I am not following how the machine "works 100%" when turned on if if is blowing the house fuse/relay? Do you mean this is tripping your house circuit protection after some period of time or is this happening immediately when the switch is turned on?

Do you have a basic knowledge of electricity/electricity safety practices/and some basic skills with DMMs or voltmeters?

I understand now, yes that makes sense. Does the game's fuse go out, or just the house fuse that fails? Also, would like to know what condition is on the circuit that this game is plugged into. Could you successfully plug in two of the working games into that circuit and have them run successfully, or is this not possible?

Page 97 of the manual shows how to configure the game for the proper voltage of the mains supply in your country. I would advise to verify that this is correct first. You should verify the voltage of the mains supply with a meter too.

I am not familiar with running this game in another country, and because the problem is intermittent it is more difficult to find the exact cause. It could be a bridge rectifier beginning to fail, or something before them in the circuit, such as the line filter or the varistor.

Do you mean the breaker in the house's electrical panel trips? What's the amperage rating on it? 10, 15, 20?

When the game(s) are on, can you hear the electrical panel buzzing or humming?

Going in another direction, it's possible that there's ground fault in the game. Is the electrical cord frayed, missing insulation, or taped up in any way? The cord might need to be replaced.

Based on your answers to my questions it sounds like your circuit in the house is sufficient. The game fuse not blowing is a pretty significant clue. If the game fuse is the correct fuse and is not blowing, but the much larger house breaker or fuse is, that would lead me to believe something is wrong very close to the power entry of the game. Those would be the power cord itself or the switch. As suggested earlier the power cord might be the problem.
_{Post edited by wayout440: additional info}

On further review, the game fuse is an 8A slow blow, and the house fuse could be tripping faster than the games fuse. Pictures of your wiring up to the transformer may help. You might want to verify that the varistor, 1V1 is rated properly for your country. It's just difficult for me to say with any certainty what the problem is likely to be.

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It looks like the outer insulation is splitting open. I'd replace the cord for that reason alone. Plus, if the cord has been crimped by movement, there could be other things going on with the cord that you can't see with a visual inspection (ie, the shorting of lines).

The varistor should have writing on it that shows the brand, model, and voltage. Something like this:
http://www.setfuse.com/shaiweite/assets/js/upfiles/images/products/home_product10.jpg

The switch on the game is going. Every now and than it is creating a dead short and tripping the breaker.

Yes, I would check that along with replacing that power cord. Of course these are all suggestions without being able to see the machine.

Tezting, this is not an easy problem to troubleshoot over the internet. We're all pretty much taking best guesses at this point. Please be careful with high voltage! You might have to replace a few of those parts (switch, power cord, etc...) Please let us know if you can solve the problem. Good Luck!

Schematic shows 8A SB, though I don't think this value is going to make any difference as far as blowing the house fuse goes. Varistor value looks good to me.

If you are in Denmark and running 240V you'll want to change that to 5A. It's not the problem with your house issue; but I'd change that to what is should be for your voltage characteristic.

Too bad this problem doesn't seem to have a solution yet. I live in The Netherlands (also 220v@50hz) and am having the exact same issues with my first pinball machine!

It's a Pirates of the Caribbean and I already ruled out the switch itself by keeping that on and just pulling the power plug. 4/5 times I don't have any issues but that 1/5th time the fuse in the house trips and I need to reset that.

I keep the pinball machine plugged in and can reset the house's fuse without any issues. So there isn't a constant short circuit or something.
Houses here have a 16A fuse per group. No other power intense devices are on this same group of outlets and I already moved the pinball machine to other outlets in the house to rule that out.

Also no visible damage to the power cord and no fuses are blown inside the machine since the house fuse was faster I guess.

I have a multimeter but am not sure how I can resolve this issues with that.

Please help!

I might have found a solution on another website. Have also spoken to a pinball technician in The Netherlands about this and he confirmed this should solve the issue.

