Reply To: Darling Restoration

#109645
Scottacus
Participant
    @scottacus

    I mentioned that the machine was pretty beat up when I got it so there were some internal parts that needed to be fixed now that the cab and head are finished.  First off there were three little white gears laying in the coin box and the “total plays meter” was apart and the wheels all spun freely.  I figured that these gears were the drive mechanism for that plays meter but there were two missing.  I called Steve at Pinball Resource and he said buy a new one on ebay because nobody makes parts so I decided to try to make new gears.

    I started by taking a photo of the part and used a micrometer to measure out the part.  I then sketched it in vector in inkscape and then made a CNC tool path in VCarve Desktop.  I turned out that a 1/16″ bit would cut the part so I cut it in plastic but the plastic melted in the kerf and I could not extract the part so I made up a multi layer ply out of .200 maple veneer with the grain running in different directions for each ply.  I used a super thin CA glue to finish and seal the part and it took some adjustment with a file because my part was slightly (few thousandths) oversized but the play meter now works.

    These EM machines have big plugs that have 1/8″ pins to connect the backbox and main relay board to the playfield.  One of these plugs was shattered when I dropped the playfield off of the rotissary (don’t ask it was a bad time :cry: ) so I used some brass rod to reattach two of the broken off pins and used CA glue to join the shattered perf-board back together.  I needed a brace to apply to the plug so act as a reinforcer for the shattered perf-board so I drew up a CNC tool path for the part and milled it out of plastic.  Unfortunately nothing on the part was a nice standard size in inches except for the pins which were 1/8 inch.  I figured a US part from 1973 would be in inches and not the then greatly hated metric system so I never tried measuring in mm.  It was like Goldilocks and the three bears, the first run was too small the second too large but the third was just right.  Here is a photo of an extra gear and plug brace.

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