Thanks for the heads up. I'll keep this in mind.

I heard this the other day as well but never seen smoke but I will definitely watch for it.

Thanks for the heads up, all work will be done with power off

Holy crap that has to be software related and Stern should issue a fix ASAP.

thanks for posting

Any idea what the cause was? For example, I had a lamp column go bad because a wiring harness wire had gotten chewed up in the orbit pop-post (just had to fix the wire and zip tie the harnesses together more heavily around the back right corner of the playfield)

Wow, thanks for posting this, I'll keep that in mind.

Great tip, thank you for posting.

+1

Is this related to the pf being lifted, or would it happen with just the coin door being opened?

kind of ironic have to admit it made me laugh to envision sparky on fire.
Great catch on this fire hazard.

Has there been a solution to this issue by Stern yet?
Just like cars...a 2000 unit recall?
In all seriousness, has it been resolved in the newer codes?

I know this is a problem to be fixed but damn, wouldn't it totally rock if Sparky *DID* emit smoke and sparks when he got fried?

Pinballpark has a thread on this as well. Happened to him. Stern really needs to address this. A known fire hazard now.

I notice some time has passed since the original post - has anyone figured out why this is/was happening to sparky?

i have heard such click on my pro, just unboxed other day and installed latest code. Have not noticed anything locked on or burning up though. Will be careful, thanks.

Same problem on my LE yesterday but without lifting the playfield. Playfield in normal position and start of the machine with opened door. Few minutes later, massive smoke, very hot coil bracket.
A stop/start with closed door solved the problem. After careful checking, I have not seen what had melted, maybe only the coil itself. I suppose that it's a good idea to change it even it is still working.

What code version were you running?

1.22

Ugh, that sucks! No one has seen it with the door closed yet? Is Sparky a 20V coil, perhaps? I have a mechanical knocker in a few of my games, and occasionally the knocker will fire if I close the door while the game is on. It doesn't lock on, though. The knocker is essentially a 20V coil, though it is stepped up to 50V via an additional transistor board.

I just joined the "I really fried Sparky" club. Coin door was open, playfield lifted and machine turned on. Sparky gave the click and then about 5 seconds later he started to smoke. Quickly turn the machine off. Where to from here? Is the machine still ok or will coil need replacing?

Code version 1.16 (edited my post: had wrong code version originally)

As a side note, the coin door switches (especially for menu) are REALLY slow/unresponsive at times. Was hoping a software update would fix this, but didn't get that far tonight.

Thanks!
Adam.

I assume you guys are reporting this to Stern when it happens, right?

If this happened in a game that was no longer under warranty, I would do at least the following:
-Keep the power off.
-Visually inspect the coil, if anything on it shows signs of heat damage, replace it.
-Visually inspect the wires running all the way from driver board to the coil. If the insulation looks to have any heat damage, replace it.
-Disconnect the connector from the power driver board and test the resistance of the coil. If it does not show the correct resistance, replace it.

Even if it appears to work, all the heat could have degraded the insulation on the coil/wiring/both making them hazardous even when the game is operating correctly.

IMO, this problem is WAY worse than the hammer stuff could ever be.

How the heck is this happening if the coin-door interlock is supposedly cutting the high voltages out when the door is open? How is there high voltage present on the playfield at that point?

Is a low-voltage circuit shorting instead? Even if something was contacting the leads on Sparky's coil, it shouldn't be energized with the door open.

This is worse than the ACDC powercycle ballsave bug.

I'm not in front of my game, but I took a look at the manual, and Sparky is driven by #18 (one of the 20V drivers) and uses a step-up to 50V. Incidentally, my mechanical knocker works the same way. I don't have the time to look it up, but my guess is that the 50V being run to the step-up driver is not being run through the interlock switch. According to the manual, it is by itself on a 4A SB fuse. My gut says that's way bigger than it needs to be.

That's a pretty big oversight if it's true - if there is an interlock switch, the conventional wisdom is that it will cut ALL instances of high voltage to the playfield. Next question is what is setting it off.. someone mentioned it happening with the PF down, so hard to see how it could be something as simple as metal brushing the coil leads. Need to determine what that 'click' is ... are there any relays associated with Sparky?

Again, I'm guessing, but the click could just be the sound of the Sparky coil pulling in and hitting it's stop.

I'm at work now, so I'm a bit busy, but I'd like to look up the coil being used, calculate the normal current it would draw when active, and figure out what an appropriate fuse value would be.

Maybe the hammer was to go up/down fast to put the fire out.

According to the manual, the coil is a 32-1800, which is about 50 ohms. The 50V power is actually around 70V DC, so locked on, it would pull about 1.4 A.

