"The Black Knight Rises" - Week 1 Progress

While a lot was accomplished in the first week, a sense of satisfaction is not present.  The road seems long from this end of the journey.

For the  non-electrical aspect of the restoration, I've been referring to the excellent "Vid's Guide to Ultimate Playfield Restoration", written by VID1900 about 4 years ago.  This being my first playfield restoration (Modern Firepower was built new), I'm not qualified to give any tips, merely point you in the direction of the information I've been using.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-ultimate-playfield-restoration#post-547712


Day 1 - Saturday:
Though playfield evaluation and parts ordering had begun a few days earlier, I decided to mark Saturday as Project Day 1, since this is where the hands on fun begins.

Troy came over and assisted me in the full disassembly of the playfield.  Every part was tagged and bagged (or boxed).  Plenty of pictures were taken along the way, at various stages of disassembly, to document where various parts should be reinstalled.  We took our time to make sure no mistakes were made.

During disassembly, all the wires were cut off of the lights, switches and solenoids - except for those related to the Magna-Save magnets and solenoids.  We took special care to examine the Magna-Save wiring to reverse engineer the power flow - a task made harder because the flippers had already been forcibly removed and their wires cut free, and the flippers were wired in series with the magnets.  Eventually I came to understand how they were wired from the factory.

With the playfield stripped of parts, it was then cleaned with Naptha, Novus, and Magic Erasers.  This was many hours of back breaking work.

It's a dirty, naked playfield...

Read on for the day by day recap...

Project "The Black Knight Rises" - Introduction

A few years back, around 2014, I came across a scavenged Williams Black Knight playfield for sale.  Many of the mechanical assemblies had been removed, and the wiring harnesses were cut and ruined, but the playfield itself was in okay shape, plus it had most of the hard to find game specific bits like rails, ramps, scoops, and the plastics.

This Black Knight, destined for the scrap heap, needs help.

I immediately realized that this was a perfect candidate for not just restoration, but a Pinball Chameleon upgrade, adding advanced sound, enhanced multi-ball, full DMD animations, light shows, an LCD monitor backglass, customize-able game rules, and more.  This is the Modern Firepower concept, but now applied to resurrecting a trashed playfield from the junkyard.

Black Knight also presented some new features for me to test and implement in my code.  Drop Targets, Magna-Save, a 3-ball Ball Lock, and four flippers.  Actually, my code already has partial support for these features, though a few tweaks would be necessary to tie them into the game rules.  For example, the Magna-Save would function just like a regular flipper, only the game would now have to disable and enable them as part of normal game-play, plus implement a timed limit on their use.

Parts that I would replace anyway, like the flippers, were already missing from this neglected playfield, so I wasn't paying for parts I wouldn't be able to use.  Plus, since I would completely rewire the entire board to connect it to my own electronics, a damaged wiring harness didn't matter one bit.

Trashed harnesses and missing assemblies... someone tried to murder this Black Knight.

One man's trash is this man's new pinball machine.

I was able to score the playfield for $200.

Another reason I jumped at this Black Knight is that, eons ago when I was first researching how pinball machines work, my buddy Troy scored a nearly worthless Black Knight playfield for about $50.  Though it was not salvageable, that playfield revealed many pinball secrets, from simple things like the dimensions of the wood side-rails, and how pop bumpers, flippers and kickers work.  Having tangible parts that I could inspect and measure, even if they didn't actually work, was game changing for someone who had never been exposed to pinball machines before.

Eventually I tossed that first Black Knight, but not before salvaging the ramps and plastics.

The remains of that first Black Knight playfield:  some metal ramps and rails, a spinner and siderail piece.

Various plastics from that first Black Knight.

Life then got busy, so this playfield has been kicking around for a few years, just gathering dust and generally being in the way.  Now, a mere month away from The Southern Fried Gameroom Expo 2017, I've decided to try the impossible: a playfield restoration and upgrade to the Chameleon Pinball Engine.

Read on to see how I prepped for the project...

Back from the Abyss

Unlike my typical posts, I'll keep this one short and sweet.

Yes, I know I haven't written anything here in almost 3 years.

But it's not what you think.  Instead of abandoning pinball construction after the completion of Modern Firepower, with a new burst of motivation I've worked diligently on the next evolution of the concept.  And I'm excited to finally share the results.

I've continued to expand upon the functionality of my pinball software, and to the solution I've added my own custom electronics.  Along the way I strove to find ways to further reduce build costs.  I believe my pinball control solution is rather revolutionary, and in many cases best in class.

With the 2017 Southern Fried Gameroom Expo in Atlanta a mere 4 weeks away, I'm in a last minute crunch to build a new machine for the show:  Project "The Black Knight Rises".

In the coming weeks, I'll be detailing the new build, and introducing you to the new Chameleon electronic products and software.

I'll try to post as progress is made, but due to the tight project timeline I may have to wait and post after the show is over.

Stay tuned, more soon...