I'm pulling what little hair I have out trying to fix an issue with playball.

What is supposed to happen...

At start of each ball, player "shoots" ball by pressing right flipper button. This causes the ball shooter solenoid to shoot the ball up into the playfield. If the player doesn't register a 10 point or 100 point score change the machine will automatically reshoot the ball without player pressing the right flipper. This insures that if the shot ball doesn't register at least 10 points that the player isn't penalized a ball.

What is happening …

On 1st ball of game, everything works as designed (usually). Relay O is engaged. Player presses right flipper button and ball is shot into playfield. Relay O stays engaged until ball has scored a 10 point or 100 point score reel increment. As soon as 10/100 has been scored, relay O disengages. If shooter doesn't score 10/100 then relay O stays engaged and it will cause ball to self launch as soon as the ball present switch has been closed. This is I believe proper behavior.

From the second ball to the last ball (again usually), ball has drained and the ball present switch is closed. Relay O is open as I think it should be until the ball closes the ball present switch. The score motor turns, the ball counter is incremented, the vari targets are reset, relay O is energized and ball is auto ejected.

My theory...
For some reason the timing is off on the relay O closure. It seems like it closes a split second too early causing the auto reshoot feature to activate.

I've cleaned and adjusted the score motor contacts and have adjusted and verified the adjustment on the double pole contacts on relay O (see photo). Looking at schematic I believe that the O relay must be closed for the shooter solenoid to activate.

Anybody else run into this?

Please help me save my remaining hair!

Allen

IMG_3956 (resized).jpg

IMG_3957 (resized).jpg

IMG_3958 (resized).jpg

Hi Mark and Curie, Thanks for the help!

The score motor always turns about 1/3 of the way through and it doesn't appear that P is active or sticking, but I'm going to take a closer look at it to see if there are any contacts that need adjusting on the P relay. 4C is indeed where the power is coming that fires the ball. It sparks a little and then ball is launched. I think I figured out at some point that 4C was also used to reset the vari targets and if O was open that is what it would do. Something is energizing O too early.

I'm going to take a close look at P and report back.

Thanks again!

Allen

I just spent an hour or two working with Playball.... so I haven't reviewed the 2 latest posts yet. I want to document what I've found before I forget it....

Received an email from another pinner who told me that the game instructions say that if a player doesn't hit a 10 or 100 switch before the ball drains then the player will be able to push the right flipper button again to relaunch the ball. I had assumed the auto relaunch I experienced was normal if the player didn't hit a 10 or 100 point target.... in fact the auto eject is never supposed to happen.

Mark recommended that I de-solder the score motor so I could move it in slow motion. Great suggestion!! Doing that I noticed that as soon as 2c closes that the ball launch always activates. 2C makes contact very early in the 1/3 turn cycle that the score motor makes when a ball drain occurs. Manually turning the score motor I was able to cause the ball launch solenoid to stay powered. While powered I tried opening contacts on the o and w and u relay. None of them would break the power to the launch solenoid.

I believe that the 2C closure on the ball drain during this 1/3 score motor cycle is supposed to trigger the variable score reset. In my testing I observed that 2C triggers both a variable score reset as well as the ball launch.

I'm thinking I've got some kind of short across the ball launch circuit and the variable target reset circuit.

Going back now to study the prior 2 posts.

Thanks again for all your help. You guys know your pins!!

Allen

I continued tracing my ball launch issues and noticed that work had been done to the machine by a previous owner. I'm kicking myself for not following up on this when I first saw it months ago. I just assumed the wire had an open short somewhere and previous owner replaced it.

The wire leading to motor 2c had been replaced at some point in the past. Following this black replacement wire to the large jones plug in the furthest back of the cabinet I can see that the original wire had been disconnected. This new wire was soldered in and it appears a jumper was also added between the replacement wire and the jones connection next to this wire (see photo).

I don't think I can find a map of the jones plug wiring in the schematics? Can someone with their own Playball please either take a photo of this rear jones plug for me or just take a quick look to let me know if this jumper is supposed to be there? It is the short black wire connecting 2 jones sockets in the photo.

I'm going to trace the original wire that leads from the jones plug to 2C and I'm betting there is a relay somewhere along the way that would have opened this circuit preventing the auto launch.

I'm feelin optimistic!

Thanks again!

IMG_3979 (resized).jpg

More progress!

I traced the disconnected old wire through the O relay. When I remove the questionable jumper, disconnected the replacement wire that went from jones plug to score motor 2c and then reconnected the original wiring that goes from jones plug to 2c and passes through the O relay the ball return is no longer auto firing. However, I no longer have enough current to energize the ball return solenoid. I can see that the ball return tries to fire when the right flipper button is pressed. There is a small spark at 2C. I measured resistance from 2C back to jones plug and it was .1 ohms. I believe the problem now is upstream from the jones plug.

I'm guessing old owner had the problem I have now and created an "auto fire" ball return by shorting across the jones plug and bypassing the O relay. This would have made the game playable.... but not correctly so!

Now I've got to figure out why there isn't enough current to energize the ball return.

I'd still appreciate verification that the jones plug jumper in question doesn't belong there. I'm 99% certain, but would feel better at 100%.

Thanks again!

I'm stuck again. I've checked the O and W relays for continuity and made sure the contacts were clean and adjusted. I've tried jumpering across the circuit in case I have a damaged wire somewhere. I've tested the ball return solenoid and it's strong when it gets electricity from somewhere other then the problem circuit.

I did note that the U relay activates every time the ball return operates. I thought maybe the machine couldn't handle the 2 solenoids on the same circuit firing at the same time. I unsoldered the U relay but I still am not getting the ball return to fire. I suspect the U relay is supposed to fire every time the ball return fires. It (U) resets the variable targets.

The last person who tried to fix this must have run into the same issues.

This should be electricity 101 kind of work, but its baffling me.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again!

Allen

Solved!

As you all suspected, there was still a dirty relay contact. Using MarkG conquer and divide advice I measure resistance across each segment of the circuit until I discovered a contact on relay O causing 30 ohms of resistance. Once I cleaned it the machine works as it is supposed to.

My personal lesson here is to never assume that an old repair fixed some old problem. In my case the previous owner's repair masked the issue.

Anybody else ever notice how the relays that need the most adjusting seem to be at the back of the machine and the hardest to access?

Thanks everybody for your help!

Allen