1952 Tadashi-mura Restore with Ball Lifter

[MrAl]

Well I decided to try my hand at a rather more challenging restore. Talk about rust. I think this thing was at the bottom of the sea for 50 years. Anyway turned out nice. The ball lifter is suuuper awesome. What a great device.


Befores:
BckBefore.jpgFrtBefore.jpg


Afters: Note the back and the ball lifter tube. Some stuff i didn't even know was copper or brass at first
BckAfter.jpgClose.jpgFrtAfter.jpg

[MrGneiss]

Nice!!

[browne92]

Dat's purrrty!

[Drunkenclam]

I like that a lot

[Spyder138]

Beautiful pachinko. I would love to have something like that in my collection one day.

[Spyder138]

How does the ball lifter work?

[Moparformances]

verry verry nice

[JACKSJE4]

That's an AWESOME restoration job!! Nice work!!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[mxfaiman]

Give you 50 bucks for it!

No, but you did a real nice job. Came out looking great.

[MrAl]

How does the ball lifter work?

The ball lifter is remarkably simple. The balls route from a tray single file down a.track to a rubber friction wheel that pushes the balls up a tube back to the top ball tray. All you need to do is crank the crank arm

[Spyder138]

The ball lifter is remarkably simple. The balls route from a tray single file down a.track to a rubber friction wheel that pushes the balls up a tube back to the top ball tray. All you need to do is crank the crank arm

Very cool. Admittedly I am very new to the hobby, but I had never seen that before. I wonder why more machines didn't feature it.

[MrAl]

Very cool. Admittedly I am very new to the hobby, but I had never seen that before. I wonder why more machines didn't feature it.

I am fairly new too. I started collecting/restoring last four months ago. I have basement full now (ouch). There are members here that can give you a better answer, but my guess is that these machines were meant for gambling. So once the balls run out you would have to pay for more. So the ball lifter would defeat that purpose.

[mxfaiman]

The reason why some machines got lifters is actually for a pretty simple reason. So parlors could have less staff and more machines. As in the 50's machines were spaced far apart in parlors so attendants could run up and down behind them to refill the upper trays. It is typical that one could be slacking and not refill your machine and then it gets jammed and you are forced to move. So to solve the problem they made it up to the customer to lift the balls to the upper tray. After this it went away. Why? Well, my idea is because the design either didn't work as well as it should have or just because it was too complicated for the player. Also some parlors started to put in crude ball refilling systems towards the late 50's.