Just Flippers Not Firing

srarcade80

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I am at a complete loss here. My flipper solenoids are not firing on my Bally Spy Hunter. All the other play field coils work great. Here is my checklist of items I have checked:

- Coil resistance checks out good
- +46V at coils
- Getting all 7 LED flashes on MPU at startup
- Pulled coils and inspected them, very clean, no melting or anything
- Tested continuity between J1 on solenoid board to the coil, all good
- Tested the transistors on the solenoid board, all good
- Tested the diodes at the coils, all good
- Tested voltage on the MPU at R113, good there
- Flipper relay switch throws during solenoid self test but no firing
- Grounded Q15 on solenoid driver board, NO FIRING grrrr

I have a newly refurbished 2518-22 solenoid driver board, it looks to be in really good shape, components are testing good on it.

Any ideas?
 
oops forgot to put that on my list- yea, playfield fuse and power module fuses all good.

The only thing that is currently abnormal is I have the sound board removed because it was having problems and I am rebuilding it, but looking at the schematic it doesn't look like that would really matter, the voltages are passed through the connector on to the solenoid board.
 
I am at a complete loss here. My flipper solenoids are not firing on my Bally Spy Hunter. All the other play field coils work great. Here is my checklist of items I have checked:

- Coil resistance checks out good
- +46V at coils
- Getting all 7 LED flashes on MPU at startup
- Pulled coils and inspected them, very clean, no melting or anything
- Tested continuity between J1 on solenoid board to the coil, all good
- Tested the transistors on the solenoid board, all good
- Tested the diodes at the coils, all good
- Tested voltage on the MPU at R113, good there
- Flipper relay switch throws during solenoid self test but no firing
- Grounded Q15 on solenoid driver board, NO FIRING grrrr

I have a newly refurbished 2518-22 solenoid driver board, it looks to be in really good shape, components are testing good on it.

Any ideas?

if both flippers are not working its most likely from the solenoid driver board.Did you check the wiring making sure no wires came loose?Make sure the connectors are properly connected
 
I am at a complete loss here. My flipper solenoids are not firing on my Bally Spy Hunter. All the other play field coils work great. Here is my checklist of items I have checked:

- Coil resistance checks out good
- +46V at coils
- Getting all 7 LED flashes on MPU at startup
- Pulled coils and inspected them, very clean, no melting or anything
- Tested continuity between J1 on solenoid board to the coil, all good
- Tested the transistors on the solenoid board, all good
- Tested the diodes at the coils, all good
- Tested voltage on the MPU at R113, good there
- Flipper relay switch throws during solenoid self test but no firing
- Grounded Q15 on solenoid driver board, NO FIRING grrrr

I have a newly refurbished 2518-22 solenoid driver board, it looks to be in really good shape, components are testing good on it.

Any ideas?

If you've got positive voltage to the flipper coils then you've got a problem with the path to ground.

Try manually energizing the flipper coils with a wire running to ground. Assuming that you've got positive voltage at the flippers. If that works you know you've got a problem with the path to ground. Either through the cabinet switches, flipper relay or a wire off somewhere.
 
if both flippers are not working its most likely from the solenoid driver board.Did you check the wiring making sure no wires came loose?Make sure the connectors are properly connected

Yea, i used a DMM to trace from the flipper switch wire on the coil to pins 8 and 9 on J1 on the solenoid board. It registers 0.06ohm which is good according to the bally pinball guide.

If you've got positive voltage to the flipper coils then you've got a problem with the path to ground.

I'm confused- shouldn't there always be +46V to the coils? I will inspect my grounds. This makes sense, if the ground is bad that is probably the last thing I would figure out.

Try manually energizing the flipper coils with a wire running to ground. Assuming that you've got positive voltage at the flippers. If that works you know you've got a problem with the path to ground. Either through the cabinet switches, flipper relay or a wire off somewhere.

Yes, I put an alligator clip on the solenoid driver GND terminal and touched it to the transistors. All the other solenoids are firing off, when i get to Q15 the flipper switch relay clicks on but the flippers don't fire. Also, there are 4 flippers on this game so the switch on the right flipper has a triple contact leaf switch. I cleaned all the switch contacts just in case, but since its not firing manually from the driver board I don't think its a switch problem.

