Daiichi missing parts

[vikzoli]

Did my parts fit OK on your machine?

Hi, I'm sorry for the long period of silence, I have been distracted by other things and mostly with work. I tried most of your parts except for the linkage wire, for which I have to take a bit more of the machine apart yet. I am hoping I can dedicate more time to this soon. The parts I did try did fit perfectly, and appear to function, and it looks like the linkage will too. I also printed the feeder tray mostly successfully. I had to print in two parts because my printer is not big enough, but it worked out and is functional.

Next step will be to install the tray and all of your parts and see if I'm missing anything else. The guy I bought this from told me that some part is also missing or broken from the ball return mechanism that is part of the front/door. I'll have to check into that and probably post some photos to help identify anything that may be needed there.

Thanks again for all your help with this, I will keep you updated on any progress. I am making a kitchen table and chairs for my sister's birthday, so that's taking up a bit of my time. No I'm not 3d printing that :-)

[vikzoli]

Ok, finally back in town and have a little more time to work on the Daiichi, and I'm ready for more...

First, the rod you sent me SibRs fits perfectly. Thank you again! However, with the covers on, I can't tell where the top part of the rod is supposed to go, is it supposed to hook onto something? I can put it through the hole of the cover, but I don't know if it's supposed to engage something inside. My cover is a little bit translucent, but not quite as much as yours. I was hoping to try to figure it out without taking all the plastic stuff off until I can make everything functional first. (I have a good reason for that) Here's a version of the picture you sent previously from your machine to clarify what I'm looking for:

Daiichiwinnerballgateandrod.jpeg

Next, the guy I got this machine from told me that behind the front panel something is broken. Maybe he meant something else, because when I take the front lower panel off, I don't see anything obviously wrong. Here is what mine looks like, is there anything I'm not seeing?

Daiichi front ball return.jpgDaiichi front ball return close.jpg

One thing a little odd is that the rod on the bottom that sticks out and is supposed to engage the hinged metal bit of the low ball system seems too short. That's not really possible of course, because the rod is not broken. This is what I mean (the picture is of your machine). The circle indicates where mine doesn't reach to connect:

daiichilowballsystemconnectionmine.jpeg

Anyway, I first want to verify that the front panel parts look reasonable, maybe the issue is there. If not, then I can try to figure out why I can't connect those bits later.

Finally, here's the picture of the feeder tray I printed in two halves, glued together, primed and painted. The front surface is a little rough, but it's functional. If I get everything else working and put back together I'll print a nicer version then. Now that I am starting to figure out how my new 3d printer works...

Daiichi feeder tray.jpg

As always, thanks for any guidance! Fun project so far.

[sparky kilowatt]

Regarding the rod in your first picture above. I had the same question when I cleaned up my Daiichi recently, so I took a couple of close up pics before cleaning. It appears the rod doesn't attach to anything on the top end and I can confirm once put back together, everything works just like it's supposed to.

[vikzoli]

Thanks for that confirmation. I was hoping that would be the case, so I'm getting closer to a (theoretically) functioning machine.

[sparky kilowatt]

Couple more pics that might help you. First two are the back of the ball feed to shooter assembly, to my eyes, yours appears just like mine, I don't see a broken or missing pieces.

Next picture is the "ball out" lower bracket, mine doesn't attach to anything, might be missing something, but doesn't seem to have any effect of game play.

[vikzoli]

You're right, your little metal bracket on the ball out part does not have a rod connected either. SibSr's machine had that connection, but it seems like maybe that's not critical. I don't even see that rod in your setup at all.

When I get home I'll compare the ball feed assembly with your pictures. It looks a little different, but I don't see anything major I'm missing. In my original photo I have that lever thing with the weight on the end - I know where that goes, although I'm not sure exactly its purpose. I don't see a similar thing on your setup. I guess I'll just reassemble everything including the parts I got from SibSr and see if I can make it functional.

BTW, I do have another machine (Nishijin B) which, although needs some work, it doesn't have broken and missing parts, and my original plan was to get that one cleaned up. But trying to bring this Daiichi back from the dead is more fun

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to take pictures of yours, especially if you took it apart for this reason! I hope I can pay all this help back to someone at some point.

[sparky kilowatt]

You're right, your little metal bracket on the ball out part does not have a rod connected either. SibSr's machine had that connection, but it seems like maybe that's not critical. I don't even see that rod in your setup at all.

When I get home I'll compare the ball feed assembly with your pictures. It looks a little different, but I don't see anything major I'm missing. In my original photo I have that lever thing with the weight on the end - I know where that goes, although I'm not sure exactly its purpose. I don't see a similar thing on your setup. I guess I'll just reassemble everything including the parts I got from SibSr and see if I can make it functional.

BTW, I do have another machine (Nishijin B) which, although needs some work, it doesn't have broken and missing parts, and my original plan was to get that one cleaned up. But trying to bring this Daiichi back from the dead is more fun

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to take pictures of yours, especially if you took it apart for this reason! I hope I can pay all this help back to someone at some point.

You're very welcome. No, I didn't have to take anything apart specifically for pictures to share with you, those pics were taken when I was restoring this Daiichi a few months back.

The "lever thing" with the weight allows one ball at a time to drop in to the shooter, the weight is offset by the weight of the ball, then it resets its self after one ball has dropped down in front of the striker hammer.

Pay if forward, help someone else on this board when you can, just as they've done for me many, many times.

[SibSr]

Your front panel has all the parts for the low ball gate to function, and I see no other issues with it. Sparky's panel does not have the mounting points for the front tray part of the the low ball system.
I have two Daiichi's, one like yours and one like Sparky's. On the back the low ball system looks the same, but one has the rod in the linkage hole, and the other doesn't.

