Kyoraku Baseball Arepachi

[emmadog]

Alright so I finally had some time to drive the 3 hours to go pick up this machine. It's been sitting at a family member's house for the last 6 or so weeks where it arrived while I was out of town. It's only the second baseball arepachi I've seen and the first arepachi from Kyoraku that I know of.
I walked in and picked up the box and brought it out to the workshop. First thing I noticed was the weight-95 lbs of which no more than 12 or so was the packing materials. It's a heavy machine. So i removed the packing and was glad to see only no damage during the transit, at least on the outside. Even the glass made it intact. Overall the machine is in great shape just the normal grime on the inside. The cel however looks pretty much new.
The lock had been removed so I manually unlatched the halves and opened the case. Everything was in order minus the very heavy transformer which had become dislodged but very luckily got stuck in between the case and the door hinge. That could have easily destroyed the entire interior components otherwise.
Ok, so I gave everything a once over and checked the fuse. Plugged it in and the baseball diamond lights came on as did the scoreboard. I flicked the token insert micro switch but nothing happened. I rechecked everything closely but saw nothing. Next I removed the 4 plugs attached to the circuit board and pulled the board off it's mounts to inspect the traces. Sure enough, there were 8 separate breaks in the traces. I broke out the soldering gear and went to work. About an hour later I had it all back together and plugged it back in. I dropped a token in and was relieved to hear the electgromagnetic switches do their thing and release the balls to the shooter area and also saw the scoreboard reset.
I played a few games and dropped balls in certain pockets to get the feel of it although I don't have everything figured out yet. Anyway the max payout is 5 and once 5 tokens are won, the game ends.
The score is kept in the upper right scoreboard and the lights come on as tokens are paid out. The 3 bases on the field stay on. At first I thought they weren't supposed to stay and should only come on as runs are hit but now after playing a bit I think they are supposed to stay lit. The homerun "plate" lights for every token paid/run in.
The 13 pockets are as follows: top center is a run in
/token paid
mid center pays 5 and game over
upper left and right are base hits
center 5 pockets with "H" on them are base hits
2 pockets underneath large features left and right-release the base hit balls from the 5 "H" pockets
The lower left and right red pockets are "fouls" which are ball returns and are hidden behind the lower marquee.
The way the base hits work is that they are held in reserve once they enter a pocket. When a ball enters the homerun or the L and R pockets underneath the large features, the electromag switch trips and removes a metal lever that blocks the balls' path. The balls are now free to make their way down to trip the payout micro switch and finally are held up by another electromag switch that trips when a new game is started.
Now a very unusual feature that I've never seen anywhere else is the token depositor. On the upper left of the machine is a plastic projection that holds about 20 or so tokens. By pressing the red button on lower left of machine, a token will shoot out from the bottom of the coin stack and into the machine. There's also a light that comes on that is part of this structure but the bulb is burned so I don't know if it comes on at certain times to indicate something or if stays on. It seems awfully elaborate to be just a coin holder/depositor so hopefully I can find the right bulb to help solve this mystery.
On every other arepachi I've seen, solenoids are the mechanisms that do the work. On this machine it's all electromag switches which in turn make all the associated mechanisms simpler.
Pics will be up in a few and are in the next post.

[emmadog]

sorry folks, i've been trying to upload but I finally had to reduce the pic size so sorry for the quality and for them being sideways!!
anyway, i played a few more games and there are 3 homerun pockets, btw. it was obvious i don't know why i didn't figure it out earlier.
so in these pics we have closeups of the token holder, front of machine, a huge relay, the main circuit board and the two black things are the coin counters, the coin overflow box, catcher guy that lights when tokens are low, and the scoreboard.

[emmadog]

more:
pic of rear of machine showing green cover over electronics
pic of coin holder with coins in it
pic of lower front
pic of electromag switches that release balls for runs in and to be shot
pic of red button that deposits token into machine

[Moparformances]

really unusual machine

great find... looking forward to a vid of this one

[emmadog]

Thanks, I'll try and make a vid tomorrow. Having trouble on this old computer uploading things.
I was worried when I saw all the broken traces but it ended up being an easy fix.
I dig the colorful marquees and the scoreboard/catcher pieces as well. Cool machine. I realized too that the base lights do stay on. When a ball goes into one or more of the 7 pockets that hold the ball until it's released by a homerun, they don't encounter any switch in the ball tracks to tell the machine that a ball has just made into one of the 7.
Also the mid center pocket pays out 5 or the number of runs still needed to make 5.

Still don't know about the token holder thing. There's a lot of text above it and the number 3. I sent pics of the labels to the translator so I'm waiting to hear back from him.

[emmadog]

Well so much for my powers of deduction, I jumped the gun on my assessment concerning the base lights. I tend to do that when I get a new machine. So after getting the instructions translated (below), it became obvious that the base lights do light up as base hits are made instead of all 3 staying on. Earlier I mentioned there was no switch to tell the computer that there were hits. So I opened the machine back up and looked carefully and noticed a couple of wires where the balls line up after making it thru a base hit pocket. I removed the plastic covers and ball tracks to find a white plastic rectangle about an inch and a half long. It was hidden by the plastic cover. Anyway, on this piece are 3 small black circles that the balls line up under, one for each base. They detect somehow when balls are underneath them to then cause the apprpriate base to light up. I'm guesing they do this magnetically?? Anyway, I couldn't see anything obviously wrong or out of order with this part but then again electronics are foreign to me. The good news is that since the payouts and score board lights match up with what's going on in the game, game play is functioning correctly. So the ball detector switch only turns on the lights. I'll try and figure out why the lights stay on at a later date.
It also appears that the coin holder device is just a novel way to put tokens into the machine. Interestingly, if more than one token is inserted ( I guess that this happens on from time to time) within 3 seconds one token is returned to the player.