_{Post edited by herg : Deleted incorrect info}

It is probably a good idea to turn off the power before raising the playfield and disabling the power to Sparky if work must be done with the power on.

I may have been distracted by work earlier because much of what I posted was wrong. It is not on F7, and mine doesn't fire in test mode if the door is open.

Are there any pictures out there on how to get to the coil behind Sparky? New coil is being sent out by my distributor. All good!

Ok, answered my own question. Found good pictures via this thread. Geez, they love making it hard when removing screws on something!

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/noob-question-metallica-pro-sparky-doesnt-shake-at-start-of-multiball

Ahdelarge, lemme know if you have any questions. Ill be happy to share any info from my experience that may not be in my thread you mentioned above. Good luck.

Couple things that id do differently...

I didnt have any shrink wrap to use to cover my new solder points on the coil lugs. So dont forget to have some black shrink wrap and put it on wires before you solder...

To remove the vertical pf piece i got creative and stacked some stuff high enough out in front of coin door so that i could rest the games playfield legs on it. That way i could get to the four machine screws on the back to remove it. But if i had to do it again.... i think if you raise the pf to the full vertical position leaning on backglass, then you could probably get at the 4 screws from the bottom. Then lower the playfield and get at sparky.

Routing the sparky wire down through the plastics to the hole in the playfield was kinda tricky. There are breaks in both plastics to allow the wire through. Bottom plastic even has a divot where the wire is supposed to stay. The plastic connector does fit through the hole directly behind sparky barely...

I think I could do this in my sleep now. Was helping another owner with their machine and the coil fried. I did a test run on dismantling my machine last night and then replaced their fried coil with a new coil tonight.

Luckily, the old black shrink slid off (with a bit of tugging) and I was able to use it to cover the new solder.

As for the playfield backing, I had the playfield in the full vertical position and unscrewed it that way. Needed the owner to hold the wooden backing when all screws had been taken out. For my machine, I was on my own and did a tricky juggling job.

Yes, it was also tricky sliding the wires back down behind Sparky.

Both machines are 100% operational again. Great to be able to fix two Metallica Pro machines in one night. We won't be lifting the playfield with the coin door open again...

Cheers!
Adam.

Is this fixable or you just have to have the game off or coindoor closed if you lift the PF?

This is my question too. I can easily change a coil, but what is to prevent the new coil from frying again?

What is the root cause of the coil shorting out and what is being done (software/hardware) to prevent it from happening again?

Seems like a separate hardwired interlock switch at the coin door that is there solely for the Sparky coil, if the 50V is not interrupted correctly like the 20V. I hope Stern is on the case...

Might be smart to put a slow blow fuse on this guy if it is not protected by the interlock.

I had to test lamp sockets on the new owner's Metallica Pro tonight and before I did anything, I lifted the playfield and unplugged the Sparkey coil connector underneath the playfield and removed the connector from the board that controls it. No messing around waiting for clicks. Cancelled it out of the equation.

Cheers!
Adam.

I think this happens as the door interlock switch sticks, when you open the coin door it should beep and say it has cut the 50/20v power. This will not occur then. I had opened the door and the switch simply needed to be broken in so it would trigger when the door is opened. If you open the door and do not get the message on the DMD and the noise saying it has disabled power simply pull on the interlock and you will get that message and it will cut the power..

I just joined the club, Sparky started to smoke, blew the fuse. I was working on a new LED mod and had the playfield up and then down, coin door open and was dorking with the mod. I will have to read the thread in detail to troubleshoot.

Has anyone talked to Stern about this?

Reset everything and it works. I blew Q21 due to my fumble fingers

I opened the coin door last night, the glass was already off and I heard a click. I reached behind and the sparky coil was getting really hot. Seems like it will be just a matter of time until it gets fried. Built date July 2013.

I am taking the glass off quite often fitting a new mod so it doesn't happen that often.

Just had this happen to a customers machine,smoked the coil,waiting on a new step up board and the coil to arrive but I have made an inline fuse 2amp sloblo so with any luck it will only blow the fuse next time it happens.
The thing I don't get is why is it activating ,shouldn't matter if the interlock is sticking something is triggering Q18 ,must be code.

Was just updating the software on my Metallica Pro and had the coin door open and machine turned on. I ducked off to the computer and thought "I better turn the pinball off". I went back and closed the coin door and there was that old familiar click on Sparky. I quickly opened and closed the coin door and turned the machine off. No smoke this time. Phew! I thought this only occurred with the playfield up?

Wow, has this been resolved?