The rod on my machine is about 39mm long from the clear plastic to the end of the shaft. It stops about even with the spike on the white load lever next to it Daiichipartscompare.jpg

The weighted lever is part of a Nishijin machine, not from this one.

[SibSr]

Ok, finally back in town and have a little more time to work on the Daiichi, and I'm ready for more...

First, the rod you sent me SibRs fits perfectly. Thank you again! However, with the covers on, I can't tell where the top part of the rod is supposed to go, is it supposed to hook onto something? I can put it through the hole of the cover, but I don't know if it's supposed to engage something inside. My cover is a little bit translucent, but not quite as much as yours. I was hoping to try to figure it out without taking all the plastic stuff off until I can make everything functional first. (I have a good reason for that) Here's a version of the picture you sent previously from your machine to clarify what I'm looking for:

Daiichiwinnerballgateandrod.jpeg

Next, the guy I got this machine from told me that behind the front panel something is broken. Maybe he meant something else, because when I take the front lower panel off, I don't see anything obviously wrong. Here is what mine looks like, is there anything I'm not seeing?

Daiichi front ball return.jpgDaiichi front ball return close.jpg

One thing a little odd is that the rod on the bottom that sticks out and is supposed to engage the hinged metal bit of the low ball system seems too short. That's not really possible of course, because the rod is not broken. This is what I mean (the picture is of your machine). The circle indicates where mine doesn't reach to connect:

daiichilowballsystemconnectionmine.jpeg

Anyway, I first want to verify that the front panel parts look reasonable, maybe the issue is there. If not, then I can try to figure out why I can't connect those bits later.

Finally, here's the picture of the feeder tray I printed in two halves, glued together, primed and painted. The front surface is a little rough, but it's functional. If I get everything else working and put back together I'll print a nicer version then. Now that I am starting to figure out how my new 3d printer works...

Daiichi feeder tray.jpg

As always, thanks for any guidance! Fun project so far.

The rod for the winner ball gate is installed where it is just below the dump arm. Then it is just pushed down by the dump arm when it operates

[vikzoli]

You just saved me a lot of aggravation, because for the life of me I couldn't figure out how that weighted lever would function with the Daiichi front tray assembly. I put the front tray parts back and onto the machine and it seems to work just fine, so I was scratching my head. I must have mixed parts of the two machines somehow then. The good news is that when I put everything back, the rod actually reached the metal bit and I was able to attach it. Thanks for the photo as well.

This weekend I'm going to put everything back together and see if the mechanical pieces all function together, I should have everything now. If it works, I'm stripping everything out and cleaning/sanding/staining all the parts before putting them back together. That's going to take a good while, especially at the rate I'm going... The playfield is actually not bad, it's dirty but doesn't appear to have the typical moisture stains, so I should be able to just clean it. I still need to figure out whether I want to remove the nails to clean them or go through the pain of doing them one-by-one without removing them. I watched Dan's videos on how to remove and reinstall the nails, so maybe I'll try taking out 1 or 2 first to make sure.

Once again, thank you and everyone for all this support. This forum really is amazing.

[vikzoli]

I'm sure everyone is sitting on the edge of their seat for updates on my (very slow) progress, but here's a small update. My excuse for a long delay is that I acquired a '67 VW Bus, so the excitement of that was a bit distracting.

Anyway, in an earlier post SibSr pointed out that my ball return gate mechanism was missing, but I didn't realize until I was putting the whole thing together, that a key part of the plastic assembly was busted and missing where the circle is: 20240511_191445.jpg

There should be a piece there similar to the one below, sort of a track that keeps a metal strip in place where the strip can slide up or down to open and close the ball exit below.

To fix that I 3D printed a piece like this: 20240511_191457.jpg

that I was able to glue in where that bit was missing. I also fabricated the missing metal strip, and now it seems to be working fine. Here it is closed: 20240528_212610.jpgand open: 20240528_212732.jpg.

NOOOOW I can hopefully reassemble everything and try it out. Assuming the VW Bus will allow me some time for this

Anyway, thanks again to everyone so far, without all the pictures and SibSr pointing out the missing parts (and making some parts for me), I would not have gotten this far. I'll post again when I accomplish the next steps.

[SibSr]

I'm sure everyone is sitting on the edge of their seat for updates on my (very slow) progress, but here's a small update. My excuse for a long delay is that I acquired a '67 VW Bus, so the excitement of that was a bit distracting.

Anyway, in an earlier post SibSr pointed out that my ball return gate mechanism was missing, but I didn't realize until I was putting the whole thing together, that a key part of the plastic assembly was busted and missing where the circle is: 20240511_191445.jpg

There should be a piece there similar to the one below, sort of a track that keeps a metal strip in place where the strip can slide up or down to open and close the ball exit below.

To fix that I 3D printed a piece like this: 20240511_191457.jpg

that I was able to glue in where that bit was missing. I also fabricated the missing metal strip, and now it seems to be working fine. Here it is closed: 20240528_212610.jpgand open: 20240528_212732.jpg.

NOOOOW I can hopefully reassemble everything and try it out. Assuming the VW Bus will allow me some time for this

Anyway, thanks again to everyone so far, without all the pictures and SibSr pointing out the missing parts (and making some parts for me), I would not have gotten this far. I'll post again when I accomplish the next steps.

Nice ingenuity. And your restoring an old VW Bus?...The Force is strong in this one....

[vikzoli]

Haha, thanks. Fortunately, the bus is in pretty good shape. Definitely there are 'opportunities' for improvements, but it doesn't desperately need too much at the moment to enjoy.