What's new
By:
Pinball info

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

GI Strings and Playfield Tear Downs

Wiredworm

Wiredworm

Registered
10 Years
Joined
Apr 7, 2013
Messages
2,377
Location
Grimsby
The big R&B restore is now well under way. I've got pretty much everything removed from the top of the playfield bar a single diverter arm and a few ball guides which i'll most likely get removed tonight.

Once that's done it will be onto stripping down the bottom of the playfield. Most of it looks pretty straightforward and i'll be labelling up as I go to make sure I know what goes back where.

But - and here's the question.

There are a number of GI strings where there are fixed lamp holders. These aren't screwed in place but appear to be held by staples. Typically there are a few clusters of these and they are interlinked by wires which are soldered and stapled to the playfield.

It's my plan to simply find where the loom connects to these and desolder at that point before labelling up the cables. I'll also take photos so I can see where things were connected. I'm not planning at the moment to remove the bulb holders. Is this generally what people do when stripping a playfield down?

Or, should I go the whole hog and carefully remove the staples and bulb holders as well? I dunno, part of me is thinking if i'm doing the job might as well do it right and go this way.
 
Not really planning on replacing them to be honest.

I was thinking it would be a right pain in the backside to remove them - but I guess once the cables are desoldered and the rest of the under playfield hardware has been stripped and moved out of the way then it might not be as much of a pain as I was thinking.

Removing them would certainly make it easier when it comes to stripping the mylar and clearcoating it. Hmmm, food for thought.
 
come on Pete, where are your balls?

your machine started like this
R&B.jpg and you 15.jpg it

so now you need to break it down into its constituent atoms i think to turn it into a pristine example
 
Haha, that sounds like a challenge Dan. ;-)

I didn't relish the idea of having to get a soldering iron into the tight spaces where the loom gets in the way. But given that I can remove all that lot and then tackle the bulb holders last then it might actually not be so bad.

Desoldering the pop bumpers went smoother than I expected despite it being a little tight at times.
 
Wiredworm said:
Desoldering the pop bumpers went smoother than I expected despite it being a little tight at times.
Click to expand...

Disassembly is always much easier than assembly (in my experience)
Not sure why you want to remove stuff of the bottom of the playfield unless you want to give it a quick sand over to freshen it up ?

I would leave it all on there, although im no expert, im pretty good at Lazy
 
BigIan said:
Not sure why you want to remove stuff of the bottom of the playfield unless you want to give it a quick sand over to freshen it up ?
Click to expand...
I want to make this as nice an example as possible so ideally the plan is to:

1. Strip the mylar using freeze spray
2. Send the playfield away to have some minor damage touched up - far cheaper than paying the £££'s i've seen online for a NOS or near perfect playfield (there's one online at the moment but it would be about £350 to get it to the UK)
3. Apply a few coats of clearcoat using the method shows by NewDOS and Rudi.

All the above really need the playfield to be as bare as possible so I need to strip the bottom too. Whilst i'm at it i'll refurb the various mechanisms too.
 
Nope - no progress on the spring.

I've been told that the new replacement motors that are available (which is what i've got) behave differently to the original and actually change direction at each application of power. This means that in fact the spring isn't technically needed. When I ran a test sure enough each time the motor started up it simply reversed the direction of travel.

It means that it's not fully authentic to the original, but given the choice between it's current behaviour and having it constantly stripping the motor and/or the toothed wheel I think it's a fair concession to make. I'll most likely look into it more once i've got everything back together. The Nell Assembly position is such that it's relatively easy to tinker with it even once the machine is fully reassembled.

Worst case I can have a spring made, but it's a bit pricey at £50 for two of them.
 
Yeah that does seem steep...

I took measurements etc for Dan when he had your R&B but if you need any more or if you want me to send the assembly over for you to work with let me know. From memory my gear is stuck onto the motor shaft rather than held on with a grub screw which made disassembly harder, well it would probably be easy enough but again the reassembly might not be as easy :confused:
 
Ooof, that's torn it. No going back now.

