Kyoraku Baseball Arepachi
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.
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