Ive made these airball protectors that should prevent the plastic from braking.

A testbatch I made and I sent this to Averell.
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Extra info:

The drawing is provided by Averell, so you can also make it yourself.
Currently I have no plans to make them unless there is interest.
Anyone that want to have this plastic can have it added to their speaker panel order,or separately.
It can be shipped worldwide in an envelope so its cheap (edit: 4.5 euros)
I think if I make a batch of 10 pieces from Vivak they will be around EUR 15 each if anyone wants them.

I would be willing to buy them all and help distribute them as well. If someone else does this I will definitely want to buy one if possible, as mentioned above. Have been looking forever to replace the plastics in my upgraded prototype machine.

I would be interested in potentially buying one of these. I had to replace my old acrylic one already. That was from me breaking it during my machine upgrade though.

I tried them and they fit, see above.
Thanks again to Averell.

I will make a batch then. Everybody that wants one (or more) PM me.

Edit: I'm making 15 pieces. Sold out=sold out.

Very well done and a really good design.
My suggestion is to put the protector under the plastic, otherwise the balls can split the platic at the post again!

Problem: the upper inner loop almost never registers. A clear and fast hit never registers. How can this be improved? It seems the switches cannot cope with the speed of the ball. This loop has two switches. In test they both work.
Cannot reduce the upper right flipper power since you need power to make the left upper ramp shot.

About the plastic: why is it so much bigger than the original? Can it be Made smaller so it doesn’t stick out so much?

It is not a new plastic, but a protector made of clear material that ensures that no more bad air balls bounce into the left metal ramp or balls bounce under the glass!
It also protects the plastics around against breakage.
The problem are the small stand-up targets and the force with which the balls hit them.
So the plastic is deliberately made longer so that the balls are deflected downwards.
You can see similar solutions at latest STERN Pinball Machine, for instance Metallica.

Seems like everybody has this problem,I doubt it can be fixed unless someone invents a beter detector

I wonder can the Eddy sensor be pulled out from the board socket a little maybe? ... allowing it to sit slightly closer up toward the playfield in the recess (and in this way perhaps giving slightly longer activated duration)

Also I think it might have been TimeBandit developed a version with a trim pot. ?

You have to check the PCB under the playfield and loosen the screws and put the sensor in the right position that they fit perfect in the hole.
Often the sensors jam between the edges of the holes and the PCB, in fact they are not aligned properly as they should be.
I had the same problme and solved it like that.

Its probably somewhere in some of these 500 pages, but how do you remove the backboard in an easy way?
There are 2 screws on the side that I can not reach (hidden behing the black wood siderail)...
Take playfield out and tak the entire back off??

Edit: Never mind I took the playfield out, easy enough.

Averell Per_ Is this the source code to the inductive switches used on Alien and Full Throttle? http://www.t-es-t.hu/download/microchip/dd3007.pdf

I seem to recall a site the author had created with more details as well as lots of pictures. I can't seem to find it though ... however, I think that's the same processor used on the switches. That design is pretty slick too!

Also, have you released the protocol the CPU uses to talk to the node boards? I'd like to see that if it is at all possible .

I can offer the Alien Xeno Flasher Board again to you.

I had a number of requests after selling my first run of PCBs - so I ordered a second run.

Again I offer the mod ready to use with 6 LEDs, connector cables and mounting hardware as described in the attached documentation ("Assembled Board" on page 6). The price remains also unchanged: 35 Euros plus 8 Euros shipping costs to Europe and 13 Euros outside Europe (wtih tracking and insurance).

I will inform all persons on my "waiting list" directly.

P.S. Meanwhile all padded envelopes with the first run should have reached the buyers. Please contact me, if yours is missing.
Alien Xeno Flasher Board.pdf

Spare parts if anyone is interested..

Parts - For Sale

Alien Spare Parts Archived

Used, good condition - “2 Pop bumper eggs, new unused 1 Small section of LED light strips from the factory for side blades or backbox, wired/soldered with right connectors 5 replacement metal xeno jaw ser...”

2020-03-01

Warrenton, VA

knockerlover

40 (Firm)

Archived after: 0 days

Viewed: 17 times

Status: Not sold

I also have about 50 five SMD tower LEDs and two of the very early tongue motors. If you’re so unlucky to have one of the games that can use these, I will send them to you for free.

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Finally got my PETG backbox piece installed today....huge thanks to TomDK for providing. Was also fortunate enough to finally find the missing, broken piece in the bottom of the cab.

It was staggering to see how many cracks were hidden in just that piece of acrylic when I removed it. IMHO, there is nothing more important to keeping your Alien alive than getting ahold of one of these PETG sets when they pop up. The acrylic turns into little pieces of "glass" when they break and most certainly will destroy the playfield over time.

