Pinball Machine Maintenance (2024)

You adored playing them as a kid, and presently you have satisfied your fantasy about getting your own. The thing was the point at which you purchased the new pinball machine, you never contemplated the way that it would probably require support. Since you have sorted out that it does, you’re thinking about what you’ve found yourself mixed up with.

Instructions to keep up with your pinball machine. You will need to gently clean your machine’s playfield each a few months by utilizing Novus 2 (Windex is a satisfactory other option assuming you don’t approach the Novus 2 cleaner) splashed onto a perfect material – never straightforwardly onto the gaming surface – and cautiously cleaning the gaming surface. NEVER use water to clean your play surface as it can twist or harm the game.

Relax. We’ll go through what you want to be aware of cleaning and keeping up with your valuable game. There are a few things you really want to consider, and we’ll investigate them further in this article.

Suggested Tools for Maintaining Your Pinball Machine

You need to ensure that you take great consideration of your new speculation, so a decent spot to begin is to ensure that you have the right instruments convenient.

Your first thought is to have great quality instruments. Utilizing inexpensively created devices can bring about stripped fasteners or broke plastics since you over-fixed things as your devices continued to slip.

A significant number of these provisions are things you have around the house, so there will not be many particular apparatuses to buy.

Generally, you will require:

What might be said about Soldering Equipment?

In certain records, you might peruse that you must have a patching iron, 60/40 bind, a switch change instrument, and a Multimeter. Assuming you are knowledgeable about fine welding wires, then, at that point, that is a choice you can investigate.

Notwithstanding, assuming you’re not polished in welding, and your pinball machine isn’t working accurately later you’ve played out the support, you would be in an ideal situation reaching a forte fix expert.

All things considered, we should dive into some fundamental support you can perform to keep your pinball machine functioning admirably.

Pinball Machine Parts – A Primer

There are three fundamental parts to your pinball machine.

1. The cabinet.

The cabinet is the place where your mechanical pieces are housed that work the flippers, posts, and guards.

2. The playfield.

This is your noticeable space of play, and the region you will keep up with and clean most frequently.

3. The Backbox.

This is the “gold” of your pinball machine. It is the place where the gadgets are that deal with the scoring and visuals for SS and DMD games. It is likewise the most costly piece to supplant – and now and again, it is extremely challenging, if certainly feasible.

General Maintenance Steps

This might appear glaringly evident, yet it bears expressing. Your pinball machine is an electric apparatus. Continuously turn off it before you start any kind of upkeep. Whenever you’ve turned off (or eliminated the admittance to battery power for) your pinball machine, take a stab at walking out on to ensure it really is disengaged.

Pinball machines are the same as your vehicle or significant apparatuses in that they, as well, accompany working and fix manuals. Assuming you purchased a pre-owned pinball machine, lead a web search to find your model’s manual. This will assist you with ensuring that you are really focusing on your gaming machine as the producer expected.

Cleaning your Pinball Machine (Every 2 to 90 days)
To clean your pinball machine around 4 to 6 times each year, you will have to get to the playfield. To do this, open the coin entryway and slide the switch at the upper right to left. This will fix things such that the lock-down bar can be taken off.

Here are the fundamental advances you will need to follow:

1. Eliminate the glass from the playfield. Presently it’s an ideal opportunity to slide the glass out of the machine. Cautiously. Glass is heavier than you might suspect – and this is an enormous, thick piece. Be very much utilized when you slide the glass out so you can handle it and delicately put it down.
2. Lift the playfield. Lift the playfield by getting the cover of the cabinet and slide the playfield toward you so you can flip it up on its turn against the backbox. The EM games normally have a prop pole (like what’s under the hoods of certain vehicles) to hold the playfield up.
3. Report your playfield. Before you do anything more, take a few photographs of your playfield. Assuming you are anticipating eliminating your pieces in general and cleaning every one of them, you will need an update regarding where each piece should be.
4. Vacuum that dust away. Since you have your documentation set up use your shop vac to delicately get all of the residue from the corners, edges, and from around the different guards and flippers.
5. Time to add some shine. For general cleaning, you will need to eliminate the moving pieces and the elastic rings. This will permit you to clean under that part completely and to buff it clean as well. Shower your Novus 2 cleaner straightforwardly on your perfect cloth and use your cloth to clean your playfield. Start from the lower part of the field, where the flippers are and pursue the top so you can ensure you get each of the spaces of play. Assuming regions are excessively little for you to get them clean with your cloth, splash some Novus 2 on a Q-tip and use it to play out the perplexing cleaning subtleties.
6. Set up back and return to playing! When you have wrapped up cleaning your playfield, ensure it has totally dried before you reassemble everything. This will assist with forestalling twisting and scouring harm. Whenever you have reassembled your playfield and brought down it back in its gaming place, clean the two sides of the top glass piece and cautiously secure it back to its resting place. Re-secure the playfield switch and coinbox, and afterward you can plug your game back in (or reconnect the battery power) and return to assuming control over the universe of pinball rivalry.

