Too Much POWER!

It's been a while since my last post, which is mainly because my focus has been partly elsewhere, and partly because I've been busy doing stuff on the machine.

First off -
I've received the parts from the welder and they look awesome!
From a user perspective it's almost impossible to detect any seams, which I was a little bit worried about. It turns out that 'tigging' is a technique used to melt two materials together using no external materials, meaning the weld will be 100% the same strength as the rest of the piece.

This would not have been the case if I would to pursue my blazing thing I had going there for a while...

Behold!

1) Habitrails welded together. I guess that was obvious by looking at the picture thou.

I had to modify the pieces slightly, most noticeably the VUK rail. The metal stop at the end was not wanted and had to go, and the loop had to be evened out to smooth out the trajectory of the ball.

I've also changed some of the solenoid coils since a couple of them were too weak. I may have to switch around the center VUK and top VUK since the top one has a bit too much power now.
Speaking of power...

I've replaced the autolaunch coil with a beefier one since the old one couldn't quite push the ball all the way up the ramp. I studied the manuals of the game I've shamefully borrowed the ramp from and found out that, as I already knew, I was using a too weak coil.

I did a couple of test shots and for some reason it didn't shoot the ball all the way up anyhow.
After a little detective work I noticed that the ball bounced ever so slightly against the edges of the shooter lane and lost momentum. So I tried to tweak the positions a little and all of a sudden the autolaunch simply gave up.

Tap. That's all the thunder it could bring.
Tap. I saw the kicker arm move but very weakly.
Crap. Did I just burn my new shiny coil?

I looked under the playfield and saw this...

2) Autolaunch...has become neverlaunch. Just behind it is the new ball eject solenoid, which is rather inconveniently placed. 

As you can see, the reason for it not working very well is obvious.
The link had simply cracked...

This wasn't unexpected thou since the link was from an older game that I've modified to fit. Luckily for me I bought the correct link in the last shipment of parts so it's all just a matter of pulling the roll-pin, inserting the link and reinserting the roll-pin.

Phew.