Early Stern White Star games (2000...) had often these colorful miniatyre bulbs. In a lot of Williams games they used normal clear ones with a silicone hood (which we promptly named bulb condoms) to change the color. Stern instead used painted lamps. I have a good collection of all the colors to keep these early 2000s games looking original. I also kinda like how the painted bulbs look.

Twilight Zone cleaned, lamp test time. Surpisingly few dead lamps this time. Only right gum ball insert flasher appears to be dead.

Let's play "spot the dead lamps" game.

It's Judge Dredd's turn to get washed and waxed. Running the lamp test is normal part of the cleanup service on these incandencent light bulb using machines.

I can spot some dead feature lamps and at least one dead flasher.

My Who Dunnit project is nearing completion. I printed the first production version of the reel and applied the decal to it. I intended to buy a set of decals, but this one peeled off intact. I had feared I'd never get it to look good, but this filament saved my day, I tip my had to Formfutura for their clear HDglass PETG. #pinball #pinrepair #arcaderepair #3dprinted

Elvira's House of Horrors was cleaner than Cassandra's puns, I pulled the plastic ramps to clean them from the underside, which made it look like new #pinball #pinrepair

Mando has some playfield damage, this is the spot where the ball lands from center ramp. May have to put a protector here. #pinball #pinrepair

Godzilla is not mega dirty, but it's gonna get a cleaning and new wax whenever he likes it or not. #pinrepair #pinball #godzilla

This thing's a bit tricky printable, but my second attempt resulted in a passable proto of the Who Dunnit's slot reel. I did not expect the lens-like magnifying effect it has! Also I had to crank up the temperature a lot, the first print at 240c resulted in a lot less clear outcome. I think the layers could be even larger in the next one. Note that even as is this would work just fine.

I encountered an odd problem with Jaws. I booted the game up to check it before cleaning and I had an operator alert about the shark fin being disabled. The game asked me to run the test to enable it, I ran it back and forth couple of times and could not immediately see any of the position optos do anything funny.

As you can see from the video, the solenoid that kicks the shark fin up is pretty violent, these games suffer from so many solder cracks in connections thanks to the lead free solder used, although I assume the materials have become better from the early lead free solder that developed cracks if you looked at it wrong.

I examined the board with a magnifying glass, it appears to be intact. I'll chalk this one up as a fluke and come back to it if it starts acting up more frequently.

Mister Bond is no longer dirty, he's actually so shiny you can see the perfect backbox reflection off the playfield! #pinrepair #arcaderepair #pinball #arcade

Over the years I've tried a lot of waxes, this Sonax brand one used to be readily available in all the car stores and it cost something like 30€ a tin. I guess over the last 25 years people wax their cars with hard wax less and less and now I have to specifically order it. The price is over 100€ and the car finishing store guy could not believe what I use it for! #pinrepair

The lamp tests have become a lot less eventful when the games went natively to LEDs and there's virtually no lamp sockets to mess up things either. #pinball #arcade #arcaderepair #pinrepair

Really, mister Bond! You're DIRTY!

But for reals, the mostly black playfield covers all the dirt so much better than the all-blue Jaws.

Oh Jaws you dirty, dirty fish! #pinrepair

I continued with the Who Dunnit slot reel. I made the design so it can be printed as a one part but it needs supports, or in two parts that are glued together. They're snug enough there shouldn't be any extra wobble even if the glued together version is printed.

The first attempt was almost perfect, the hub axle part was 2mm longer so the reel didn't go deep enough to trigger the home position opto switch.

This was fixed in the second version, which also seems to work fine in the game.

I created myself an account at Thingiverse (apzpins) where I'll start releasing the various parts I've done and that I'll make in the future. None of these parts are 1:1 clones, they're often reinforced or otherwise designed for ease of printing and durability in commercial use. My older stuff is made with OpenSCAD, the newer ones with FreeCAD.

The decal seems to come off without a fight. That'll do for the first transparent prototype. #pinrepair

The first prototype of Who Dunnit's reels appears to be a perfect fit. I ordered some clear PETG and I'll continue refining the model. Also need to order the decal kit. The shape of the side supports is still WIP, I think I'll thin them out in the final. I also have the hub piece with a metal threads for attaching this to the motor.

Who Dunnit is having bit of a crap day. Last Wednesday a player reported the rightmost reel in its slot machine behaved oddly. I made a note it didn't seem to find its zero position and it rotated somehow oddly, so I just disabled them as the game doesn't need this mechanism to be played.

Today on investigation I found that the whole reel is somehow wobbly. I pulled the whole mech to investigate and sure enough, the motor is bad and it has probably ran so hot at some point it warped the plastic reel.

The reel itself has pretty simple geometry, I'm contemplating on just modeling it in CAD and printing it out of translucent filament. I already have some improvements in mind on its design. The decal is apparently easily available, as is the motor as it's just pretty standard stepper.

I've posted some videos of leg bolts with bad back plates. I've often been told in the comments that it's going to be a horrible job to fix it.

I never got that take, the backplate in WPC games for example is just 6 small screws away from being pulled off. In a lot of classic games there's a very thin metal plate back there that can be replaced with an upgraded one easily.