Supportive of Tip: Never splash any cleaner or dissolvable straightforwardly onto the playfield. Because of every one of the openings in the field, it would be excessively simple for the dissolvable to trickle down to the parts and wires underneath. This could bring about harming your game, best case scenario, and causing a fire even from a pessimistic standpoint.

Profound Cleaning Your Pinball Machine (Every 12 Months)

About one time each year, you will need to profound clean your pinball machine. This is more fragile work since you would rather not detach or break any wires or blow any wires or circuit sheets.

1. Get your documentation together and secure your machine.

Before you start this cycle, make a note of any lights that haven’t been working and should be supplanted and of any guards or flippers that poor person been working appropriately.

Your following stage will be to ensure that each of the legs are secure. Check assuming that the leg bolts should be fixed or supplanted before you start pulling your cabinet and backbox open.

Favorable to Tip: Keep an overhauling note pad for your pinball machine. Genuinely record when you performed quarterly cleaning upkeep and make notes of things that should be really focused on during your yearly support times.

Yearly support implies that you will need to dispose of any residue and grime that is in the cabinet beneath the playfield and in the backbox.

You will follow similar methods we examined for your quarterly cleaning, but at the same time you will vacuum the residue in the mechanical space of the cabinet and in the backbox.

2. Getting to the backbox.

There will be a key for the backbox so you can get to it.

The glass for your backbox is undeniably challenging to supplant, so utilize additional consideration when you lift it out. You’re likewise going to need to check your game’s support manual before you clean that glass as it could be treated with dissolvable delicate colors. Utilizing some unacceptable cleaner on that piece of glass might bring about blurred, running, or deleted colors.

Since this piece is so delicate, it is generally exceptionally simple to scratch. Ensure you lay it level on a delicate surface rather than inclining it against something different.

3. Get the vacuum back out.

As with the playfield, cautiously vacuum both the backbox and the cabinet to free it of aggregated residue and possible pet hair.

4. Supplant blemished and worn parts.

Supplant any lights that have gone out, that are faint, or that are not reliably lighting, and supplant any breakers that haven’t been working as expected.

Your wires will control lighting capacity, sound capacities, realistic capacities, flipper activity, and guard activity. In the event that you are supplanting lights, it very well might merit thinking about placing in LED bulbs. They will endure significantly longer and will rarely – if at any time – should be supplanted.

This present time is likewise the best opportunity to supplant your white elastic rings and the game balls. Like the elastic rings, the gaming balls get dinged and harmed and should be supplanted. Yearly support is a happy chance to play out that errand.

Supportive of Tip: Use white elastic rings rather than dark elastic rings for a couple of reasons:

• White rings will keep the battleground cleaner than dark rings will yet will likewise show soil quicker than the dark rings will. Along these lines, in spite of the fact that they will look dirtier quicker, the white rings will endure longer.
• Dark rings are more enthusiastically than the white rings. This implies that the ongoing interaction might accelerate utilizing the milder white rings, however you want to focus on the ball activity as unforeseen harm might happen with quicker bobs.
• The harder dark elastic rings can harm the posts of more seasoned EM games.

5. Consider supplanting wires that have broken.

Assuming you notice that you have wires that have become detached starting from the earliest stage, your screwdriver to delicately release the connector, reattach the wire, and retighten the connector.

On the off chance that the wire is broken and it’s not difficult to follow from one connector to the next, take clear photographs of the beginning and place to pause, just as any interdependencies along the course, take an example of the wire to your nearby home improvement shop, get a substitution wire, and reattach the new wire.

6. Call for help.

Assuming that you have led your support something actually isn’t working, it could be an ideal opportunity to bring in an expert fix specialist.