Ask Frank ‘the Crank’ Seninsky
Down the Clown – Ticket Payout % Has Been Slowly Increasing?
(Dave Lohr, Alpha Regional Manager)
Down the Clown (ICE) is a consistent earner but the ticket payout % has been slowly increasing over the past few months. We know that players like to double up (play a single game with two people throwing the balls) and try to increase the score and max out on tickets. However, most often they just get in each other’s way and don’t score any higher than they would playing one person at a time. However, two really skilled players can score the bonus frequently once they get their position and timing down. Trying to keep 2 people from playing together is not a valid solution to this problem.
The goal is to make the game harder but not to turn off the many players who currently play the game and enjoy it. Raising the starting bonus target score from 500 to a higher number could irritate many of the current players, so this is not a great option. One practically invisible way to increase the difficulty is to increase the time interval between individual clowns turning red, which doubles their value. The factory setting is a 3 second interval. By increasing it to 4 seconds, the game becomes a little harder and takes away much of the advantage of two player teams. So far no one has noticed this change and the ticket payout % has been slightly reduced and back to the 30% range.
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Milk Jug – Very Skilled Players Getting 5-out-of-5 Balls in the Milk Jug (Dave Lohr, Alpha Regional Manager)
Milk Jug (ICE) is another great game but it has been very rare for a player to toss 5 out of 5 balls into the Milk Jug. The ticket payout % has been consistent since the game was introduced almost 2 years ago. At one of our locations our staff watched a player get 5 out of 5 multiple times and win the jackpot bonus each time. Of course many other customers witnessed this and started following the procedure which is to bounce the ball off the first scoring platform between the score holes and then the ball bounces into the jug. The first bounce slows down the ball and brings it in at an angle that catches the jug rim and then goes into the jug.
With some research we discovered that ICE now has a plexiglass shield to replace the factory shield in front of the first scoring platform, which is much higher and blocks the angle that allows a player to bounce the ball on the first platform. This discourages the player from bouncing the ball and encourages them to revert back to tossing the ball the way that the game was originally intended to be played. We did not know about this modification and assume that there are many Milk Jug owners out there who are also unaware of this.
Smart Candy Crane Claw Not Closing in Down Position
Problem: Claw does not close when it drops down but it does close on the way back up so I know that the coil is working. My volt meter shows the proper voltage is being applied through each phase of the claw drop. All of the connections look good. What do I do next?
Solution (Ramon Vivar, Alpha Sr. Technician):
From my experience, the problem is that the claw’s closing is being delayed. What could be happening is that the plunger of the solenoid coil is too far down, causing a magnetic delay. You can adjust that by moving the ring around the outside of the cylinder, a little bit up. That would give the plunger a bit of a head start. There’s usually a couple of allen set screws holding the ring in place that you need to loosen first so that the ring can slide. Also make sure that the plunger is sliding freely.
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Smart Crazy Curves LED/Driver Board Situation
Problem as reported by Jason: We started off having one LED that was not lighting on the playfield of Crazy Curves. To check if this LED was bad, I swapped it into another LED socket (it did not light) and placed a known good LED into the socket where the bad LED came from. Long story short…I ended up blowing 2 additional drivers on the Driver Control Board and ended up with 3 LEDs not working. LED bulbs cost $7.50 each. A LED Driver board is $180.55. My errors cost my company almost $400 when the cost should have been only $7.50.
What I learned: A bad LED light when plugged into another good LED socket can blow the driver on the Driver Control Board. I have now seen this happen on the rope lighting on Wheel Deal Extreme. I am now changing my trouble shooting procedures. I now first check with the manufacturer of the game before I do any LED swapping. In this case it is best to trash a suspected bad LED and swapping a known good LED to make sure the suspected bad LED really was bad and not the socket (driver).