Thanks for the ideas so far, I'm scrambling to have this working by the weekend when I have some friends over.
 
Yea, i used a DMM to trace from the flipper switch wire on the coil to pins 8 and 9 on J1 on the solenoid board. It registers 0.06ohm which is good according to the bally pinball guide.

That tells you there's continuity through the harness. Next you should see if there's continuity to ground at the flipper switch with the flipper relay energized.


I'm confused- shouldn't there always be +46V to the coils? I will inspect my grounds. This makes sense, if the ground is bad that is probably the last thing I would figure out.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. If we consider the flipper coil to be the middle of the circuit then one side needs a path to the solenoid voltage and the other needs a path to ground. If you've got voltage at the coils all the time when the game is powered on you know that one half of the circuit is working. That isolates your problem to the other side. The path to ground which flows through the cabinet switches and flipper relay.

Yes, I put an alligator clip on the solenoid driver GND terminal and touched it to the transistors. All the other solenoids are firing off, when i get to Q15 the flipper switch relay clicks on but the flippers don't fire.

The flipper relay doesn't actually energize the flippers. It just closes a set of contacts which supply a ground path to the flipper switches. You manually energize the flippers with the cabinet switches so the flipper relay is not going to energize the coils unless the cabinet switches are closed (pressing the buttons). I don't suggest doing that. The flipper relay is not designed to have huge arcs across the contacts.

I would ground the metal tab on Q15 with an alligator clip lead and leave the flipper relay energized to troubleshoot this problem. Then you can see if you have continuity through the flipper relay contacts and a ground path out to the molex header and eventually the cabinet switches.

Also, there are 4 flippers on this game so the switch on the right flipper has a triple contact leaf switch. I cleaned all the switch contacts just in case, but since its not firing manually from the driver board I don't think its a switch problem.

Like I said above, the flipper relay won't energize the flippers without the cabinet switches being manually closed.

Thanks for the ideas so far, I'm scrambling to have this working by the weekend when I have some friends over.

The flippers are a pretty simple circuit. Current flows from the power supply through the coil, the cabinet switches and the flipper relay back to ground. There are a bunch of connectors and at least one fuse in there but that's basically the whole circuit.
 
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Thanks Lindsey! That description was great. I went back and traced the ground to the power module to the flipper switches, it makes total sense now and is very simple. So my buddy came over and said hey lets just try cleaning these leaf switches. So I said yea, i know what will get those clean.. PB Blaster! Lol a bit of overkill but we did one switch til it looked brand new. Fired it up and we had a working flipper! 3 more to go!

Thanks!!

PS - Should I be seeing a white spark at the coil when I press the flipper? I think its just the cleaner i used.. it did say flammable on the can.
 
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PS - Should I be seeing a white spark at the coil when I press the flipper? I think its just the cleaner i used.. it did say flammable on the can.

Yes, that is the End of Stroke (EOS) switch opening. The flipper coils have 2 windings, a high voltage "kick" winding and low voltage "hold in" winding. The "kick" voltage goes through the EOS switch and thats how the coil voltage goes from kick to hold in. You see the higher voltage for the "kick" arcing as the EOS opens. Once the EOS is open, the lower voltage hold-in winding keeps the flipper in the up position. If the higher voltage was applied to hold the flipper up, it would overheat the coil.
 
Yes, that is the End of Stroke (EOS) switch opening. The flipper coils have 2 windings, a high voltage "kick" winding and low voltage "hold in" winding. The "kick" voltage goes through the EOS switch and thats how the coil voltage goes from kick to hold in. You see the higher voltage for the "kick" arcing as the EOS opens. Once the EOS is open, the lower voltage hold-in winding keeps the flipper in the up position. If the higher voltage was applied to hold the flipper up, it would overheat the coil.

Thanks, yea i did some reading on this on Steve's Bally page http://stevekulpa.net/pinball/bally_flipper1.htm which covers the kick and low voltage theory on how the flippers work. Also gave a schematic how the 2 and 4 flipper games are which helped me fix the top 2 flippers. Really cool stuff, thanks!

Ryan
 
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