I am pretty sure I did NOT get a node10 error when my 2nd board (1st replacement) smoked. I remember cycling power several times when it happened to see if the error would show up on boot. I remember that it didn’t and wondering why clock and ramp stopped working, but no error…

I played it a fair number of times while waiting for a replacement and I don’t remember Node 10 errors on those boots either… but less certain for all of those boots.

My game also had no idea its node 10 had stopped working. Burn mark on the chip was very small.

Jesterpester Pinball-Ike DanQverymuch

Thanks for comments to my question!

Time for an update.

We had some pretty high hopes for a test, but the board ultimately failed again, but it never threw a Node Board 10 error (a first for this pin). Not sure if that was progress or a fluke. Hence, the reason I asked that question a couple of days ago.

We kept the mods simple, perhaps we should have added a couple of mods we had been tossing around.

Some additional parts have been ordered and received, and are currently being tested. But we might run into the problem of limited assets to test unless we can repair a node board.

Hey everyone does anybody know what other games use the node 10 stepper motor board? I know Rush and Godzilla use it does any other games?

I looked on Marco Specialties, and it seems to only be GZ and Rush. Side note: It hurts that these now go for $330.

James Bond 60th has a similar board but to manage 4 steppers instead of just 2. IIRC mbwalker's take on that board is it looks like it may be better designed and more in line with the recommendation of the chip manufacturer.

Could you drop that board in as a replacement?

That's a question I wish we had an answer for.

Just looking at the pictures I saw earlier, they reworked the 5V power supply on the node board, along with moving the Home switch filter that was on an adapter to now being on the node board. Still no reverse EMF protection from the stepper motors (would have been nice to add pads in the artwork just in case parts were ever needed). But's that's just from a quick 'look see' from a couple of pictures. Big_Whoopin already mentioned they added the parts for the two extra stepper motors. There's probably more I don't know about.

I’m over here playing Atari sweating bullets,keeping an eye on the wife playing Rush-in-roulette with the node board!!
Please god!! don’t let that board blow while she’s playing.

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Never for me.

Update: I let mbwalker know this already but my 4th Node 10 does not throw any error messages and the steppers are completely unresponsive. On this one, the wires for both steppers were soldered directly to the board and it lasted about 80 games. For me anyway, that rules out the connector issue.

You all are making me nervous. I have had my RUSH Pro for almost a year, and to day all is good. Hoping we stay there.

node 10 issues do not apply to the rush pro machine, only to the premium and LE editions that have a node 10 board for the moveable ramp in front of the time machine

that being said, I think that you can sleep tight knowing that you'll never experience a node 10 failure on your rush pro

You can always go ahead and add a node 10 board to your Pro just so you can enjoy the anticipation of waiting for it to blow.

I have a favor to ask the thread: Anyone willing to donate a blown node board that doesn't throw a node board error?

We're short on boards to test. I'd like to try to replace the TMC stepper motor driver chip to try to bring one back to life.

A few caveats:

1) The board won't be returned. So don't donate a blown board in your pin. But if you have a pile of blown node boards gathering dust and want to get rid of one (or more) - great!

2) We need a board that doesn't have any damaged traces.

3) We'll test the board, you won't have to test a repaired board.

I have some severely damaged boards and will practice removing/replacing the TMC5041 chip. If it goes well, then move on to a blown board that's in decent shape.

Thanks ahead of time! Just shoot me a PM.

Yes, I now have two boards that meet the criteria. Second one just blew after 6 months of normal operation. Thanks for all your continuing efforts, I'll reach out to coordinate shipment.

Thanks!!

A quick question for those of you who have had node 10 failures.

Have you ever noticed that while playing your games (with or without a functioning node 10) that the flippers or other functions on the game slow down or become weaker?

For example, you might be playing a game and everything seems normal but suddenly you notice that you are missing shots, or the Time Machine misses ball catches (promium mode assumed)? And if so, after a machine reboot do things return to normal for some period of time before happening again?

As the proud owner of one of these impacted Premiums, I've been mulling this over for a couple of days, and since 95% of the roughly 2K games played on my machine have been in "promium" mode... I'm now wondering if I even understand what the correct operation of the Time Machine is supposed to be!

