Problem: once the ball is up on the battlefield the kicker will fire once every time you try to scroll left or right as if the opto beam has been broken. It always only fires once then keeps scrolling if you keep the flipper button down.

I've looked for shorts under the battlefield and not seeing anything. Also the opto works fine when the beam is broken by the ball and if you manually trigger it and hold your hand there it will fire repeatedly as it should until the beam is not blocked.

I'm a little baffled.. What us causing it to kick and why just once? Is this a setting that can be turned on or off?

I'll check that tomorrow with the switches.. I think I had determined that it only happens when the battlefield mode is engaged through the flippers during play but I could be wrong. Regarding LED's... I did install them but am not positive if this was a problem prior to that or not.. could they cause something like that?

Ok.. switch edge test shows that everything is working correctly, no overlap across any switches for the flippers or miniPF opto. MiniPF test works correctly, just slides the motor back and forth without firing the kicker. It's something with the flipper buttons and their control once the ball pops up on the battlefield and the computer starts controlling the left/right motion of the kicker via the flipper buttons. I messed around with it for a while and very rarely I WAS getting a left scroll w/out the kicker firing if I jammed the button in fast.. and I think a couple right scrolls as well. I think I will try swapping out the flipper optos with WCS and see if that changes anything... I already tried cleaning off the optos.

Any other suggestions welcome

Yeah.. it seems like that opto is reporting the switch closure upon pressing the flipper button, but here's the thing -- holding down the flipper button only fires the kicker once (right when you initially depress it) whereas if you break the beam (with your finger for example) and keep it broken the kicker will repeatedly fire until the beam is restored.

Sweet! I had been thinking that the motor movement was somehow triggering it via vibration but was thinking it had something to do with the beam itself, not the solder. That actually makes a lot of sense as the opto just stopped triggering via the beam being cut by the ball during play 5/6 of the time now.. although the motor was continuing to trigger the kicker. I was going to switch out the optos.. just hadn't gotten around to it. This makes me confident that it's most likely a solder problem.. easy to fix Thanks fliperz!!

That could be a switch adjustment issue as well -- if you have not already Checked that. Contacts on blades super close together making connections from enough vibration

I took a look at it and they actually looked strong but I'm going to resolder when I get back home.. I was headed out the door on vacation so I didn't have time. Hopefully this Sunday.

Thanks guys! Here's the update:

I was getting even more erratic behavior with the kicker firing only sometimes.. so I got out the soldering iron this morning and started taking a look. I finally realized one of the wires had broken loose on the kicker so I resoldered that and reflowed the other lug but that didn't fix the problem. So here's what I did so so far without fixing the issue:

I reflowed solder to both optos.
Rechecked connections on the long-hop board, took it off then and reflowed the opto headers and cleaned up the dust on the backside. (all the connections looked good on the components)
Switched out the optos on both sides with a used spares I had.
Did switch tests trying to wiggle the hell out of the miniPF, opto connections/wiring, motor.. trying to mimick any vibration the motor would cause.

So.... I've been wondering about the voltage dropping when the motor starts as well since it triggers the opto every time, but only once.. as if the +12 voltage drops out momentarily when there's the inrush of current to the motor. This seems to make the most sense right now. But how do I get the voltage back up if that's the case? I'm going to check the +12v and see where it's at. I wonder if my motor is just starting to go out and maybe drawing too much current? Anyone found low voltage on the 12v and corrected it successfully? What should the optos measure closed and open? Can someone check there's for me?

*my regulated +12v on the power board is at 12.14v and remains there even when the kicker fires.
*at the opto right/left side I've got around 11.7v, which does drop when the motor runs to around 10.4v or so.. hard to tell without an oscope. Is this normal behavior and if not.. any ideas to correct it?

Hmm ok well I guess I've got more work on my hands I did install the colordmd but had the issue prior to that. May disconnect it and see how voltage changes. What happened to yours that caused you to install another supply? Was the colordmd not even powering up?

Update on this..

I swapped my highpower boards from WCS94 & Shadow to see if anything would change. Nothing. Checked the lop-hop opto board again and reflowed solder on the receiver / transmitter pins. Nothing. At some point someone installed new wires to the transmittor side, using a jacketed 3-wire (1 bare). I thought maybe there was a break and something was shorting inside, so I removed part of the jacket and pulled out the bare wire. Nothing.

I've also tried slapping and slamming the hell out of the cab during switch test to see if anything is possibly loose and making intermittent connections. Nope.. opto switch only activates in switch test by blocking the beam.

I ordered a high power rebuild yet which I will install when it gets here... but I don't have a lot of hope there. Pretty much getting stumped here. I can't make the connection between the opto triggering and the flipper buttons being pressed, other than they both have a connection back to the 12v line somewhere.

I took a look at that -- voltage is still fine until you activate the motor, then it has a drop to low 11's. I rebuilt the power board today -- replaced all the cap's and bridges with new. No change. Still has the same issue with voltage dropping. So I'm down to my last 2 ideas -- something is screwy on the motor board itself or the motor is going bad.

Markmon -- any chance you could measure the resistance across the terminals of your motor? I'm at 4.2ohm or so.. seems like that's ok?

I wired in a 15k uf cap to shunt the +12v that comes to the motor controller board to see if I could hold it up when the motor activates. No luck there.. still firing off the kicker. Sigh... what a pita!

**update**

I realized I could let the machine boot up, then lift the PF and pull the cable to the motor and replace it with a 4ohm resistor (the upper PF won't work unless there's a load sensed on the wires out to the motor). Even without the motor connected it was triggering the kicker. Going to try a 10ohm resistor just to doublecheck, but it looks like there's an issue on the motor controller board.. something shorted perhaps? Hopefully I'm getting closer...

Bump for help -- Anyone able to measure the resistance across the terminals of the DC motor that moves the kicker back and forth? Thanks

7 months going and no solution although I've found someone with the same issue...

I installed a brand new motor and if anything it made the issue worse I think even the divertors were triggering the paddle to fire in battlefield mode last time I played.. So odd.

Yeah Markmon, I have been actually thinking the same thing but have yet to implement.. partially as I do not have a power supply. Other thing.. it was just turned on this evening in attract and all of a sudden the display went out and then it started autoplunging balls over and over again. pretty sure the 12v fuse is blown, but what caused this? I was sitting a good 5 or 10 minutes before it happened. It makes me even more suspect of the 12v supply line.. don't know where to go from there having swapped in a good board previously with no results, and also replacing all the bridges and caps.

Man I'd love to solve this issue though! one day,... one day!

Wow, I see I've had this problem for over a year lol -- spent a lot of money trying to solve it. Yesterday I finally fixed it -- cannot believe it. The battlefield is so much more fun with it working correctly!

For the record -

I bought a new long hop opto made by homepin. This didn't turn out to be the issue, but helps diagnose opto issues because of the leds on it indicating a good 12v present, and the green led indicating the optos are functioning and emitting/receiving the ir beam correctly.

With that installed, I ended up changing out the whole transmitter cable between the opto and long hop board, and also the receiver opto itself. I don't know if it was a combination of two problems but it seems like it might have been. At any rate, it's functioning 100% now. Good luck to anyone with similar issues, what a pita!