How to Play

1. When you press the bottom left button medals will be used 1 at a time and 16 balls will line up in the front window, so please fire those balls.
2. If you accidentally put in 2 medals in a row, 1 will automatically return to the tray below.
3. Balls that enter Foul will return to the firing point and can be hit again.

Scoring

1. 1 medal when a ball enters the homerun pocket.
1 medal when a ball enters a hit pocket or five ball pockets when the bases are loaded.
2 medals for a homerun with the 1 man on base lamp lit.
3 medals for a homerun with a 1 man on base and 2 men on base lamps lit.
4 medals for a homerun with all 3 man on base lamps lit.
When a ball enters Called Game, a number of medals matching the high score including the medals that came out during the game will be dispensed and the game ends.
1. 5 medals for the high score in the game
2. The game is over if there are no balls left to hit even if the bases are loaded. No medals will be dispensed for the men on base.

Warning
If more than 1 medal is inserted within 3 seconds the medals beyond the first will be returned, but if 3 seconds pass then the subsequent medals will not be returned.

[Moparformances]

sounds like your geting it sorted out

[emmadog]

YouTube - Sent from my iPhone

Ok, the above link is for the first of 5 videos about this machine. Due to a slow internet connection and old computers at my current location, I could only film with my phone hence the limitations. The computer wouldn't accept the video card out of my camera.
Anyway, once the link comes up, click on my user name to access the other 4 vids. Take some dramamine too.
Once at home I'll put up a normal video and better pics.

[Moparformances]

nice looking machine...

[teachermaniac]

I am truly jealous.

These machines just never seem to crop up in my area. One day, though, I will find one!

[emmadog]

Here's a few more pics with a real camera. Also here's a link to a remade video of gameplay. Uploading now is a more interesting IMO, vid of the interior components.
YouTube - Kyoraku Baseball Arrange Ball Game Play

[emmadog]

YouTube - P1030587

Here's the link for the interior component description. These vids are much improved over the iphone clips.

[ACMech]

Very cool, I can't get over these baseball arepachis, neat stuff.

[Moparformances]

its neat how the coin dispenser works by a simple rod... with the noise in the vid i would have guessed it was a solonoid fired unit

cool and unusual feature

[emmadog]

I'm continuing on my streak of misunderstanding this machine. Thanks to Mopar for pointing out that it does payout on a 4th base hit. The machine has no idea how many base hits are made, so the way a 4th hit and thus a home run and a payout are done is that there is no room to hold 4 balls on the base hit staging area. So when a 4th base hit is made that ball comes down, hits the third ball and bounces off on down to the payout lever.

[emmadog]

Thanks to the holidays and slow days at work which is typical for this time of year, I've had lots of free time. However most of that has been learning all I can about EM pinball machines and getting supplies and tools for those.
But, I devoted a few days to cleaning and refurbishing this Kyoraku. Here's the latest pic with the parts polished and repainted. Still a few small areas to tweak but for the most part, the front of the machine is done.
As mentioned in an above post, the 3 base lights stay on at all times which is incorrect. After removing all the interior components, I found the reason why. Above the area where the 1-3 base hit balls rest after going thru the pocket, is a ball detector with 3 separate sensors in a white plastic housing. For some reason the third sensor has been removed and wires cut. So I sent that part off to the electrical guru where all my pachinko stuff goes, to get sorted out. he actually suggested that the sensors were probably fine and the problem was downstream with a component on the board. I traced the sensor wires to the small board that then leads to the main board. On there all the wires terminate into an Omron relay. Luckily that exact relay is still being made and I bought a few off eBay. When I get the sensor housing back I'll be able to narrow down the problem if there still is one. If there is, an alternate way to fix the problem is to rig up 3 leaf switches that the balls will roll over in the staging area thus turning on the appropriate base light. We'll see.

[emmadog]

And one more. Oh yeah, still gotta polish the pins.

[pachinkojeff]

Looks like you "hit a homerun"! Seems like you've "covered your bases" on diagnosing the problems with the traces. I wish I would "score" and find an arepachi but so far I have "struck out".

[emmadog]

After a 6+ hour reassembly this morning, it's finally done. It was completely dismantled for cleaning and restoring. Well it's almost finally done-I am going to trim the bottom of the coin tray where it's jagged so that it's perfectly flat.
This morning the wood sealer was dry inside and out so it was time to finish this project. In the pic the wood looks shiny but that's just the flash. I never liked glossy wood and besides the original wood on these machines is definitely not glossy.
The cleaned parts have been sitting in a box just waiting but with travel, the holidays and newly arrived pinballs, this machine has been on the back burner. So I told myself that before I can think about working on my two newly acquired Taiyos ( I have been playing them quite a bit though) that I had to put the Kyoraku back together.
Pics
1. inside of rear case with some components installed
2. close up of wood
3. rear of front
4. front

[pachinkojeff]

Looking good!!!