, I revealed two #44 GI lamps which weren’t working. I wonder how many years ago they burned out?