Decided today to go back and try a 4A SB again today Now it can't even do a "grab and drop", will blow that if the ball is coming up the ramp at speed.
Tried a 5A Fast (normal fuse) again and it does "grab and drop" over and over and even could "grab and throw"- but blows while playing a game.
Enjoying the game too much to lose the magnet feature, so put back the original 5A SB which works.
No permanent damage to the game has appeared so far. But I decided to call Stern technical support 1-800-kickers when they open around 9am.
Told Stern the problem with the specified 4A SB fuse rating. That I thought the switches were all good and working in test mode.
To my amazement, Stern said they hadn't heard of this fuse problem. I know my distributor already said he emailed about it. They got me to:
No permanent damage to the game has appeared so far. But I decided to call Stern technical support 1-800-kickers when they open around 9am.
Told Stern the problem with the specified 4A SB fuse rating. That I thought the switches were all good and working in test mode.
To my amazement, Stern said they hadn't heard of this fuse problem. I know my distributor already said he emailed about it. They got me to:
- Start a game, test the magnet with a ball, by holding it just outside the ring on my palm and spinning the spinner with my other hand.
- Banged on the playfield to see if any switches were causing the magnet to fire at the wrong time. That looked OK to me.
- Measure the voltages on a few of the transistor tabs for HV coils which was about 73-74v DC. That's OK (when no load)
- Measure the resistance of the coil at the backboard with my best DMM, I got about 3.3 ohms they said it should read 2.9 but it's near enough.
With the black and read DMM leads touching together, the DMM should say 0 ohms. It showed a few tenths of an ohm, maybe 0.2 ohms.
So I need to test this again after replacing the DMM battery.
If I had to guess, I'd still say 4A SB is under rated for the application.
Once again, your blog came to the rescue in my very first week with my new LOTR machine. Today I noticed the ring had stopped grabbing the ball, but it was still starting the modes correctly.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading these posts, I opened my backbox (for the first time) and checked the fuses. Sure enough, fuse F7 was blown. Took a quick trip over to Ace Hardware and picked up a 5A SB (plus a spare, just in case), and the ring is back in action again.
Hopefully that's the last kink that needed to be ironed out, and now I can focus on destroying that ring!