Hey guys and gals. Got (what I was told) was most likely the very last brand NIB Premium left back in March of this year from a distributor in Colorado. Since that time, the F7 magnet fuse has blown twice. The machine has the updated magnet board based on my serial number, so I don't think that's the issue. I have visually verified it. I am experiencing no problems with the hammer or anything that has previously been reported. None that I've seen anyway. The machine is playing perfectly except the F7 fuse has blown twice and I can't find a reason. Also, the plunger that keeps the balls captive in the coffin started acting up yesterday. Turned on the machine and it kept cycling uncommanded for nearly a minute, then stopped all by itself. Something strange is going on. I'm wondering if the coffin/hammer magnet is getting too hot or is faulty. I can imagine if the magnet is in "sense" mode for too long, waiting for the ball to roll across it, it will heat up and blow the fuse but I'm not 100% sure on that. I've found a few threads on the F7 blowing for others, but it was all related to the older magnet processor board. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks guys. Didn’t plan on upping the fuse to 5a since there is a reason it’s blowing. I was unaware the sense is on a timer. I’ll do the test to listen for how long it lasts and report back. One question though, if I lower the amount of time it’s activated, and the ball goes across the magnet after it’s deactivated, will the magnet still grab the ball?

Went through all the menus (standard/feature/game) and don’t see an adjustment for the sense timer anywhere. Also, the sense appears to be active for an infinite amount of time until a ball goes across the magnet pad. I let it run for nearly a minute and didn’t want to run the risk of the fuse blowing again, so I gave it a ball to hammer down. The machine only has 1.64 code so I’m going to update it to 1.70 and see if that affects anything.

So I may have stumbled upon the solution/cause. I have a playfield protector installed on this machine. The Grave Marker and Hammer magnets have cutouts for them. The Electric Chair did not. I noticed that the plastic in the area above the magnet for the chair was warped and raised a bit. The ball ended up sitting on the edge/rim of the magnet instead of dead center like it’s supposed to and the magnet was working overtime to try and hold the ball.

I guess the heat or some other unknown factor caused the plastic over the chair magnet to warp and allow the ball to sit on the rim vs the center of the magnet. So I took a sharp razor and cut out the plastic around the chair magnet. Now the ball sits dead Center when the magnet is energized. I’m thinking this might be the solution to the issue. Will report back if the fuse does not hold. Thanks everyone.

Thank you!

So it’s getting worse. The coffin magnet is hot as hell, the fuse blows within a few seconds, and it reads 13.87M ohm across the magnet coil. Making changes to the pulse, etc does nothing and the magnet test does not work in the menu. Sparky magnet works fine. So do I have a bad magnet coil or a bad magnet control board? It should also be noted that I have a technician alert regarding the magnet but I’ll be damned if I can find switch 63. Is that the magnet itself?
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So after letting the magnet cool for 24 hours, it reads 4.7ohm. So it’s most likely ok. I turned my attention to the control board. Tested every component on the board that I could. Everything passed except Q2. It’s dead shorted. I have a whole new board on the way from Stern, but in the mean time, I’m going to replace this transistor and see if that gets me going again. If so, then I gotta figure out why the sense runs forever until a ball runs across the magnet.

It was mentioned that it’s only supposed to run for a few seconds but this machine ran it forever until a ball went across the magnet. That very well could have been what caused the issue but is the firmware in the control board responsible for that? If the new control board does the same thing, will turning off the sense disable the coffin lock/magnet all together?

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So the CPU board could be the cause? Hmm. Great. No, I haven’t asked them but it reads the same as the other two magnets (appx 4.5ohm).

Thanks.