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More sensitive tilt

Vengeance

Vengeance

Well-Known Member
Nov 14, 2012
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Keswick, ON
I know this is going to seem like an odd question, but I'm been trying to figure out ways to make some of the tilts on my games more sensitive.

The tilts all work, but I find, I can hear the bob banging around on the ring and not tilting, it's only when it makes a decent bit of contact that it actually tilts.

I assume it just resistance that has built up that is stopping it from making quick connections, but I've tried, cleaning and filing the ring/bob and still it makes no difference.

Is there something I can do or add to to help make the tilt more sensitive? A conductive coating of some kind, or some kind of component I can add to make it register the switch closures more quickly?

Thoughts?
 
WARLOCK

WARLOCK

Administrator
Staff member
Nov 14, 2012
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The Bluffs, Scarborough
I understand your question Adam. I don't pretend to know the answer.
However...
Bolt your pins to the floor with 4" concrete slags.
Then we will see who can really play...
 
sylvain

sylvain

Active Member
Apr 27, 2013
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Ottawa, ON
In older Bally machines, two things were done to get the tilt better detected:
- a small flexible wire was soldered directly to the rod of the tilt bob, instead of relying only on the pivot metal junction at the top;
- a 0.05 uF disc capacitor was present to make the contact of the bob to the ring appear longer, to the MPU, so it would be detected.

See this picture from the Web (pinballhelp.com) for the tilt assembly for a Mata Hari:
http://pinballhelp.com/tag/mh-bally-mat ... inball-ss/

Of course now, we often need to replace these old 'leaky' disc caps that fool the machine in thinking the switch is permanently on :)

...Do the machines you would like the Tilt more 'sensitive' have these two features already ?

Good luck,
Cheers,
- Sylvain.
 
Vengeance

Vengeance

Well-Known Member
Nov 14, 2012
1,990
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Keswick, ON
It's actually 4 different machines I want to fix this on, and 3 different manufactures/era's.

First is my Bally Flash Gordon, it does have the flexible wire, but not the capacitor. It is quite insensitive, so you think adding in the capacitor will fix that issue?

Second is my Gottlieb El Dorado, city of gold, same problem, no flexible wire or capacitor, is it safe to add in the capacitor?

The last two might be out of your realm Sylvain, it's actually my LOTR and TSPP, older DMD Sterns IMO are notorious for insensitive tilts and unreliable tilts, I know that they work, but I can never get them to work as reliably as I think they should. Sometimes I can death save my LOTR and not take a warning, others a small bump and I tilt out. The tests show if I manually hit the tilt it is registering, but just not fast enough for my liking. I even went as far as to install a Williams Tilt Bob assembly thinking that might make it work better. Any thoughts on increasing sensitivity in this era?

sylvain said:
In older Bally machines, two things were done to get the tilt better detected:
- a small flexible wire was soldered directly to the rod of the tilt bob, instead of relying only on the pivot metal junction at the top;
- a 0.05 uF disc capacitor was present to make the contact of the bob to the ring appear longer, to the MPU, so it would be detected.

See this picture from the Web (pinballhelp.com) for the tilt assembly for a Mata Hari:
http://pinballhelp.com/tag/mh-bally-mat ... inball-ss/

Of course now, we often need to replace these old 'leaky' disc caps that fool the machine in thinking the switch is permanently on :)

...Do the machines you would like the Tilt more 'sensitive' have these two features already ?

Good luck,
Cheers,
- Sylvain.
Click to expand...
 
Menace

Menace

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Staff member
Nov 14, 2012
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Santiago de Aurora
Been away from the pc all weekend, and Sylvain beat me to it. The disc cap on the tilt for your older games is bang on if they are not present already.

As for the new Sterns, isn't there a setting in the menu system that handles tilt sensitivity? I recall seeing somewhere something about setting the number of tilt warnings before the game actually tilts... maybe set that to zero?

D
 
Vengeance

Vengeance

Well-Known Member
Nov 14, 2012
1,990
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Keswick, ON
Menace said:
As for the new Sterns, isn't there a setting in the menu system that handles tilt sensitivity? I recall seeing somewhere something about setting the number of tilt warnings before the game actually tilts... maybe set that to zero?

D
Click to expand...

That's just the warnings before the tilt, they are detected in the same way as a tilt and just as unreliable
 
Chris Bardon

Chris Bardon

Well-Known Member
Nov 15, 2012
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Mississauga, ON
Could you rig up your own part for the tilt that might be more sensitive? Right now the tilt mech is based on the plumb bob making contact with the outer ring and closing a circuit, but couldn't you rig something up with some wire and a couple of microswitches? Think of something siilar to a joystick assembly, but with the bob in place of the stick. If all 4 switches were wired to the tilt, couldn't you detect if any of those were closed and then close the "tilt" circuit? You could also go way more sophisticated with a digital level/accelerometer if you wanted to build something.

If you're saying that the sterns of the LOTR/TSPP era are worse than the newer ones, what's different in the assembly? At first glace that all looks like the same hardware, so is it something at the board level?
 
Luckydogg420

Luckydogg420

Member
May 12, 2013
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Kitchener
luch said:
or what about an old thermostat , the ones with mercury that closes or not closes a switch
Click to expand...

This is what I was thinking too. You should be able to hook up a mercury switch in parallel with the plumb bob. Then the game would register a hit on one or the other. I'm not an electrical engineer but it should work in theory.

I have a mercury switch that I didn't use in my VP build, sent me a pm and I'll mail it to you no charge if ya want.
 
Menace

Menace

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Nov 14, 2012
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Santiago de Aurora
You specifically asked about omni-directional mercury switches. The one you posted is non-mercury, and from what I can see it needs to be installed on a perfectly horizontal surface to work as the angle of operation is 11º above horizontal typical actuation, 6º above horizontal typical return so where the cab is pitched you'd run into issues.

The other thing you would have to figure out is how to adjust sensitivity, as this one appears to be static given the actuation degree's I posted above.

D
 
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