Great idea and well done but I have found that you can just adjust the height of the lane guide to fix this?? Worst scenario is the need to slightly rheem out the hole in the lane guide to get more adjustment(I havent needed to go to that extent).
Not trying to bag your plastic, just interested :)
Cheers Gav
No worries, happy for feedback. Hmmm...didn't try raising the height of lane guide itself (if you meant relative to the surface of the playfield) but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work with this particular game for the following reason:
The problem with the ball's line of travel is that the wide end of the flipper protrudes above the line of the lane guide. That is, when the ball travels down the lane guide it meets with a bump when it hits the flipper. I had to make the plastic overhang the guide by 2mm on the top side so that the lane guide is flush with (or just slightly higher up the field) the flipper where they meet. Now, the lane guide is 13mm off the surface of the playfield, and the ball is 26mm in diameter. In other words the lane guide touches the ball at its widest point already and heightening or lowering the lane guide relative to the surface of the playfield will therefore make the ball travel even lower down on the playfield (towards the apron) and the problem will be exacerbated.
If you meant raising the lane guide up the playfield away from the apron I did try that and it didn't work. This was because on my game the adjustment needed was about 2mm northwards which was way more play than I had to work with. I couldn't open up the holes in the guide because there are bell posts on the underneath this lane guide which are attached permanently by a flange in the top of the post. Therefore you can't really widen the hole without compromising the structure of the lane guide. This is another reason why I didn't want to modidy the guide itself. You could remove the bell posts, change the shape of the guide and then have the screws hold it all together but I didn't want to do that because it wouldn't be reversible. I also couldn't change the position of the holes in the playfield because (apart from the fact that it would be rather frightening) the lane guide is held in place by two screws and a bolt and t-nut. Therefore, I would have to have changed the position of the T-nut, which I thought was too drastic a modification.
Cheers, SV.
