There has been an amazing hive of activity in the Homepin factory over the past few weeks. We were interupted for a few days by massive storms that flooded the small village near us and I allocated several staff to go into town and help the locals with the clean up efforts for a few days.

The bad weather also delayed delivery of a couple of new pieces of machinery and the installation of air conditioning in our new expanded R&D room to accomodate the three new engineering staff. This should be completed this week and I want them all to be in the new room by the end of the week.

I have received two sample motors built to my specifications by an electric motor factory for the TAG shaker motor. I will also be selling these as an after market add-on with a universal driver board so they should suit must electronic pinballs and will be practically a drop in replacement for most late model Stern machines. I don't have a final sell price yet but we are aiming for AROUND $170~190 including post.

The motor is of the absolute highest quality with replaceable brushes (motor life is 5000 hours so I doubt they will ever be needed) and a roller bearing each end of the shaft instead of the usual bushes. These motors cop a real hiding driving offset weights and the strain on the bushes is VERY high - that's why I specified roller bearings.

I contantly amaze myself with just how stupid I can be - my draughtsman drew up the five metal brackets for the motor mount to my "hand scratched" drawings and emailed them off to the laser cutting factory to have a sample set cut in 1mm stainless steel. This morning I realised I hadn't allowed enough room for the weights by about 3mm - so back to the drawing board and throw away the sample set that hasn't even been picked up yet!!! AAARRRGGHHHHH...............