Williams Solved Magnetized Ball & Pinball metal Parts

[Philly_pa]

On both of my Williams Comet & Williams Cyclone machines, there are several places on the play fields where if the ball is moving slow enough it will stop & stay automatically. Causing me to basically Tilt or bump the machine to jar the ball loose to continue play.

I am confident the reason is because the ball has become magnetized and sticks to other magnetized metal parts of the Pinball machine.

Is there a way to De-magnetize the ball or the machine's metal parts outside of replacing them all together?

Thanks.

 

[faralos]

buy a degauss-<wbr>er unit or demagnetizer
most electrical companies sell them
found this one for sale

 

[Philly_pa]

Faralos....Item you pictured/listed is for screwdrivers. Will not work on Pinballs or Machine Parts larger than screws.

I am sure others have run into this problem and i'd like to see what they've used to resolve this issue. I will continue to look into some type of hand-held demagnetizer device that might assist me in this matter.

Thanks

 

[Coil_Smoke]

Try This...

On both of my Williams Comet & Williams Cyclone machines, there are several places on the play fields where if the ball is moving slow enough it will stop & stay automatically. Causing me to basically Tilt or bump the machine to jar the ball loose to continue play.

I am confident the reason is because the ball has become magnetized and sticks to other magnetized metal parts of the Pinball machine.

Is there a way to De-magnetize the ball or the machine's metal parts outside of replacing them all together?

Thanks.

Magnets don't like heat. When I was a kid I put a strong magnet on the electric stove burner and it was weakly magnetized when it cooled down. Have you checked the balls to see if things, screws/paper clips Etc, actually cling to it? Heat stirs up the atoms in a magnet. This disrupts the rank and file alignment that turns metal magnetic. So does hitting a magnet really hard. As the resulting dents would ruin your playfield...HEAT YOUR BALLS... Let me know what happens .

 

[mrschultz]

They are getting harder to find now but I have used large video tape erasers to degauss metal objects. But I've never tried it on a pinball so can't say for certain it would work.

You can still find them on ebay, they look like this:

 

[pinballdaveh]

it looks like we have a bad case of follow the leader here. a ball becoming magnetized is rare, i have only seen it happen once, and 2 games having the same problem in someones collection is even more rare. i think the problem is not magnetizm, its sinkage, the playfield plastic inserts are worn. the concaving of these inserts will allow a slow moving ball to get stuck. this repair tip i found at pinballhelp.com , he explains removel, sanding, and inserting/leveling. it can also be found on a you tube blog. if you find it please enter it in your responce thread for others to find.

 

[mrschultz]

Yeah, should have asked if he checked the ball to see if it really was magnetized.
Just don't use a magnet to check it, because then it will be.....:)

 

[Philly_pa]

Ok, I've checked into the possibility of the issue being related to sinkage on the Comet. In one area in particular (inside the cycle jump rings) there are no playfield inserts & the ball occasionally rests against the back end of the cycle jump ramp (metal) without rolling into the eject hole.

However since the ball goes up a ramp and drops into one of three holes in this area, I left a piece of mylar in the large circled area. This happens to be the same area where the ball occasionally rests against the back of the metal ramp is if to be magnetized. Ok, so I'll sand, buff, and re-apply a few coats of clear and see if that resolves the problem in that area. There are two other areas on this game where the ball does the same thing & there is definitely no mylar or inserts in these areas. But I will look for similar causes.

I've not invested time to resolve the same issues on the Cyclone machine yet.

Thanks, PinballDaveH

 

[Coil_Smoke]

Hope it's just magnetism

Have you checked the balls to see if things, screws/paper clips Etc, actually cling to it? .

I/we are still wondering if you checked the ball for actually being magnetized ?

 

[faralos]

http://www.pinrepair.com/restore/index2.htm
look at all three parts of how to restore pin
I own a Flash (Williams)pin and ALL the pf lenses are cupped enough
that all of them must be heat gunned out of the pf then sanded down
polished then glued back in
this takes quite a while to do
hope no one else has to go thru this

 

[Philly_pa]

After gathering the few staples, paper clips, safety pins & thumb tacks I could find around the house, NONE of them tried to attach themselves to the Pinball from my Comet machine.

Conclusion, the issue I am experiencing is most likely NOT due to the PinBall being Magnetized after all.

Thanks Everyone