I've looked at Averell cracked PETG (?) area on mine closely....no problems, and can't imagine the hit that caused this. There are so many other areas of the machine that get pounded during multiball, it's hard to sort that protector doing anything except causing potential ball traps between the raised lip and airlock screen.....just my take though....(I've got around 1500 plays on mine to date, playfield still in amazing shape, scuffs on pf window)

Changed so many broken plastics on my games over the years, but never had a PETG crack.....lucky, I guess.....

I don't think so - in fact there are many solutions around to implement those sensors. The Alien sensors are still available from FreePlay and they seem to be robust, so there is currently no need to re-build them.

I've already asked a member of the Alien developers if he can disclose the I/O board protocol (if not standard USB) and the "commands". This would make it easier to replicate the I/O boards. I argued that it can anyway be exposed with a logic analyzer listening to the traffic. He referred me to the Pinball Brothers because it is their intellectual property. And he gave me the hint that the communication was designed to make analysis difficult.
Again, the knowledge is currently not urgently needed, so i didn't follow up...

Oh boy .. there is such a high request. I ordered material for enough sets and will sort the orders within the next days.
Also people are willing to have more sets send to them.
Please be patient it will take a longer time to produce. Price for a full set including both plastic ramps will be around 250 EURO.

MK6PIN Glad that it went well with the backboard swap. PET-G is much more stable than acylic/plexi but it is, also, not unbreakable.

Thank you for doing this for the community!!
Much needed...

I'm not a plastics guy, but know PETG is " almost" unbreakable in this use case. I sleep easy thrashing all my games that have the protectors, or in this case, the actual plastics made of this stuff.

Thanks for doing this.

QSS

I received the Airlock protector today and it fits in perfect.
I did some adjustments and the setting for the Airlock popper is -15% in the coil setup now.
Have to wait for the new Airlock plastic in PET-G and then the ALIEN is finished.

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Thanks much TomDK

just realized that the plastic enfs up 3-4 mm lower than the scoop... Will it work? Averell do I need washers?

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Also I spray painted the backboard black and put a small black cover over the small spots where EL foil shows.

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Anti airball plastic works very well in combination with reduced power of the popper coil weaker 10%.
I have checked this and it's fine.
Here you can see the new airball protector and the new airlock plastic above (thanks to TomDK for spare).

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I made 3 resin 3D printed hypersleep chambers... Will need some work to make the acrylic cover and finishing it up. Its a little rough finish now

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Will you be selling these?

Maybe I will make a few, depending on how well they turn out and how many people want one.
I will make a light inside that is triggered when a ball is locked.
I made a small pcb for that. Light time can be trimmed between 1 -8 seconds roughly.

Looks really cool!!
Can't wait to see the final result!
If you made a few, I'd definitely be interested in picking one up.

Question for the group.
Relates to the scoop.

I know that having more than one ball in the Airlock scoop during multiball has been an issue for multiple owners, as it relates to having them kick out in a timely fashion (if at all or completely sometimes in those situations)....which then, if all the balls do come out via ball search coil firing, has a tendency to enter into that bug in the code where you're on a forever ball saver, for the most part.

Not so much a question of that code bug, but a question of what can I do to get that scoop more reliable...
I did go to the settings and increase the scoop coil power by 20%.
I have heard of placing some type of insert inside the scoop to help the balls "line up better" ?
I have heard talk about manipulating the roof of the scoop that shows at the playfield and bending it back some ?
I've heard talk of changing the coil spring at the scoop to a less powerful spring ?

Seems my game certainly has an issue if there's more than 1 ball in the scoop at one time, and id love to resolve this issue.

Is there any sage advice and/or consensus on what is the best, most reliable thing to do to address this issue?
Thank you everybody!

A little confused...are u referring to the scoop, or trough, ball launch?

Airlock scoop

Hmm....I was aware of an ongoing problem w the 70v switching power supply not being able to keep up during frenzied multiball activity ( couldn't launch consistently, scoop getting jammed, etc.).

That was never a code, rather, a ps issue. It was ( is) fixed w @Kneissl's capacitor mod, found up in the thread.

Power supply issues play a big, big role in resets, weak multiball action, etc. On both 12 and 70v sides.

Sometimes the airlock scoop gets an issue to reject two balls.
I played around with the settings... 5-10% weaker works perfect with only one ball in the scoop, but with two balls the coil is to weak to reject the balls.
So, I decided to play with default setting and it works.
The best solution would have been a mechanical lock for the airlock if one ball is in to prevent that a second ball can be shoot in.

