Post #4340920

Cracked solder joints are one big annoyance in pinball. Thanks to the game's mechanical nature, there's a lot of vibrations coming from various mechanisms firing non-stop as the game is played. The outcome is often weird issues. On lamp boards these are easy to diagnose, just wiggle the connector and if the lamps mysteriously return, take the board for a closer look. These days I can spot the issue even without a magnifying glass, just rotate the board under the work light and look at the solder. There's often a visible crack at the point the problems manifest themselves. Naturally these happen elsewhere too, I had one game that rebooted at random while it didn't have the typical 5 volt issues. However tapping its CPU board made it reboot and sure enough, the power feed connector was barely hanging in there. I'd also like to reminder that the wiggle test is not a fix. I've seen way too many wiggle a connector and then close up the game happily, thinking they fixed the issue. This one absolutely needs some hot soldering iron on pin action to go away. #pinball #repair #arcade #pinrepair