TAF Thing Hand Problems

[simon]

Hi

posted this on the group but thought Id try here as well

Am having nightmares with the Thing hand mechanism on my TAF and wondered if
anyone had any ideas atall?

The magnet was dodgy but ive sorted that, was a broken wire inside the
insulation where it was kinked - this now magnetises when it should so thats ok.

Whats happening is in test it seems to behave just fine going up and down when
it should, but in gameplay its very hit and miss.
Quite often it comes out to pick the ball up and just kind of sometimes sits
just above the saucer it collects the ball from, seems to do this more so on the
'no no no' bit where thing collects the ball and then comes back out and drops
it back there, kind of.

Its like the machine thinks the hand is back in its box. Once theres a ball
search it buggers off back into the thing box. Also, sometimes it goes back to
the box but only about 3/4 of the way so you can still see the hand and the box
lid is open.

Ive renewed the connector onto the little controller board attached to the
mechanism (It was pretty tired), reflowed and tested everything on that board,
and also checked/ reflowed and cleaned the related optos etc..

I dont 'think' its the gearbox as it behaves pretty well in test so dont think
its slipping gears (May be wrong I guess) so am now pretty stumped as to what
could cause this behaviour, if it wasnt breaking the optos Im assuming the motor
would keep on trying to move so i cant see it being that?

Have had this mechanism in and out so many times the past week and its driving
me mad now The site its on have a busy few days coming up so would be nice to
remedy this so they can take a few quid on it over the weekend.
Have done a lot of repairs to this since i got it last week and am so nearly
'there' with it now, very frustrating.

Thanks
Si

 

[pinballmania]

Check the soldering on the emi filter board. It's the big bronzy coils on a small PCb. Follow the motor wires back to find it.

The solder cracks around the thick wire. Soldering it is quite hard. You need a powerful soldering iron to get the wire hot and burn through the enamel insulation, to make a good contact.

 

[simon]

Thanks for the tip, have done that now and a few other tweaks and it seems to be working just right now
Of course I've now found that the ball hangs up somewhere after the hand takes it sometimes, trying to figure out where exactly but it's a bit tricky without being able to see inside the machine when it happens
Thanks
Si

 

[replicas]

That's pinball, you fix one thing and another problem crops up.

 

[RudeDogg1]

Ain't that the truth

 

[Calimori]

The ball is released into the metal box that also houses Thing. Two bolts undoes that. It rolles out of the corner into a popper to take it back up into the under ramp which feeds it into a metal part that forms the bottom of the swamp. My under-ramp was too tight near the swamp so the ball would get stuck there.
Good luck.