Hello All.

A recent problem has begun to plague my Bally On Beam machine. I am in need of some expertise, as it seems like a problem specific to On Beam. Unfortunately, I know very little about pinball machines in general, beyond playing them. Especially these older EM machines. So please excuse my ignorance... I will do my best to clearly describe the issue.

Simply put, the ship gets stuck on one specific beam. As those who know the game are aware, there are multiple features within the game that should move the ship to a new beam (A, B, C, or D) in order to line up on the same beam with the space station in order to score points. However, none of these features actually move the ship to a new beam any more. The ship just moves around on the same beam, currently Beam B... I can open up the back box and hit the stepper and get the ship to move to a new beam, but the regular features are no longer making it happen.

Any input is appreciated. Thanks!

Thank you MarkG and DCP
MarkG I took your advice and cleaned all those contacts really well, along with some others in there that looked suspect... I also cleaned the stepper switch again and it all seemed to help. After I manually advanced the stepper a few times, it worked properly for a few games before getting stuck again. I then manually advanced the stepper just once and it worked again. This has happened a couple of times since, but always gets back to normal after manually advancing the stepper one position. It seems to be getting stuck much less often now as I continue playing.
DCP I followed your thread there. Very cool stuff. I dabble in 3D printing and CNC milling myself. So yeah, very fun to see that stuff. So your tips there made me question something else that is happening with my machine. Probably unrelated, but... Not every time, but more often than not, after you launch a ball and it passes over any one of the top rollover switches, the reset motor you are talking about starts to spin. The clutch doesn't engage until needed, but the motor runs the whole time the ball is in play. It stops after you lose the ball. Is that supposed to happen?
Any thoughts?

TwinDavid DCP
Thanks guys for the input. I have been out of town, but I will try to work on the machine a bit more this weekend and see what I can get sorted out.

So I believe I have found what is causing the motor to run...
As the ball passes over any of the top roll over switches, the motor engages, and Bank 1 (shown in blue in the image below) does a full 360 degree rotation. Bank 2 (shown in yellow) does only a partial rotation.
I'm not sure what is supposed to happen at this point, but I am guessing that bank 2 should not rotate when the ball passes these top rollover switches. Correct??? Or are both c1 and c2 supposed to rotate a full turn?
I can manually rotate the disc (c2) back a bit and the motor stops running.
What is the correct operation here and what would cause bank 2 to not rotate normally? Could this just be a matter of lubrication? If so, what are the lubrication points?
Thanks

OnBeam_ResetBank (resized).jpg