Quoted from Rensh:Interesting. I changed out the sleeves recently with silicone sleeves and I am trying to remember now if I have seen it since
Will keep an eye to it. Never made a relation between the sleeves and magnet grab.
I posted this about a month ago, but for those struggling with the magnet, here's what I've found:
Ohhh if I could only describe the amount of frustration I've had on this issue. I've tried it all and even things that you won't read on here (like drilling entirely new holes to mount the core at various different angles in an effort to get this to work 100% of the time). After almost 40 hours of dicking around with it, I've gotten it to a place where it will grab it every time, but there's unfortunately not a single fix. It's a culmination of all of these items:
1) Balls: Get yourself some carbon-core balls. They react much more strongly to magnets. I got mine from ball baron.
2) The rubber post next to the chute: This plays a huge part. Order a cliffy blue one from Cliff himself (Don't get from pinball life as they are falsely labeled as Cliffy's but don't bounce as much).
3) Leveling/Pitch: This also plays a big part I've found best success at 6.8 degrees pitch and obviously it needs to be perfectly level left to right. That being said, don't rely on that stupid app people always tout on Pinside. It's worthless. Get yourself an actual digital level: amazon.com link »
4) Waxing: This was the nail in the coffin for me and something that was counter-intuitive to what I suspected for the first 35 hours I messed with this thing.. My finding is that a recently waxed playfield makes the magnet work MUCH better than one that hasn't been waxed in hundreds of plays. In fact, as soon as my magnet starts missing again, the first thing I do is clean/wax the area around it and that does the trick - especially with the carbon-core balls. It grabs those suckers super fast.
5) Put 1-2 washers beneath the core as found on other threads here. You want the actual center piece to be pressed up hard against the playfield - the ring does not matter.
Good luck!