Some balls will sail right through the Time Machine when the ramp is permanently propped up (particularly the really fast shots up the ramp), but I don't know if that's by design, or if the magnet is trying to grab it, and missing. Is the TM supposed to attempt to grab *every* ball shot through it when the ramp is up (premium/le), or the TM is ready (pro)? I haven't put enough games in on the location Rush Pros around me to notice the difference.

But I guess short answer is: Yes, my Node10-affected game occasionally misses TM catches... but I don't notice it happening with "fade" over time, as you would expect with flipper coil fade over a long session. It might happen on the first 60 seconds of ball 1, and then the rest of the game it seems to be behaving normally, for example.

Much appreciated I had not followed the thread from the beginning.

More to report on my end. My 4th Node 10 was installed last week with direct solder connections from the stepper motors to the board. This worked for about 80 plays and then the ramp and clock became unresponsive. Interesting facts: 1) No node 10 failure on boot up or in diagnostics. no tell tale burn mark on the stepper IC. 2) Unresponsiveness occurred again in La Villa mode.

Awaiting next steps from Stern.

Interesting that you noted that it died in La Villa Strangiato. I wonder if that detail holds up if people are paying attention to that specifically (or, tempting fate, selecting that a lot). Maybe some timing that's specific to that mode?

PinMonk from what I have been told…it’s not a coding issue and I think? mbwalker would probably agree with that.

It’s an interesting observation for sure. The funny thing is that LaVilla is a relatively calm mode. I find it odd that it failed there twice. I had 80 plays on this board and some crazy multiball modes with an add a ball and pop bumpers going crazy. It lived through that so I really find it odd.

But if no one knows what the actual issue is, how do they know it's not some combination of timings specific to that mode?

Pretty crazy that we're over 2 years now and no solution by Stern has been made available.

During my correspondence w/Analog Devices tech Support, I specifically asked AD if programming could blow up the chip and they replied 'No'. I don't flip SPI bits in my line of work, so I guess I need to take their word for it. But I still worry about it...

My tech support correspondence:

Me: "Is there anything else that can cause destruction of the stepper motor driver and the internal 5V regulator? Specifically, TMC software configuration?"

Analog devices: "The driver IC cannot be destroyed by software settings (just make sure you don't fry the motor by too much current)."

Time to try my hand at board repair.

I've worked with SMD parts for probably 30+ years, but the TMC5041 part has a pretty fine pitch on the leads, so it will be tricky. I have a beater node board, so I will practice on that first, then move on to a board that's in better shape. Fingers crossed.

If it goes well, I'll have a board to test again.

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As a side project, I was looking into making a board to protect the stepper motor chip from reverse EMF. We've had boards fail with no motors attached, but I might try this anyways in case there's a couple of problems going on. Don't plan on selling this, just use it for testing. 'Leave no stone unturned' sort of thing.
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I agree with you Jesterpester. Per my communication with Stern last week. They are still…yes STILL looking into the problem. They did an “experimental” fix on mine where my dealer came 3+ hours to my house and soldered the motors directly to the board. It lasted 80 plays. The response is…engineers are looking into it and we’ll let you know. When? Who knows. Obviously it is NOT just the connections. As this experiment failed AND as mbwalker notes, boards have failed with no motors connected. I am going to follow up with them tomorrow and weekly from here on out. At this point we all may need to put some pressure on Stern to take them back. They said that there are a dozen or so premiums that keep blowing boards. I find that hard to believe because there are probably many that have not done it yet but surely will in the future. I have been through 4 and the first was not until it had 900 plays on it. I feel your pain and I have only dealt with it half as long as you have.

I'm just going to put it right out there and say that they're *completely* full of shit.

There are over 5 DOZEN of us on this Pinside thread alone. That's not counting the buyers who aren't on Pinside, and more importantly, the operators who can't be assed enough to complain about the issue... they just stuff a racquetball under the ramp, empty the coinbox, windex the glass (if we're lucky) and move on. There's one of those fine specimens on location near me.

In January, Support told me that they had two of the "problem games" pulled back from the field, their engineers had them back in the lab, and they'd have a permanent fix announced shortly. Well, that was now just over three months ago, and it's looking more and more like their latest "fix" is to solder the motor leads directly to the Node 10 board!? Are you kidding me? They should have known over a year ago that the motor leads are not the problem.

