So you have finished restoring your Playfield (or have a new CPR playfield), now it's time to repopulate.

Of course you are anxious to hurry up because you are in the homestretch, but, there are a bunch of small steps (aka: time suckers) that will make sure you don't mess up all your hard work.

1. You seriously NEED a rotisserie.

Having one will save you easily 8 hours on the repopulation.

It will also allow you to gap all the switches with the playfield in the horizontal position.

Just do it now, it's $100, hangs on the wall flat when you are not using it, it's made of metal, it will never wear out, you will find 100s of other uses for it.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-quick-and-dirty-rotisserie-guide

-

2. Wax the empty playfield.

Here is the only chance you will ever get to wax every square inch of the playfield. A good coat of non-silicone wax will repel dust from collecting in hard reach places. A coat of wax will help your monthly vacuuming be more efficient.

Sure, it's an additional step, but you need to do it.

(before you ask, I find Blitz One Grand Wax lasts the longest)
1 (resized).jpg

3. Install the wood rails.

[placeholder]

Normally the rails are the first thing you do after waxing the playfield, BUT for this guide I'm going to go out of order for the sake of superior illustrative pictures.

I'll fix this in the final edit, lol

How do you know what size drill bit to enlarge the dimple?

You know that the threads can't make contact with the clear, so take the screw over to your kit of drill bits, put the screw in the index holes, until you find the bit that is just slightly larger than the screw.

drill_bit_set_metric_1-6x0 (resized).jpg

Note how the holes are larger than the threads:

3 (resized).jpg

Normally, when you put a bit into a chuck, you tighten the chuck around the smooth shaft of the drill bit.

But for this job, we don't want any flexing of the bit, so we "choke up" on the bit, leaving the least amount of metal exposed.

5 (resized).jpg

Again, use brand new bits.

If the bits have been rolling around in the bottom of your tool box, or used for boring metal - they ain't going to cut it for this job.

-

Do all your post holes at once. Don't drill a hole, put a post in, drill another hole, put a post in ......be efficient.

Now sometimes on a playfield, the hole itself is not hidden by a plastic base or washer.

For example, Wire Ball Guides.

This is one of those parts of the playfield that separates the pros from the amateurs.

If you tap the guides in at an angle, you will dent the hole off-center.

If you used too hard of clear, you might have cracks spidering around the hole after only a few weeks of ball hits.

If your playfield prep was sloppy before you cleared, you may have halos in your clear around the holes after you drill, because your clear lost it's adhesion to the playfield.

We are going to avoid all that mess with a 2 step drilling.

(If you have never drilled or installed any wire guides before, TEST your hole size choices in a piece of scrap wood, or under the apron! Don't mess up the playfield with your experimentation.

Just like with the post holes, your first 2mm deep hole is slightly LARGER than the ball guide wire.

Take the ball guide to your drill set and find the right bit.

Now, with the drill gun running at top speed, just barely kiss the playfield. Wahlah! You have a perfect hole with no chips, lifts or halos.

Next find the drill bit that is SMALLER than the ball guide wire, drill all the way through the back of the playfield. You will note that the first hole will center the smaller drill bit, so you won't chip the edges of the larger hole.

If you have a used, restored playfield, the hole won't need the second step.

If you have a brand new CPR playfield, you most certainly will need the second step!

Here you can see our 2 step holes in a black part of the playfield.

6 (resized).jpg

Tap the Wire Guide into the playfield with a plastic face dead blow hammer.

Tap one leg a little, then do the other, so it goes in straight.

Every tap should make progress.

If the guide is not moving, something is very wrong. Stop. Drill the smaller hole again to clear out any wood chips that are clogging the hole.

If the Wire Guide has any barbs on the legs, file them off. Use a drop of white glue in the hole to secure the Guide, rather than a barb. (don't fill the top of the hole with glue, we want that tiny amount of clearance between the Guide's leg and the clear - the two should never touch).

1 (resized).jpg

Most Wire Guides should be tapped down until the legs are flush with the bottom of the playfield.

But if there is any doubt, a ball is a good tool to see that the top rail of the Guide is half the height of the ball.

If the ball **clicks** as it rolls past the Guide's leg, the rail is too high off the playfield.

2 (resized).jpg

The Biff Bars that go behind the flippers are tapped down until a credit card can just pass under them.

The ball does not roll along these, they are installed to keep players from performing a Bangback - cheating in league play.

3 (resized).jpg

No one will ever know.

9 (resized).jpg

Because Greg Kmiec designed Xenon, there are some actual pins (nails) on the playfield. (kind of a nod to real "pin ball")

These are installed to avoid 2 ball traps.

CPR did not drill these, so you have to drill and place them yourself.

Drill like the Wire Guides, but obviously with smaller bits.
10 (resized).jpg11 (resized).jpg12 (resized).jpg

Some reproduction playfields are missing a bunch of holes.

You could make a template out of thick Mylar film (like the protective sheet that covers a new TV screen) or maybe a piece of drafting polyester.

BUT often it's much quicker to just pull out the plastic that is installed in that section, center all the existing holes, and drill your missing one.

`13 (resized).jpg

3 hours latter, you get a spotlessly clean, brightly colored, very hot wiring harness.

All the metal switch blades are shiny clean, muck that would take 20 minutes to scrub with a toothbrush is simply gone.

Check the strainer at the bottom of the dishwasher for any mystery screws or washers that were inadvertently tangled in the harness. There are always a few.

Use a folded cardboard platter to slide the harness onto, it will be too hot to simply pick up.

Note how all the labels on the coils are nice and clean - still stuck on.

8 (resized).jpg

Get all your new contacts from Great Plain Electronics:

https://www.greatplainselectronics.com/products.asp?cat=73

The 4 amp are better
-

Get the larger .156 contacts too:

Trifurcon are better

https://www.greatplainselectronics.com/products.asp?cat=86

-

You are going to re-use the plastic housings (many sizes are no longer available or the wrong color), just get the contacts

-

You are going to need a ratcheting crimper that does both crimps at the same time $19

https://www.amazon.com/HT-225D-Cycle-Ratchet-Crimping-interchangeable/dp/B007JLN93S/ref=pd_sbs_469_1

41mYV1ZrFYL (resized).jpg

Since we are reusing the now extinct plastic housings, we need to remove the contacts without damaging the plastic.

If you look carefully at the metal contacts inside the plastic housing, you will note that there is a square spring-tab that keeps the contact from extracting.

If we were to depress that tab, while gently pulling on the attached wire, the whole contact would come out!

10 (resized).jpg

We need yet another tool.

Oddly enough the tool was invented by Johan Vaaler in 1899 a few decades before modern pinball, and yet we still use it in pinball repair today.

paperclip (resized).jpg

Q: Vid wait!!!! Don't I want to buy an expensive Extraction Tool ???

11-03-0016 (resized).jpg

A: Nope, for $25, this tool will break all by itself in your tool box

You can get 28,000 paperclips for $25

You will never break one removing contacts, I'm certain of this.

-

Depress the Spring-Tap while pulling on the wire:

11 (resized).jpg

The contact slides right out:

12 (resized).jpg

If this is your first rodeo, I'd just suggest you crimp one contact at a time. This way you are less likely to mix up the order of things.

1. Extract the old contact.

2. Cut it off as close to the old contact as possible.

3. Strip off about 3mm of wire insulation. You can use a new contact as a strip-guide to see how much insulation needs to be removed.

13 (resized).jpg

Put the new contact in the crimper, click the ratchet handle twice so it's half cocked.

This will hold the contact in place while you insert the wire.

14 (resized).jpg

Put the stripped wire in, there is a little stop in the crimper that will catch the insulation edge - making alignment a breeze

15 (resized).jpg

Squeeze untill the crimper releases the contact.

(if you ever get a part stuck in the jaws, the release mech is that small lever above the lower grip.)

16 (resized).jpg

So now you have your newly crimped wire.

You can note that the Dual Crimp dies did both the conductor and insulation crimp at the same time. This saves your hand at the end of the day by cutting your crimping in half.

You can also see that the Trifurcon connectors triple the contact area. This is good for a high vibration location like a pinball machine.

You can see that the little bit of conductor sticking out past the crimp, matches the factory made one.

You can also see our locking tab on the bottom - remember the tab goes in the little window when you slip it back in the plastic connector housing.
17 (resized).jpg

It's going to take you a hour to redo all those contacts.

Do it while seated, with a nice alcoholic beverage at your side, and some T Rex on your speakers.

The tech support would be a nightmare.

SWITCH STACKS

---------------------

Switch Stacks have thin, #4 screws that the heads will break off if you try to run them into the dimples on a reproduction playfield.

Use a drill bit with a Collar Stop to keep you from drilling all the way through the front of the playfield.

If you use Masking tape (like nubes do), the tape will migrate up the shaft until you finally drill all the way through.

19 (resized).jpg

Your switches are probably spotlessly clean from the dishwasher, but you can pull a crisp new $100 bill through the contacts, while gently holding them together, if you want to be sure. If the bill pulls without a black trail, you know the contacts are clean.

Adjust your switches now, rather than once you have the playfield installed - a big time saver.

A whole set of Collar Stops is $3 at HF.

You will use these everyday once you own them.

https://www.harborfreight.com/7-piece-drill-stop-set-38336.html

image_17257 (resized).jpg

The Switch Caps help the CPU detect quick ball hits, that it might otherwise miss.

The game will work without them, but it will not play as well.

Since many of the caps will be missing, how do you know which switches originally had a cap?

You look at the Switch Matrix in the manual.

For Xenon, we see that 8 switches need the caps for best performance (I've added a red dot next to the caps):
23 (resized).jpg

Note also, that we can't completely trust the manual.

On Xenon, the top 4 rollover Button switches originally had caps on them from the factory, but that is not shown in the manual.

Those can be very quick or slight hits, so it makes sense that Bally added them after the schematics were drawn.

I put the red dots in to highlight the Capacitor symbols next to them.

So looking at the symbols that Bally used, you can see that the caps are non-polarized (no + sign next to them) and non-variable (no arrow running through them).

Non-polarized caps means that the caps can be installed with the legs in either direction.

capacitor-symbol (resized).png

GI WIRE SACRILEGE

=================

[flame suit on]

If you have been servicing games for a few years, you know that when a General Illumination circuit keeps blowing fuses, it's probably a spring broken from it's socket shorting out, or something is touching all that bare GI wiring stapled everywhere.

Sure, Bally saved .50 cents by using bare wire, but that does not mean you have to.

Yeah, if you are trying to restore a game exactly I get it, but let's face it; no one is going to look at this mirror surface Xenon playfield and believe that it is in any way an original.

No one is going to look at all the tumbled hardware under the playfield and believe that after 40 years, it's not white with corrosion (let alone all you guys that Plate or Powder Coat your hardware).

So it's OK to use the much more durable, more reliable, insulated wire.

Now I don't use it everywhere, it's obviously quicker to just leave most of the lamp clusters connected to the bare wire. It runs through the dishwasher all soldered together just fine.

But the crazy wiring around the pops, where it's zig zaging around every obstacle, just waiting to short out against everything - that's a good place for insulated wire.

And because the wiring is insulated, you can take a more direct path with it, not having to do any zig-zags, or worrying if one wire crosses over anonther. Much cleaner looking. Much installation time saved.

