https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/show-and-tell-your-diy-homemade-tools

If this was a basement topic, I would state what I would invent.

Here is one. How about a little cheater harness, that goes between the board and the existing wiring harness in areas that are notorious for needing re-pinning. These are common on old Bally and Stern games, as well as other areas.
The thing is, the cheater would have special terminals that really bite. If you could eliminate the need for all that re-pinning, that would be quite a time saver and it would seem to be quite marketable for that reason. I should add that this would be useless for cold or cracked solder on board pins, but if the problem was loosely gripping plugs, this would work well in that case.

Every game needs an individualized coil fuse board. How many times have you found a coil hot and toasty? The coil got so hot from a locked on transistor or misadjusted switch that it shorted that circuit and possibly melted some plastics or did this:

image.jpg

A fuse board that connects between the solenoid harness and the driver board would be ideal. The existing fuses in the game are rated high enough to withstand a 5 minute multiball session, but cannot protect against a single failed coil. People have individually fused the three magnets in The Addams Family because they were overheating and ruining playfields. There is even a kit for this! Why stop there? Bally 6803 games do this for individual flashers, but not coils that I know of.

^^^
that's one of the saddest pictures I've seen

Gottlieb system 80 and system 3 games put fuses on the playfields for the coils. You might be able to follow that example.

Whenever I remove a backglass or playfield glass, I have a tough time finding a safe place to set it while I work on the machine. I've been considering making a holder...a simple tripod with two or three crossmembers that could hold a backglass and a playfield glass. Kind of like a painting easel, but instead of placing your painting canvas on it, you could put a backglass (resting on the lower crossmember, just a few inches off the floor) with a playfield glass in front.
The crossmembers would have some sort of padding so that the glasses don't get scratched.
The deluxe model would fold up for easy storage or to take to shows.

If anyone decides to build these, just send me one and I won't charge royalties.

A pinball-sized Roomba would be adorable.

LOL! I thought that was an elaborate mod

Fully functional self replicating nanobots.....oh you meant pinball related, hmmm.

WTF MAN?!?!

What? They would change the world! Done right they would make our world a utopia.....done wrong they would destroy the entire planet in no time flat.......I'll roll those dice.

I'm thinking less like exocomps, more like Borg. I don't trust it!

Stargate Replicators?

A brace to go underneath the rear of a Stern playfield when it is up on the service rails so that it can sit level, but up and clear of the cabinet, and be stable.

Oh crap, nice one. Totally forgot aboot that shiz right there. I miss the end of SG-1 & Atlantis...good times.

You could make this out of PVC.
If one did, it could be shipped with assembly required, and a sellable/profitable business model is possible.

Good idea!

In game ball cleaner, actually drew something up.

A time machine and go back and buy more machines NIB before things got completely out of hand. Around 1972 would be my preferred start date, not 1998, like some might guess.

Honestly though, I have made plenty of one time tools to fix and restore machines, sometimes for a single purpose. Ratcheting nutdriver for example, long before it was available.

The electric turbo charger.

Would be nice to have a small size board that would fit say on the side of the back box with a wire harness with fuse like connectors that clip in the fuse holders of a board, and replace the fuses with mini circuit breakers. This would save purchasing fuses, and the "lets stick in a 10 amp fuse instead of a 1 amp." Or gobbling up four or five fuses chasing a problem.

I just put the glass on carpet, on a scrap piece of carpeting, or a towel and lean it up against a wall. I think I have a stack of about 15 pieces of glass leaning up like this (with padding between each glass).