Tuesday, November 24, 2020

1962 Bally Spinner: Correcting a design flaw using junk parts

 Correcting a design flaw in 1962 Bally Spinner using junk parts.


I am currently the caretaker of a 1962 Bally Spinner (No! Not 1963. Spinner was released December 28th 1962 according to IPDB). Spinner is a unique concept in the history of gambling machines. It’s like a giant game of Hungry Hungry Hippos for adults.




I’ve known of... and worked on this rare game since before it ended up in the middle of my living room.


Spinner in the middle

Full ball traps

Empty ball traps

And for as long as I’ve known this game it’s had the same problem. Way before it even ended up at my place the game didn’t reset and start properly.


Back then, I thought it wasn’t resetting properly due to the fact that all the switch points were heavily tarnished so I cleaned all the switches and the game seemed to work fine. But the problem wasn’t entirely solved... Intermittent problem.


A dime would be dropped in the coin chute and more often than not, the centre disc would start spinning without first ejecting the trapped balls from the previous play.


Normally, at coin drop.

The start relay would engage by way of the coin switch.

Then, simultaneously, the timer unit reset coil and the ball dump motor would energize through the start relay and the start relay would hold in (remain energized) through the open at zero switch (closed the rest of the time) on the timer unit and the ball dump motor cam switch open at index(closed when in rotation).


Once the ball dump and timer unit reset would complete, both switches holding the start relay would break, the start relay would drop out and the felt disc would start spinning and normal play would begin.


Bally Spinner Schematics


In reality, what was happening was that the timer unit would reset so fast that it didn’t allow enough time for the ball dump cam to rotate enough to close the cam switch, due to mechanical loss and slop in the mechanism. Before the reset cam could even rotate enough for the cam switch to close, the timer unit would have reset, and electrically both conditions for the start relay to drop out were met.


Ball dump motor cam switch at index

Ball dump motor, shaft and eccentric cams



The timer unit would reset lightning fast because it didn’t have a wiper or a disc. Just a ratchet gear, with no wiper and disc drag to slow down the ratchet gear as it wound down to zero position.


Not actual stepper unit from Spinner, but here's what a stepper unit looks like without a wiper and disc


At first I wanted to correct this problem electro-mechanical by installing a 0-5 second delay relay and use it to delay the timer unit reset coil from energizing by about 1 second so I ordered a Chinese copy of a Omron delay relay from Amazon, but then I got impatient. Update post with solid state timer HERE.


I should just try to create a delay mechanically by adding a disc and wiper to the timer stepper unit. The wiper and disc would have for only use to create drag to slow down the ratchet gear just enough so that the ball dump cam would rotate enough to close it’s switch.


So I looked through my box of bad parts and found a bad payout disc from a Bally Super Wall Street and some 3 finger wiper of unknown origin. The 70’s parts fit perfectly on a 60’s stepper because Bally and a slight tension adjustment of the ratchet gear spring did the trick.


Mechanical delay disc and wiper

Bally Spinner relay board... Someone at the Bally factory mixed up the labels


So far so good! 


1962 Bally Spinner top view

1962 Bally spinner inside


Monday, November 9, 2020

Bally Big Time bingo: two variants. Bingo haul and Decals

Picked up a few Bally bingo machines over the weekend.

Gotta love a van!


Nothing special. Two Show Times and a Big Time. The price was low but the drive was long. The machines were all water damaged (found that out once I'd driven all the way there) and are pretty much good for parts only. The whole affair was more of an excuse to take a day off work and drive around to be honest.

I noticed the Show Time bingos each had an interesting decal on the top arch:

Bally celebrating its 25th anniversary: 1932 - 1957


A Union stick I have never seen before: 

NATIONAL INDEPENDENT UNION COUNCIL
AMUSEMENT & VENDING MACHINE EMPLOYEES
LOCAL UNION No 1


Never saw that before




Also noticed a key difference on the parts Big Time compared to my good Big Time:


My good Big Time bingo machine has a strange setup for the ball trap switches. Actually my machine doesn't have switches. It has contacts and it's the conductive metal ball that completes the circuit to the card number lites. The shutter has NO switches on my good Big Time.


It's a very annoying setup, balls that have orange peel (imperfect surface due to long term play) tend to have poor contact resulting in intermittent and flickering numbers on the card.


A set of contacts 180 degrees across the hole.


The Big Time parts machine has proper switches on the shutter. I speculated that it was a retrofit of some sort: maybe an operator put in a shutter from another machine model due to reliability issues...


But on the underside of the playfield, there is no sign of the contacts. So it's definitely not a retrofit.


Interesting production variations. I'm curious to know which variation is the most common for Big Time.

Which variation do you have on your Bally Big Time Bingo?