I've not got as far as desoldering the GI and lamp holders YET - but tonight i've managed to finish clearing the top of the playfield. I've also desoldered a fair few of the mechanisms below the playfield too and removed those - both flipper mechs, slingshots, all the pop bumpers, the trough eject mechanism. I didn't like the idea of dropping the coils out of the mech and leaving them hanging as they're not exactly light and I had visions of weak solder joints and the possibility of it having strange issues when put back together. This way i'll resolder the coils back in position once the mechanisms have been stripped, cleaned and reassembled.

No photos yet but i'm at the point now where the top side is totally cleared so I can lay it on it's front to finish the work. I have another piece of wood the same size as the playfield so the plan now is to disconnect everything from the playfield and slide it across to the other piece of wood before drilling some holes and securing it in place so the rough shape is maintained.

The whole loom is looking quite odd right now as every cable i've disconnected has been labelled up with a toe-tag. I realise the cables are all colour coded and a quick look in the manual would give me the information I need but it's just so much easier having everything labelled up. It will also hopefully prevent silly mistakes when we come to reconnect things.

Oh, and i've taken another 90 photos during tonight as well. I've got all the photos grouped together and since getting the R&B i've taken 1023 photos of it. Hopefully that will be sufficient to get it back into one piece without any major issues. ;-)
 
I've done a total strip down on the PARAGON playfield, including similar string of GI lighting that is held in place with staples and bare wires. You can see why it was done like this: SPEED. Imagine the factory production line: take a blank playfield, pop lamp holders in the appropriate holes and tack them in place with a single staple. Next get a roll of bare wire (probably helpfully hanging overhead) and using a staple gun tack it from lamp to lamp following a layout diagram. Then get a big fat 100W iron and solder the wire to the lamp lugs in-situ. My playfields still have a splatters of hot flux all over from this.

I removed them my from PARAGON because I need to sand it for the overlay decal, etc. I'll use the opportunity to clean the #47 lamp holders properly and repaint the underside grey. Not sure what it's going to be like to put back together? Probably a total f*****... I wouldn't do this if the playfield uses the later #555 lamp holders as the contacts can be cleaned in place.
 
To be honest my biggest issue was a lack of confidence in my own abilities. I've done some fairly fine solder work before including board repairs and never had a problem so I should have maybe had more faith.

Had no problems at all last night whilst doing the teardown and whilst I know putting stuff back together is always harder than removing it I have to say i'm feeling a bit more positive about things now.

I'll most likely leave the wires in place on the back as it's already pretty clean and just needs a good wipe over. I will remove the bulb holders though because I want the top to be totally clear for when it gets clear-coated. I'm also going to remove all the lamp boards because I want to give the inserts a really good clean from the back side. I'm pretty sure the 20 years worth of grot that's accumulated there will be dulling the shine on the nice new LED's.

No going back now anyway. I've got several huge boxes of parts bagged up so once the loom is desoldered and removed from the playfield the work really starts. :)

Cabinet is almost ready for painting too - will be lovely to finally get it painted up and get the decals applied.
 
I've bitten the bullet and have started stripping the GI bulb holders out. In cases where it's just a cluster of two holders with a direct link then i'm removing the entire lot as a single piece. In more complex areas i'm desoldering the bulb holders and removing the staples so I can take the holder itself out, but i'm leaving the GI wiring behind and still stapled to the back of the playfield.

So, next question.

I'm going to need to reconnect the lamps once i'm done having the playfield sorted out. Would something like this be fit for the job? I've measured the staples already in use and they look like 8mm staples.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HEAVY-DUT...338?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item33a1bfdb1a

I presume the above could also be used when I need to refit the cabinet braid too?
 
Grabbed one. Interesting to note that the buy it now price gave free delivery and was actually cheaper than the starting bid plus postage. Saved another quid or so there. Is it wrong that each pinball purchase, no matter how small, puts a big grin on my face. More stuff to help get this Pin all nice and fixed up. :-)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom