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Episode 389 - Solid State Williams Drop Target Design - Blech - Troubleshooting a Short Circuit - Paint Removal - Nicovolta's Cross Country Repair

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·36m 2s·held·Feb 10, 2017
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.021

TL;DR

EM/SS repair techniques, Williams drop target design critique, paint restoration methods.

Summary

Nicholas Baldridge discusses Williams solid-state drop target design flaws, including brittle plastic mounting brackets that fail under normal wear. He also covers troubleshooting a short circuit in a late-1960s Williams by isolating stepper switches, and details his paint removal process on a restored Chicago Coin cabinet using chemical strippers and steel wool. Additionally, he highlights Nico Volta's cross-country trip to teach EM repair and schematic reading.

Key Claims

  • Williams solid-state drop target circuit board mounting brackets are made of cheap plastic that breaks under normal wear and tear from ball impacts

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldridge, host, describing personal repair experience with early Williams solid-state machines

  • Williams drop targets are significantly more rugged and well-designed compared to their solid-state counterparts

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldridge comparing the two eras of Williams drop target design

  • A fiberglass eraser pen is an effective tool for cleaning stepper traces and horseshoe contacts on drop targets

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldridge describing his repair toolkit and methodology

  • Mostenbacher's Lift-Off combined with quadruple-aught (4-0) steel wool is effective for removing thick latex paint from vintage pinball cabinet artwork

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldridge detailing paint removal techniques tested on a Chicago Coin restoration

  • Citrus Strip, Goof Off (new formula), and Xylene all remove original paint too aggressively and are unsuitable for restoration work

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldridge describing chemical stripper testing on a cabinet restoration

  • Nico Volta is planning a cross-country trip to visit enthusiasts and teach schematic reading and EM repair

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldridge mentioning a pinside thread about Volta's itinerary

Notable Quotes

  • “The problem is the really cheap plastic into which the circuit board screws... it's going to break that plastic mounting bracket... just through normal wear and tear of the ball hitting this target over and over again.”

    Nicholas Baldridge @ ~5:00-5:45 — Core critique of Williams solid-state drop target design flaw

  • “Those EM drop targets are such a stark contrast to this... the assembly in an Williams is so ridiculously rugged it's kinda surprising that they went so cheap on these solid state targets.”

    Nicholas Baldridge @ ~7:30 — Highlights design philosophy shift between EM and solid-state eras

  • “If you set it to three ball the game would hit the game over relay as soon as player number three was added in.”

    Nicholas Baldridge @ ~11:45 — Problem statement for the troubleshooting case study

  • “There was continuity... the trace that handled ball number three was actually shorted directly to player indicator lamp number three's trace.”

    Nicholas Baldridge @ ~20:30 — Root cause identification in the short circuit diagnosis

  • “The problem was there was too much paint... in some spots there are so many layers of paint you would not believe.”

    Nicholas Baldridge @ ~28:15 — Describes the paint removal challenge on the Chicago Coin cabinet

  • “I would do is take quadruple-ought steel wool, so 4-0. This is the finest steel wool that you can buy.”

    Nicholas Baldridge @ ~37:00 — Key tool recommendation for safe paint removal

  • “Somebody actually going door to door and teaching this is quite the endeavor. I'm really interested to see how this goes.”

    Nicholas Baldridge @ ~42:15 — Commentary on Nico Volta's cross-country educational initiative

Entities

Nicholas BaldridgepersonWilliamscompanyChicago CoincompanyNico VoltapersonAvapersonSophiepersonBallycompanyFor Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball PodcastorganizationMostenbacher's Lift-Offproduct

Signals

  • ?

    product_concern: Williams solid-state drop target mounting brackets made of brittle plastic that fails under normal impacts, rendering game unplayable when brackets crumble

    high · Baldridge encountered this failure firsthand during recent repair; plastic bracket crumbled to dust when attempting removal, leaving circuit board unable to be remounted

  • ?

    design_innovation: Use of 4-0 (quadruple-aught) steel wool with Mostenbacher's Lift-Off as effective method for removing thick latex paint while preserving underlying artwork on vintage cabinets

    high · Baldridge tested multiple chemical strippers (Citrus Strip, Goof Off, Xylene) and magic erasers before settling on steel wool and Lift-Off as the optimal safe approach

  • ?

    operational_signal: Step-by-step isolation technique for diagnosing shorts in EM steppers using business cards to block individual switch fingers and identify root cause

    high · Baldridge systematically isolated coin unit stepper by blocking fingers individually, narrowed to player lamp #3, then traced short to ball count unit trace

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Progression of paint removal methods tested on Chicago Coin cabinet reveals chemical strippers universally damage original lacquer; mechanical removal with steel wool preferable

    high · Baldridge tested and rejected Citrus Strip, Goof Off (new formula), Xylene, and Magic Eraser+alcohol due to aggressive removal of original paint; settled on steel wool approach

  • ?

    historical_signal: Marked difference between robust EM drop target construction and cost-cutting in Williams solid-state era reflects broader manufacturing transition priorities

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.108

0:00
The End What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to 4 Amusement Only. This is Nick Baldridge. It's a sleepy edition of 4 Amusement Only. Been a busy couple weeks, so let's get into it. I've been doing repair around town again, starting off slow I'm just kind of getting people fixed up and then moving on to the next person in line. And one of the first people that I helped had an early Williams solid state with the special drop target mechs that I love very much. And I think I mentioned in a much earlier episode how much I dislike these drop target mechs. I'm a fan of the Drop Target mechs and I was reminded exactly why I dislike them, having not messed with one for a little while. The basic construction of the Drop Target mech is pretty simple that Williams did. There's a few things which I might change. The thickness of the plastic is not very, so it feels, you know, kind of, I'm kind of cheap, but that's just above the playfield. Below the playfield, what's happening is that there is a small circuit board. And as the target drops, there are two contacts which are shaped in kind of a horseshoe shape that ride along down the circuit board. And as they ride through different traces on the circuit board, A wine invasive So your basic goal is to bash as many of these targets as possible and there are quite a few drop targets in this particular machine. So each of the circuit boards needed attention and the contacts themselves. Now the contacts are similar to the contacts that are on spiders for EM step units. Those are okay. They can get gunky and dirty and of course they're solid state so you have to be careful about burnishing them because you'll remove the plating and then all of a sudden they won't work at all. That is to say if they worked before you took the thing apart. So, cleaning requires alcohol, patience, and if you're lucky enough to have one of these, a fiberglass eraser pen. This thing shootss out little hairs of fiberglass and you can use those to clean the traces very quickly as well as the horseshoe contacts on the back of the drop target. So, the biggest problem with this assembly is not that particular construction, the construction of the circuit board and all that, that's fine. The problem is the really cheap plastic into which the circuit board screws. So the circuit board is out. Let me see how I can describe this. You have the front of the drop target and that's what the ball hits. The back of the drop target has that horseshoe contact assembly and that's screwed to the plastic of the target. Then you have the circuit board which is behind that. That circuit board assembly screws to a piece of plastic like a pinball. Remember your nope

medium · Baldridge notes EM assemblies are 'ridiculously rugged' while solid-state used cheap plastic; suggests industry prioritized innovation speed over durability

  • ?

    community_signal: Nico Volta organizing cross-country trip to teach EM repair and schematic reading to home enthusiasts represents grassroots educational effort

    medium · Baldridge mentions PinSide thread documenting Volta's itinerary and expresses enthusiasm for the educational initiative

  • ?

    content_signal: Episode demonstrates detailed technical troubleshooting content focused on EM/solid-state repair with practical methodology

    high · Baldridge provides step-by-step repair case studies including schematic analysis, isolation techniques, and tool recommendations

  • ?

    collector_signal: Chicago Coin cabinet with painted-over artwork acquired at favorable price due to cosmetic condition; restoration reveals minimal underlying damage

    high · Baldridge describes painting as likely cosmetic, not due to damage, and successfully restored stencil artwork; notes it was underpriced because of white paint

    • 4:54
    It's for navigation The problem is that just through normal wear and tear of the ball hitting this target over and over again, it's going to break that plastic mounting bracket. And that's precisely what happened in this game. So your choice is really not very good. You know, the situation, rather, is not very good when you find yourself there. So, in this case, one side of the target circuit board, and it's only screwed in with two screws, one side had come up. And I said, no, that's not looking good. Started unscrewing the other side, and the tiny bit of plastic that was holding it into place crumbled into dust. And so the unfortunate thing is that there's no way to attach the circuit board anymore, basically rendering that portion of the game completely dead uh... because there's no way for the game to sense if that drop target is up, down, or in the process of dropping. I didn't have any spare brackets on me and in fact I don't think those brackets are made, the Plastic backing brackets. If they are, wonderful. I'm sure you could 3D print something that would do as reliable a job as those Williams brackets but really it's a poor design. When you have metal into plastic like that and
    6:41
    especially in something that is just going to shake itself apart, it's in my opinion a poor design. So, just remember those drop target assemblies,
    6:54
    Fo surgical vs Utah players in Super Train Jeopardy Long elbow design and even Williams in my opinion never got the drop target uh... correct after they moved out of the EN era. And their EM drop targets are such a stark contrast to this, I mean thats assembly in an EM Williams is so ridiculously rugged it's kinda surprising that they went so cheap on these solid state targets but You know, the industry moves and things change and it was probably impressive at all that Drop Targets made it into this game. But, regardless, those of you that tune in probably didn't tune in to hear me complain about Williams Drop Targets for an hour, so I'll move on. I also diagnosed and fixed a short circuit in a game last night. That was an interesting repair and one that took a little bit of time and some thinking to figure out. What was happening, it was a late 60s Williams EM, of course, and when it was set to 5-ball, the game would operate normally. Everything would work. It was a four-player game. Each player would play, score, Train, Advance to the next ball Etcetera Everything was fine however if you set it to three ball the game would uh... hit the game over relay as soon as player number three was added in a williams uh... from sixties multiplayer you have something called a coin unit And the coin unit as it advances with each additional replay play or coin drop will uh... light the next player. So it basically is keeping track of how many players you have in the game uh... one through four. Fairly simple. How hard could that be? Right behind it you have the ball count unit and this keeps track of which ball you're on Alright, easy enough and then over to the left you have the game over relay which is a trip latch-style relay so there's two coils and each side will pull either when you're starting a game or when the game is over fairly simple straightforward so looking at the schematic you have your three and five ball selector which is in the back of the head and it's one of the type that you use a flathead and you turn and uh... set it. It's this metal piece that you turn. It's very interesting looking actually um... But when you have it set on five ball electrically normally there's absolutely nothing different between uh... how the game operates in three ball and five ball except that the ball count unit can step two additional steps now if the ball count unit happens to step to ball number four Then the game over relay is tripped. Fair enough, right? If it's on three ball. Makes sense. If the ball count unit somehow gets to number four then the game's done. You know it because ball number three has already been played. So what I had to do in order to figure out this problem Because it happened repeatedly, you know, every single time that it was tested when it was set to three ball you push the start button player one, great. Start button again, player two, wonderful. Start button again, game over. Tried a couple times, same behavior every single time. So that told me there was a short somewhere. And there was a short to the game over relay. Now why was that? And it only happened on three ball. And what I had to do to fix it was to isolate switches. Now on a stepper, this is something I haven't been over before, in a relay you can isolate switches by taking a business card or a piece of paper and just putting it between switches. I might have talked about that previously. In a stepper what you can do is just tuck a business card under one of the legs of the spider and see how the behavior changes. So, knowing that the coin unit would step to the third step and then trip the game over relay and then I did it by hand to verify I knew that the problem, the short, was happening on the coin unit. So, what I ended up doing, take a business card and put it under each of the fingers of this spider in turn and see which ones caused it to trip out the game over relay. Well, only one of them did. And here's the interesting thing. It was the player lamp, the player indicator. So the thing that says one, two, three, four players can play uh... in the back glass when it tried to light number three specifically it would trip the game over relay. I said, huh... that's funky. So then what I had to do was determine why there was continuity from lamp number three's trace on the stepper unit and these are Williams Steppers that have traces instead of rivets which actually makes them fairly easy to troubleshoot from a short perspective.
    14:12
    Because you can take your meter, set it to continuity, and then check across various points, which is exactly what I did. So I tested it to
    14:22
    Game over. And funny enough, there was continuity. I said, hmm, there should not be continuity on the coin unit to game over. It does not make any sense. So, then I had to go back and look at the schematic and again look at the difference between three and five ball. And what I saw was the only, only, only difference is in the ball count unit, which happened to be right behind the coin unit. So I said, hmm, what are the chances that one of the wipers or one of the traces on the circuit board is shorting to the coin unit? And bingo! That was the problem. So the trace that handled ball number three was actually shorted directly to Guess what? Player indicator lamp, number three's trace. So, what I ended up having to do, I did have to cut into the harness and um... I had to follow the wire. And what I found is that right where the harness made a bend to go into a trunk, it was tied down, it was laced with the factory lacing, Nobody had messed with that. But, some of the insulation on that wire had come a little ragged. You know, it started to disintegrate right at that little juncture. So, um... what I ended up doing was I took a piece of electrical tape and wrapped it around the slightly ragged bit just to see if that was correct and sure enough it was. So once that was wrapped with electrical tape everything was good. Now the proper fix for that would have been to either take some heat shrink and put it on that piece of the wire. However I did not have the appropriate length of heat shrink with me. So The other option would have been to replace with a different wire. The wire that I had was very flimsy plastic coated wire. So I would have had to splice that in and I realized that that was probably a losing proposition. So I ended up zip-tying that into place which that's not something that I'm fond of. As you might know I prefer I
    17:50
    I going to show you how to use the playfield in the backbox and in this case because of the way Williams stacks their units on the bottom board what I do is unplug the playfield and then remove it That gives you access to all sides of the coin unit and the beauty is if you testing startup you can leave the back box hooked up and as you're pressing start the motor spins the coin unit will advance all that kind of good stuff so you get to actually test the function without having the playfield in there to Kontrib同, light buy in context to a marque I Met Upahrmae оYeah! It's a Tilt-S chịка, a woman. I'm I'm nothing but a fool oUр Filmards, assistant simba Voices, Engineer at PodCemp, hood demandé af 익ing 그렇 matched Dog dates šッ residential rijesת HDMI šť ogni pension�� przetrá sailedxiăcîn in electronic Meaning So, I'm going to play the game and I'm going to get involved for somebody who's not very good at art. So, it's one of those things that frustrates me very easily and I set it down and then start on another project. So right now, that other project is actually a Chicago Coin thing. I was able to pick up this game from somebody in Virginia and I saw the listing and thought there was no way that I was going to be able to get it. I thought there was no way in heck that this guy would agree to the price that I was offering. He was advertising it for what I thought was a lot of money. The cabinet was completely painted white. The back glass had some fade, some leaching in the reds, but otherwise was completely intact and looked great. The playfield looked wonderful, but that cabinet, that stark white cabinet The stencil on thing is whimsical and very attractive and the base coat of the cabinet is red, which is pretty unusual and very eye-catching. The cabinet itself is larger than a standard pinball cabinet or a standard wood rail cabinet. And honestly, I think the game is beautiful. So it really kind of made me sad that this thing had been painted white. All the wood, everything had been painted with the game fully assembled. And they even painted over top of part of the back glass. So, you know, hey. I threw out an offer that I thought was ridiculous and the guy accepted right away. So I guess it wasn't that ridiculous and I went and got it, brought it home, and I have been cleaning paint off this thing ever since.
    21:36
    Now, those of you who've been listening for a while know that last year my daughter Ava learned how to restore games by fixing up a Bally Turf King. And I taught her how to clean the game, how to maintain the game, how to read schematics, how to solder, all that kind of stuff. Well, when I had that very nice bonding experience with Ava, Sophie let me know in no uncertain terms that the next game was hers and she wanted the same treatment. So, I haven't picked up the game in quite some time aside from the multi which she did help me with the initial wood filler and paint and those kind of things. I'm going to consider having her work on the thing with me. The thing that gives me pause with this game is that it is, as I say, larger than a standard pinball. She is only six years old, so she's not tall. She's not going to be able to reach a lot of things easily. I'm not going to be able to see what she's doing. So what I'm thinking is that I will teach her to read schematics. She can read, so she should be ready for that. And she'll help me with the restoration, but she won't do the majority of the work like I had Ava do. So, uh, for the cabinet, because that's very heavy duty, chemically active, gross work, I've been doing that. And Ava helped me on the Turf King. On that one, what I was able to do was to use this product called Mostenbacher's Lift-Off on a magic eraser. And Ava and I would Take a square, gloves, and face masks on, and scrub and it would take it away. Now, on that game, the operator had spray painted it, so it was actually a fairly thin coat of paint. On this game, the person who painted it painted using a brush and latex paint, and they really went to town on this thing. I mean, there are... in some spots there are so many layers of paint you would not believe and I have a feeling that that's because the base coat of this cabinet is red and just hiding that red is actually fairly involved if you're painting the cabinet white. So, um... my technique of using the magic eraser did not work. The problem was there was too much paint Uh... and once I got down to the actual underlying paint, the problem was that uh... the kind of sandpaper action of the magic eraser would remove the original artwork before uh... I was able to actually stop and see what I was doing. In some spots on the cabinet, the original art is laid on in a extremely thin layer, uh... specifically the head. I'm the size of the head. There was not a large amount of paint used to do the stencil on the sides of the head so I have to be very careful when removing paint from the head especially. Now unfortunately there has been some paint loss and that's unavoidable at first i was thinking if i could reveal enough of the stencil to just trace it and then stencil and repaint it i'd be satisfied but as i started going on the base cabinet and the front door i realized holy cow this thing actually looks amazing underneath and if i am cautious and uh... follow this plan that i'm about to give you It'll work well. So, here's what I did. There were certain parts of the paint that were very thin, the white paint, the latex, and in those places it had started to flake off. In those instances what I did was take a fresh razor blade and just kind of push until I could no longer Get a cut of the paint off, the white paint. When that happened, I just made sure to go all the way around and cleared out as much of the flaking part of the paint as I could And then I was left with kind of the solid paint left and maybe a base of original that I could work out from So then what I did is I tried a bunch of different chemicals I tried citrus strip and that worked relatively well The biggest problem with that is that it just completely ate through the original paint immediately So that didn't work. Then I tried Goof Off. I used that in a very small area. Same deal. Just took all the paint. Now that's the new formula not the original one. So I went and got a can of Xylene which was the previous active ingredient after doing a little bit of research. Tried that. Well, you know, that has something in common with Citrus Strip and the new formula of Goof Off too, because it just took the paint right off. So, again, I'm testing in very small areas, in this case under the lock bar, on the front of the cab. So, I tried Magic Eraser in alcohol, and that had A similar problem to Magic Eraser and Monsenbacher's Liftoff, when I got down to the original paint, I didn't have enough time to really check what I was doing before the original paint was gone and I had sanded the cabinet. So I did away with that. Again, the biggest problem there is just the uneven number of layers. So by the time I hit that and it's a different amount, I'm not a fan of scrubbing for each little area, so I'm stopping and checking every second or two, and the problem with that is you still mess up. There are few things more frustrating than that. So switch back to Massenbacher's liftoff, and in this case the formula that worked was instead of using Magic Eraser, what I did was took quadruple-ought steel wool, so 4-0. This is the finest steel wool that you can buy. It is the smoothest and least abrasive. There you go. So what I would do is just saturate this thing with Mostenbacher's Lift Off and spray it on one side, not the side that I was holding, but the opposite side that I was going to use the scrub with, probably two dozen times. I did a lot of work on the pinball and not enough that it would just drip down the cabinet, but enough that it would have some biting power. And I scrubbed. And I scrubbed. And I scrubbed. I scrubbed some more. Scrubbed some more. And eventually, I got all the paint off the side of the cabinet, the coin door, the front of the cabinet, and both sides of the head. At that point I stopped and decided to restore the plain wood sections that I could. So this is the lock bar, the side rails, the legs, The frame that goes around the back glass. Well, the biggest problem here is that removing the paint is going to change the coloration of the wood underneath. Even using something like Mostenbacher's Lift-Off and quadruple hot steel wool. The problem is that I'm going to bite into that lacquer coating that is on top of the wood. So, what I ended up doing is sanding. And the problem with sanding wood from 1951 is you don't want to sand it too much. You don't want to get too rough with it because most of the moisture that originally existed in that wood has long evaporated. And you don't want the legs on these to snap. So, you don't want to apply twisting force and you don't want to really sand them like crazy. At least that's my personal opinion. I'm not a woodworker, but it makes some kind of logical sense. So, I've got that in my head anyway. So, got them sanded so that I could apply stain, stain them and then lacquer them. There are small flakes of white which still exist deeply embedded in the grain.
    32:13
    And I just did not want to go super crazy sanding this thing until there was no white left. I'd just be concerned with with doing that on these legs. But again, I might be nuts and in that case someone can follow behind and certainly I'm not going to do that later on if they choose to do so or replace the legs, but I find value in keeping those original, reusing them if I can. And in this case, I can. They were stainable, lacquered. They look beautiful. I think they look great. However, if you look in just the right sides, just the right areas, you can see The game's not perfect. I mean, that's the whole thing. There are gouges and things in the cabinet which are still filled with white paint. But there's very few of them which I find very intriguing. So what I'm curious about is just how damaged the stencil was before it was repainted. It sure looks to me like it was hardly damaged at all. I'm not a pinball enthusiast at all. Uh, and, you know, someone just decided they wanted it to look different with their decor, which is fine. Um, you know, that's what allowed me to get it for the price that I got it for, so that's all good. I have about, uh, a quarter of one side of the cabinet left, uh, clear, uh, off of the white paint. And then should be good to start on cleaning the playfield and working on the mechanics and so forth. So, what else is going on in the EM world? There's a person from Texas who is planning a cross-country trip where he will meet with you in your home and teach you how to read schematics, fix your games, all that kind of good stuff. It's actually an interesting experiment. I'm really interested to see how this goes. I will link to the pin side thread in the show notes. You can contact him through there. His name is Nico Volta and he already has quite the itinerary planned it looks like. So this is very interesting. Of course, education about EMs is one of the things I'm a fan of Pinball, so I'm very passionate about it. Somebody actually going door to door and teaching this is quite the endeavor. I'm really interested to see how this goes. Best of luck, Daniko Volta. Alright, well, that's all for tonight. Thank you very much for joining me. My name again is Nick Baldrige. You can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com or you can call me on the bingo's line. Info at 724-BINGOs-1 or 724-246-4671. You can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, 4amusementonly.libsyn.com. You can follow me on Instagram also at bingopodcast, or you can listen to us on our website which is 4amusementonly.libsyn.com. Thank you very much for listening to this very tech heavy episode of the podcast and I will talk to you next time.