Thanks guys.
I'll keep fiddling with settings.
MK6PIN , I sent Kneissl a PM to see if he had any of these capacitor mods left around to help out with the potential ps issue experienced during mb.

I know I'm not alone with this issue and it certainly is a PIA... sometimes I find myself just trying to avoid the scoop at all costs during mb as a result...

I’m in for sure !!! Build it they will come!

It makes a world of difference, and adjusting settings isn't going to help the inherent ps sag issues in this case. He did a nice drawing w part #'s of it in the thread somewhere...try searching his avatar name here for his posts in this thread...I'll be at my computer tonight ( easier than my phone) and find it to repost...inexpensive, very effective fix..

Thanks! That's great. And I appreciate it! Probably help the "power sag" I notice with the right upper flipper as well... as I notice that "increasing coil power by x%" to the right upper flipper does not routinely give enough power to reliably make it up the hypersleep ramp, which is also annoying...

Edit: Kneissl did pm me with some pics of his capacitor addition, but I'd still really like to see your post of that as well as it's not entirely clear to me how to connect all of that....that said, it's great to hear it solves the ps sag issue!!

Once the power issue is sorted, the game is quite reliable....the difference is night and day....as the game should perform.

Will the new Alien be at the Texas show

There is no new ALIEN!

Lol

Yes, hundreds of new Aliens. The Bally Williams version but they dont know under which brand to bring it out.
The AlienRemake after MBr a very good seller , Heighway also brings some games.
The Alien version from Capcom will become lausy, its nearly the same gameplay like BBB only with Aliens. Boring.
Spookys Alien ... yes, that is a great game !!

Second new title will be "Corona, the pinball adventure" ... maybe it will crack the Texas show .. we hope not !

I love your post....

Update:
So i investigated yesterday, and it looks like the previous owner had already done the capacitor mod addition!! (see below) I looked back to the Pinside market ad and sure enough he even commented to it (I just didn't know what that was, but I do now).

One thing that happened early after getting this particular game (which I posted a few weeks ago with pics) was some chips on the center I/O board fried and took the right upper flipper coil with it (in smoke). Fortunately the seller included another I/O board, I exchanged it and changed the right upper flipper coil and coil sleeve and have been essentially good to go since. One thing I noted at that time, was that the coil for the right upper flipper was different than the others (non-Heighway, see attached picture) and there were replacements of this style coil in the goodie bag of things from the seller that I was able to replace with.

So, I will say, all in all, the game plays well (outside of typical things we all seem to experience). But, this still leaves the problem of the scoop being unable to reliably kick out balls if there are more than 1 ball in there (during multi ball), AND the power for the right upper flipper is just lame (can almost never get the ball up the left hypersleep ramp).

Seems that the scoop issue is mechanical in some way, Im just not sure how to solve the issue and would love any additional advice.

AND, after exploring around the machine yesterday, I think the issue of the right upper flipper power not getting the ball up the hypersleep ramp may have to do with the coil itself....it's a non-Heighway coil so maybe the style is just a bad match/replacement choice?? (Note, I did explore the coil, coil sleeve, coil stop and wiring, and all seemed fine, smooth, attached and clean).
Ive tried to find the higher power flipper coils (CO10), but for the very few places that sell Alien parts online, it seems they only sell the low power coil (CO30) and a high power alternative (CO20).

Any suggestions regarding replacement alternatives to this right upper flipper coil?? If the Heighway CO10 coils are not available anymore, does anyone think the high power CO20 would be an ok alternative? If not, does anyone have any suggestions as to what would be a better alternative coil to what I have in there now?? Id really love to resolve these two issues....

Thank you all.
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Did you get that from bladefury? My gut is telling me that was my Alien. (pink ziptie around those caps.) Are you sure your replacement io board was 100%?

Yes sir, I did. Good eye!!
The I/O board replacement that came with the game looked new-ish and I couldn't see anything grossly wrong with it. I put it in after the first one fried out some mosfets and no more smoke, blown fuses and everything worked/fired smoothly since. Just these two remaining issues...
I did pick up an extra I/O board since that time (at an uncomfortable price, but hey, when you need one you need one), and I suppose I could try and install/swap that this afternoon and see if that makes any difference...if that's what your thinking...

I've noticed that the Heighway coils have no diodes (all diodes are soldered on the powerdriver) and I'm curious if the diodes on this current replacement coil are somehow preventing the full potential power of the coil at this flipper? I suppose I could test this by swapping out the coil from the upper left flipper to the upper right and see if that makes a difference...

You could just clip the diode

https://www.flippers.com/coil-resistance.html
You can maybe ball park your way to a good replacement with this or something similar, check resistance and maybe the # of windings can be found for the Heighway coil? I forget if they were labeled.