I had a problem with my WCS serving multiple balls, and I thought I’d share the approach I used to fix it.

I had looked at the switch tests, but the problem was somewhat intermittent so that didn’t really help.

I pulled the whole trough unit out; that took:

• Two screws from the bottom
• Removing the bottom playfield cover below the flippers
• Removing 5 (?) screws from the top

That loosens the trough. I then took out the 4 screws that hold the solenoid to the trough, unplugged the connectors, and it was out.

Test the LEDs

I started by testing the LEDs. Through trial and error, I found that a 1K ohm resistor and a 5V supply resulted in a current of about 4mA, and since that’s within the spec for most LEDs, I stuck with that. Hook one end of the supply to the common and the other to the individual LED pins, and verify that they all light up.

They’re infrared LEDs, so you can’t see them, but pretty much any digital sensor can; a camera, your phone, etc. It’s simpler to remove the board from the trough before you do this.

All the LEDs on my board checked out.

Test the phototransistors

Keep your setup to turn on the LEDs as we’ll need it for this step.

Using a ohmmeter, connect one end to the common and then connect the other end to the pin for the LED that you currently have on. You should see about 4K ohm when the LED is on and something around 1M ohm when your hand is blocking the light. If you don’t see any difference, swap the leads from the ohmmeter around. You may have to turn the lights out to get 1M on some of the phototransistors as you can get room light reflecting into them.

Work your way down through each LED and phototransistor and verify that you are getting the right settings. If you find one that isn’t reading correctly, or consistently, it is *most likely* a connection issue.

I would start by verifying the connections; with one lead connected to the common pin, verify that you have continuity to all of the phototransistors; one of the pins on every one should be zero ohms (or close to it) and connected to the common.

Then repeat that from each of the LED pins on the connector to the non-common phototransistor pin. You should see zero ohms on each of those as well.

My issue turned out to be a rework issue; the #6 phototransistor was replaced by somebody and they either messed up the through-hole or didn’t resolder it correctly, so it was only making contact on the LED side of the board sporadically. Rather than pull the board off and try to resolder the phototransistor, I added a small jumper wire from the pin to the phototransistor.

Everything tested fine, and no more double balls.