Nice! And one step closer to a Stingray pf

Here is a better picture. I also checked my flippers and PN is correct. Maybe I need thinner rubber?

Note: CPR Galaxy playfield would be great.

7526F078-1B7A-455F-8346-2BC38C51F830 (resized).jpeg

I have an older Williams that had huge flipper hop on one side, I seem to remember the lower two connections went into tee nuts so I slotted the metal rail a bit and used slim rubbers to get it flush.
If the guide uses wood screws I'd probably just fill the old holes and move the the whole thing up a hair.

Cut a slight slot in those added clear plastics for adjustment. They aren't original anyway so you're not hurting anything.

Beehive looks to already have a prototype done so I would suspect they will be running them soon.

If they do.....I’m going to have keep my Galaxy forever for how much I got into it. Great game though.

They do.

https://www.beehivepinball.com/product/coming-soon

Good old fashion way of screen printing as well, scroll down you can see the test ones.

Looks great!

As your attorney, I advise you to buy a classic stern.
I finally did! Purchased a mint Galaxy last week. My techs got it at his house tracking down a bug. So wont land for a while. But I'm psyched for my first REAL Stern.

I think your ball guide is mis-located. Some good straight on pictures you ld help to see.

Kerry sent me an email today regarding the sling shot kickers. His first attempt has failed. He did not elaborate. He says he will get back to them in a couple of weeks.

I imagine he will be rolling this problem around in his head reaching for a solution.

I have new plastic set and one of my ball guides doesn’t seem to fit right, I have to push the plastics up to get it to screw in :/ should I slot the holes or just push the plastics

I just bore the holes out a bit.

How about giving me some pictures so I can see what is going on?

Thank you, but it would help if they were screwed into position so I can see what is going on.

Success! My tech found out the credit switch had been improperly wired! It was messing with the dip switches and turning off the sound.
He's gonna put in new flipper coils, and Bob's your uncle!
Gonna pick it up next week.

Very happy Message from the Freak Kingdom.

All five of the stationary targets on my Hot Hand have switch stacks that look like this. Is this correct? I would think the switch blades should be arranged so that the big round contacts come together.

20200920_154028 (resized).jpg

I have noticed the same thing myself. I don’t know which is the correct installation but all it takes to work is the small contact point.

It’s backwards. Will still work. Was like that from the factory I’m sure.

Most targets just have the tiny contact point. The big ones are for high power contacts like flipper buttons, Slingshots etc

yeah i have often wondered about those... seems counter intuitive and wrong but it's definitely factor?

The pop contacts on this pin are that way too. I may turn them around the right way. Just got done rebuilding the pops and I want the best action possible.

I have seen so many switches with the one contact installed "backwards" that I don't think it is a mistake. The switches only make contact for a millisecond. A small point of contact is all that is needed, IMO.

If you want your pops to be real snappy just remove 200 wraps of wire from each pop. Then take another 100 wraps of wire off of your sling shot coils. That will spice things up a little bit.

It is a mistake that switches from Williams and Stern had in the late 70's. Yes, it "works" with the one point of contact, but that side of the rivet is often rough, and it scrapes off the gold flashing on the other side. They worked while new (and for decades beyond, with adjustments) but it is wrong. Switches rivets have an obvious "face" that needs to meet the other face.

I wouldn't pull stacks apart unless it needed it to correct. The last Flash I got I needed to because all of the gold plating was gone from the one face, so I had to replace 1 blade on each switch with a new contact, and turn the other blade around so that the solder tabs weren't on top of each other.

It's a lot rarer on Stern games vs. Williams though. I don't think I've seen Ballys with this issue nor Gottliebs from the time period - Gottlieb did a lot of sub assembly stuff in house as did Bally so that might be the difference (although I do not know 100% if Stern/Williams subbed this stuff out)

The 1980 Williams parts catalog shows some switches with one of the contact rivets "upside down". Something tells me it's not a production mistake, it's by design.

Williams_Parts_Catalogue_1980_Switches.pdf

Yes, a design mistake.

Have you ever looked at the the gnarly surfaced rivets on the switches in question? No way was that by design.

I don't dispute some accelerated wear, but there's no way they'd do it without a reason. Maybe the two flat surfaces swiping can cause multiple make/breaks when the switch gets a little dirty, where the rivet point is less likely.

Major assumption: That one engineer drew these three pages of drawings. Possibly Williams could have assigned this drawing work to more than one engineer, but my money is that one engineer did all of this work.

Some of the switches are drawn up one way and others are drawn up the opposite way. If it was one engineer, then my thoughts are that these drawings are 100% correct.

The question is: Why? Why do some switches have contacts set up in reverse? As an old time auto mechanic in the days of "plugs and points" there is no way your car would run for very long with a reversed switch contact on the distributor points.

But I still wonder about the logic.

Take a look at this: The 2 spinner switches and the 1 slam tilt switch on the left are reversed while the 3 switches on the right are "traditional" style.

That cannot be a design error.

Screen Shot 2020-09-21 at 9.06.59 AM (resized).png

Look at the back rivet part of EM switches, which are designed to contact sometimes on both sides - those are smooth. At some point they ended up gnarly, and at that point, should have been rejected as they scratched into the smooth face.

OK, I looked at the WMS parts catalog I have here at the 'generic' lane switches a game like Flash, Firepower would have had and they are drawn backwards, so I guess it's by design. And the design is wrong in practice because of the rough small contact. I'm sure no one is going to leave it that way because "that's the way it came from the factory".

