Hi Ros
Not a strange request at all, I have wanted the very same thing myself for ages.
Yes, not a strange request. I wanted to do the same, shortly after we started out in pinball. I emailed Robin (who was doing the repairs at PBR at the time) and asked if I could shadow him while he was doing repairs
I even came into PBR as a volunteer while Robin wasn’t there, and valiantly, erm, CHANGED A LIGHTBULB (on an MM). Whahay! And, then, I found a High Speed with a fault that needed soldering and had no idea what I was supposed to do, because I’d never used a soldering iron before.
@Mike Parkins was very kind and patient with me, despite the fact I was f****g hopeless and probably less useful than if I hadn’t been there.
Ah, those innocent days back in 2021 (or so).
The only way I deal with it is that every time something needs doing, I try to do it myself. I get help of course, either here on the forum or through friends I’ve made here on the forum or at meets over the years.
Yeah, we’ve never hired a pintech. I keep trying to, every time we get really stuck and a pin is out of action for weeks, but the people who do this professionally are really, really busy as there aren’t many of them about. It’s also the case that, when I did shadow an arcade pintech (for about half an hour on holiday in Whitby) he pointed out that most faults that pins spawn in the wild are dead easy to identify and fix - wire came loose, snapped slingshot rubber, that sort of thing. Whereas when I notice we have faults, they’re stuff like ‘the pin had a simple fault, but it’s wired back to front because it’s Spanish, and - when the wiring got checked in the process of fixing that fault - it turned out to have three other complex electrical faults, including not actually being earthed’. And, I only notice those faults because I’ve already failed to fix them myself, asked
@MadMonzer to fix them, and he’s on his third weekend of spending eight hours a day failing to fix them either.
If a ribbon cable comes loose, I’m like “p**s, it’s that again”, lift the playfield, stick the cable back in and bob’s your uncle - fault fixed and forgotten.
You have to learn to use a multimeter. You have to learn to solder. You have to be willing to research and learn some electrical and electronic basics. Buy some (imperial) tools and ask away. They will help you as they always do. I can help with the simpler stuff.
You also need to have confidence in your ability
Because ability is fractal - like, you can have some ability, and still think you’re utter crap
I always think I’m absolute trash at repairing pins because I’m struggling, slowly, through a full restoration job with not a flaming clue what I’m doing and - as per previous - I delegate all the complex electrical faults to
@MadMonzer because I struggle with understanding wiring diagrams. HOWEVER, I recently advertised for a pin on here, and a couple of people were like “oh, it’s had all this workshopping done on it”. So, I check, and it’s had the top surface stripped, cleaned, re-rubbered, etc. And I’m like “Nah, that’s not shopping a pin. I’ve done that on two different B/W pins already. To *properly* workshop a pin, you have to redecal/restencil the cab and do an entire playfield swap.”
So, my calibration might be a bit off…
But all the ones I know are top men. Who? Top. Men.
Can I add the inevitable disclaimer about women being able to repair pinball machines here, please?
(if we can lift the d*mn playfield up)
.
when I have a lot of games and things to do sometimes it's just better to pay someone to deal with issues like that.
if you own pins you'll likely have to do minor fixes at some point.