Here you can see I used Orange and Green wires, the same color as the GI buss wires that feed it. Color coding it, makes troubleshooting easy for the next tech that works on it:

24 (resized).jpg

There is a whole thread on Pop Bumpers:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-rebuilding-pop-bumpers

But here we see another time saving opportunity.

Before the Spoon Switch gets buried in all the wires and mechs, NOW is the time to adjust the centering of the Spoon, and switch gap.

The top spring arm in this pic needs to be flattened with a pair of Duck-Bill Pliers, before the switch gap is adjusted:

25 (resized).jpg

Yep they are the same thing.

47 followed by 3 zeros

Those are 47,000pF, also known as 47nF, also known as 0.047uF - three ways to label the same thing.

The GI is AC voltage, so it has no polarity, attach the leads to any socket and the whole string of GI should light up. If no lights light up, reverse the leads (because the wall wart is probably DC). When you are plugged into the cabinet, the power supplied is 6V AC, so you never have to worry about the polarity.

But the Switched Lighting Matrix does have polarity.

The bare wire that zig zags through the playfield is the Positive wire (everyone online always refers to this as the **ground** wire - it's not).

Attach the Red clip anywhere on the bare wire.

Now touch the black clip to any lamp tip, and you should have light. So if you think about it, the game is switching the GROUND on and off to each lamp, not the Positive. (Same with the coils).

Tap each socket tip, and make sure each lamp works.
IMG_20180827_205854282 (resized).jpg

29 (resized).jpg

Seasoned restorers probably caught my error in the above picture.

You need to touch the Solder Terminal, not the Socket Tip, to actually test the socket.

When I test the Solder Terminal, I actually get no light:

27 (resized).jpg

Old sockets sometimes are no longer making contact between the Socket Tip and the Solder Tab

Of course, in a restoration, you would just replace the socket; but in the field, you wrap a solid core wire around the socket tip, then solder it to the tab. Trim off any excess wire.

31 (resized).jpg

Usually the tip itself won't take solder very well, so if you try to solder the wire directly to the tip, it often breaks free a few months later from playfield vibration.

Other common reasons the lamps wont light:

1. Bad LED - a few out of every batch are bad. That's why I always tell people to order 10 extra of each color. You need spares if some burn out anyway. A Warm White bulb you buy today, likely won't match a WW you buy 6 months from now.

2. Reverse Wired LED - sometimes an LED is wired backwards internally. Normally when you test a LED with your little wall wart thingy you built, the Body is Positive and the Tip is Negative.

If you get one that only lights with the Tip Positive, you can use it in the GI, or just throw it away.

3. Corrosion in the socket - clean the socket with a cylinder stone in your Dremel. Especially if you accidentally sprayed clear coat down the sockets.....

71CBspA4V-L._SL1500_ (resized).jpg

Bent socket - on #44 sockets, sometimes the little hook tabs are bent that hold the bulb, allowing the bulb to sit crooked. Use some needle nose pliers and reshape the socket into a nice circle.

Plastic Bally #555 Sockets from the 80s - these are total crap. Experienced restorers replace all of these with #44 sockets. I know, it's a lot of work; but there is no way to fix them. Even when they were new, they sucked.

All metal pop bumper #44 sockets - again, clean off white corrosion with Dremel. Be sure to get the Collar and the Tip areas back to shiny metal. Pull up on the tab that contacts the bulb Tip; it should have some spring tension to it.

No need.

Warm the area with a hair dryer (warm not hot), because those brand playfields tend to have gobs of clear on them.

Make a dimple with a scratch-awl so the bit does not wander and then drill your hole

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-re-populating-playfields#post-4526507

You don't want your post leaning backwards or it will make airballs.

Drill a hole in a piece of thick scrapwood using a drill press.

Now clamp this wood to the playfield as your drill guide.

The wood will keep your bit straight as you drill

Every time you bring a drill bit near your playfield you add to the risk.

The only time I drill a pilot hole, is when I'm using really large bits that might wander on their own.