From what I hear this problem happens more in Europe than in the USA. I have no idea if this is because of the 110/220V difference, or because of the type of breaker/electrical wiring used.

I'm awaiting my part today and post results!

This problem is caused because when you switch on the game, the transformer (and other parts of the game) suddenly require a lot of electricity. It causes a sudden load, the main breaker of your house thinks there's a short somewhere in the circuit and resets. Bam - your whole house is without electricity..
There's also a reason why it doesn't happen all the time. AC is a wave which goes up and down, 50 (or 60, depending on what part of the world you're in) times a second. When you switch the game on while the wave is at the bottom, you usually have enough margin so the breaker doesn't act, switch on the pinball machine while the wave is at the top and the circuit gets overloaded.

There are two solutions for this. The first is a workaround - you can add more resistance to the wiring (so the main breaker becomes slower to react), try to plug in your pinball machine in a long extension cord instead of directly into the wall. The extension cord can help solve your problem.

The correct way to solve the problem is to install an NTC. NTC stands for Negative Temperature Coefficient, another word for it is thermistor. It's a resistor that changes its value with its temperature. It's job is to limit the inrush of current when you turn on the machine.
Turn on the pinball machine and the thermistor will limit the inrush of current because of its resistance. Once the machine is on, the resistance of the NTC lowers, not influencing the circuit anymore.

Source: http://www.flippers.be/basics/101_sys11_house_fuse_trips.html

Question:

How new are these circuit breakers, and have they been replaced recently (last 15 years?)

At least here in the US, it's been required to install arc fault circuit breakers for circuits in many room types in the house; and as of 2014, basically all residential circuits require an AFCI (everything that does not require a GFCI due to proximity to water.)

The thing about them, is they can nuisance trip when something that presents a large inductive load. A pin could do that two ways: Either the transformer itself, or a combination of the transformer and the EMI/RFI filter that was typically installed in the cabinet...between the two of them they present a pretty large inductive load.

Ooh, Wikipedia tells me these things have been around in Denmark for a while:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device

I don't know about the Netherlands but I'd assume a similar requirement exists there.

You could try bypassing the EMI/RFI filter in the cabinet, and seeing if that helps. If it does, we're on the right track.

BTW, these breakers do actually fail, you might just need one replaced. I know moving the machine is a pain, but can you try it on another circuit somewhere?

It's not required for operation of the game. It's there to keep the computer in the game from causing interference to other things, like AM radios.

It does this with an LC network designed to suppress RF interference; that LC network is very heavy on the L (inductive), and coupled with the transformer causes a lot of lag in the phase of incoming power.

Most modern power supplies are switching, and include power factor compensation that overcomes this, but old linear supplies do not, and the transformer makes them an inductive load like a motor. That plus the filter does not play nicely with some of the modern safety breakers -- A friend of mine had a trip about 10% of the time when he'd turn on any ceiling fan on any branch circuit in a new house here.

Yep! The NTC resistor (thermistor) did the trick!

Apparently newer houses (like mine from 2010) have circuit breakers that react very fast. A peak in the circuit caused by the pin is incorrectly seen as a short circuit. The NTC resistor makes sure that peak is not created as it's a 5 Ohm resistor upon startup. It's a € 0,90 part and some easy soldering inside the metal box under your playfield. My pin works perfect now and no more running back to the circuit breakers anymore!

If you need additional help PM me. But it's really straightforward. Pictures inside that link I posted earlier.

Hopefully this is helpful for other people in the future as well.

I bought a NTC 5 Ohm which appeared to be available at a lot of pinball parts (web)store's. Figures...

It looks like this:
http://uk.farnell.com/productimages/standard/en_US/07P7901-40.jpg

And I did solder it between the brown wire (phase) and before the fuse. In this picture (on the right!) they soldered it after the fuse but I don't think that would make any difference:
http://www.flippers.be/images/art/ntc02.jpg