I'll admit I'm wrong in that it looks like it is drawn that way in the documentation, but it's still wrong in practice because of the accelerated wear. On a related note, the gospel of 'the switches are backwards at the factory' came out of the RGP days and Clay's original guides. I can't believe that in 20 years no one would have added the note that says "the factory drew it this way, and the switches happened to have rough surfaces which scratched the gold plating" - it was always "the factory put them together backwards". Maybe Quench was the first one that looked instead of repeating what (at the time) were the people who knew?

In practice, it still needs to be corrected because once that plating is scraped off, the switch is just unreliable. You have to clean and adjust them constantly, and they're still not reliable.

Looked in the Stern parts catalog now as well, for maximum confusion, the switch in there is drawn as part of 2 different subassemblies, one showing the faces towards each other, and the other, same switch #, showing them "backwards". Their drawings are no where near as good as WMS' catalog.

And just because I have it as well, the Gottlieb catalog specifically calls out switches as having the contact faces facing each other.

Maybe we should ask BigAl56 if he's got any insight into the switches.

The gold contact switches in the 1981 Stern parts catalog all have one contact backwards.

Stern_Parts_Catalog_switches1.jpg
Stern_Parts_Catalog_switches2.jpg

Can you send me a scan of the stern catalog? The one I have doesn't have those pages (it's the later one with Video game stuff listed first)

What's the point of having a contact face if it's not used as a contact face?

I've never seen Bally switches put together this way but Big Al might have insight into how the subassemblies were made at the time - and likely what the other companies were doing since they all seem to know each others' businesses.

I think what ended up happening is that the cinch punch for the rivet wasn't providing the smooth finish it should have.

A lot of this is academic anyway, since almost all operators at the time filed all the switches, so they all need to be replaced. They usually ignored the stickers and warnings everywhere saying to not file the gold plated contacts.

It's on PinWiki:
https://www.pinwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Bally/Stern#Parts_Catalogs
Switches are on PDF page 37 of 56; the video game stuff is in the beginning of that catalog.

durrr.... it's in my printed copy as well. Different section.... I thought page 21 was a cumulative page # but guess not.

With Stern's sloppy assembly ways and sloppy drawings anything could be possible. But when I was building business jet aircraft and on a brand new design, all the time we would stumble into a drawing that had problems that were miscues by the engineer responsible for the drawing. Those were expensive mistakes because to correct the drawing, the corrected drawing had to be approved by the FAA.

I do have some finicky switches that are hit or miss on making contact. So you might right in that the reversed contact destroys the plating on the surface. I'm going to have to look at a couple of my problem switches and see the construction.

But Williams machines strike me as built of good quality and Williams drawings are much cleaner than Stern drawings.

I did not think it made a difference. Buy my finicky switches suggest you are onto something. I am going to have to open up my DE Robocop and see how its switches are built.

I've considered this. If there's a 26 gauge 1000 turn coil already made, I'd rather just do a coil swap. Or get some new AN-26-1200s and mod them. The Stern originals look so nice with their clean factory wrappers.

PBR has some A25-1050s on sale for $5.00 each if those would work for you.

Screen Shot 2020-09-21 at 2.42.58 PM (resized).png

He also has some 850s for $5.00 each.

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Yeah I've had some SS Ballys since I was a teenager and I always took it as gospel that the gold-plated contacts on SS games were all that stood between smooth pinball action and a world of random intermittent junk. I couldn't wait to get my first good job, so that I could clean those contacts with MY VERY OWN business card.

The first time I called Steve Young for parts for my SS Bally Black Jack, I ordered a flex-stone. "YOU DON'T USE THAT ON THAT GAME!", he yelled. "I know, I know, it's for the FLIPPERS!", I pleaded back. After that we got along fine.

I don't know how much current those driver transistors can handle before they pop. Maybe someone will chime in on that.

I have noticed on my Centaur that the coil that shoots balls out of the flap to the playfield is an AO-25-950, and it's switched through a relay instead of being directly connected to the Darlington transistor.

He said the same thing to me when I was ordering for my Big Game. Actually, he YELLED. . He just about jerked me thru the phone line

Unlike you, I did not know any better. . I said my mea culpas and we have gotten along fine ever since.

Good point. Thanks.

Steve don't mess round. LOL. You do something wrong he will make sure you do it right or you lose your pinball card for the day. He is a world class guy and can stomp on ones confidence rather quickly.

I got a extra lockbar off a Dracula if someone is in need. It has the post not the fin.

sold

What people forget is that points on contacts are a assembly line process.
The bottom solder lugs are to be opposite of each other... a left side and a right side...
The best and fastest way to assemble is to have one die for the contact points.
The leaf switch fits the die, one way, and clinch. Now on to the next 100,000 leaf switch contact.
You can also note that the points have no rounded head; which makes the contacts face only one way.
This is also a leftover process from the EM relays.
Bally would change contact points design implementations in the late 70's.

I recently ordered some replacement contacts from Steve at PBR. They are the smaller contacts that are used on all of the switches.

What I was wanting were some of the larger contacts that are used on the flipper switches. Steve does not have them. However, a Google search brought this website up.

https://www.deringerney.com/electrical-contact-rivets/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIidzK1aSF7AIVz8DACh3PLQbjEAAYASAAEgI1D_D_BwE

You can tell from the website that this outfit is not geared to retail sales . But I am going to call them on Monday and see if I could procure a handful of the larger flipper switch contacts. Since flipper switches cost around $8.00 each I think it is worth a try to procure some.

Doesn't he put them on the switch assemblies he sells though? Must be getting them from somewhere, odd he doesn't sell it separately.

That web link looks promising, depending on pricing.

Ditto.

Speaking of switch contacts, anyone have a tip on replacing them on a spinner switch?