Quoted from spooky_dj:Honestly, I think a lot of people who are put off by the idea of repairing surface mount electronics would actually find it pretty easy with a little practice! It's really not terribly different from through hole.
The issue isn't skill for most people...it's the fact that in order for it to be as easy as through-hole, you need a different set of tools....tools that until very recently have not been particularly cheap. Yes, you absolutely CAN do SMT soldering with varying chisel tips, patience, and some tweezers......how do you heat both sides of a SMT component to desolder them without a hot air/rework station? This is a rhetorical question, I'm going to look it up, but yeah. I don't like kludgy work or halfass solutions....I'd rather just have the proper tools.
Quoted from Sonic:Not really....the bowl and rollover MRS' are not comparable - the old bowl switches used very different magnets than the rollovers - the rollovers magnets are about 1/3rd the strength....any hangup over the rollover should not be the rollover itself - it's not strong enough on a playfield with a 6deg pitch to hold the ball with any momentum behind it...further we have rollovers in early 80's pins with slower moving balls and less pitch with zero hangups...
Matt
You're the expert! Thanks for the clarification.