I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to a) live with my "promium", b) sell the game at a severely reduced price (disclosing the issue to prospective buyers, because I'm not a complete and utter scumbag), and try to find a Pro, or a Premium/LE without the issue, or c) wait for the fine folks in the pinball hobbyist community to solve yet another one of Stern's cock-ups.

Since I absolutely love the band, and love this game... my money is on option "c".

I guess option "d" would be the Stern engineers getting their collective heads out of their collective asses, and it's looking more and more like that's never going to happen. It's a shame that Borg and team have this black stain on what would otherwise (IMO) go down in history as one of the GOAT games.

</rant>

Did you notice what was going on when it died?

Time to fire up the hot plate and the hot air gun to try my hand at removing/reinstalling a blown TMC5041 stepper motor chip. I absolutely HATE doing this given the fine pitch of the part. Just practicing on a beater board for now.

I cut a small piece of aluminum that sets directly under the TMC part so as to not heat up the entire board, this will focus the heat directly on the TMC thermal pad (under the part). Plus there's some leads sticking out on the bottom of the board, so I needed to raise the node board up a bit anyways. Screws in the corners helps to level the board on the hot plate. A thermal probe lets me keep an eye on the temperature. pasted_image (resized).pngpasted_image (resized).png

The hot plate is just being used to preheat the board, then the hot air gun raises the temperature some more to make the solder flow. Some Kapton helps keep the surrounding parts from flying away.

Got the part off and cleaned up the area. Not bad. The damaged on the right is from when the TMC5041 went nuclear while in a pin. pasted_image (resized).png

Time for the hard part - installing the old part back on board. Got it in place, ready to heat things up. pasted_image (resized).png

So-so results. I might of had a bit too much solder on the thermal pad and the part didn't settle down in place as much as needed. The leads do go under the part so some might be soldered despite appearance (but not good enough for me). I removed C12 some time ago to check the value. pasted_image (resized).pngpasted_image (resized).png

Time to practice some more...

I'm not sure how comfortable I am sending a repaired/modified board to someone to test just yet, have to think about that some more.

At least you were able to get a dealer to come solder yours. They asked us to solder them ourselves knowing NOTHING about what soldering skills we have. I refused mostly because we KNOW it’s not a connection issue. They won’t move past them. Sorry it didn’t work on yours but it’s not surprising.

I agree… they are full of it. They told me there were around 2500 premium and LE machines sold and only a dozen are having issues. There’s no way! I told them I wanted at least a refund on the $2000+ difference between the cost of pro vs premium because we have yet to enjoy the premium features we actually paid for. I don’t even care about the ramp working anymore. It does absolutely nothing for game play and there really is no reason for it to actually move. I at least want the clock working though.

As someone that recently picked up a soldering station with a hot air gun (which will probably most often just be used for heat shrink) thanks for sharing with us your process! I need to accumulate some scrap boards to play around with hot air work. I understand the usefulness of a hot plate but I don't know if it is worth it for me to invest in one. When I finally get to trying out hot air work on something I don't care about I may just cheat it... use my toaster oven to preheat the board, then transfer to my work area and hit with hot air.

Get some Kapton tape, that will help to keep little parts from being blown away if you're ever doing SMD work.

Hot plate didn't cost a lot, ~$67 and it's pretty good size. The node board problem just gave me an excuse to finally buy one. Wish I had it when I was doing some repair on my Munsters CPU.

Getting better at replacing the TMC chip. Probably fried the guts of it, but at least the fillets are looking better. Still the same blown up board and TMC5041 part.

P.S. I still hate doing this, it's a royal PIA.

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Yes. The last two times it was in La Villa Mode and that mode is far less taxing on everything than some of the other modes. There were no multiballs in play. Second time this happened that I was paying particular attention. So, it was a pretty calm environment for this game.

This is good information. I still suspect there's an external programming combination (not of the chip itself, but what's being sent to the chip) that is causing this under certain hardware circumstances. The fact that you got a blown board twice in this particular mode strengthens that idea.

Completely agree. Stern has not been forthcoming at all about the issue or the fix. I bet you they know what’s wrong, but the fix is probably too expensive in their eyes or too difficult for the average user to implement or both. It’s a fantastic game when it works. I too am a huge fan of the band and want to keep the game, but I want some assurance that whatever fix they come up with is permanent. Even so, I will always be skeptical and worried about it. No way would I try my luck with another one. I love the band too and prefer to keep it, but not like this. Like you I would at the very least want a refund of the difference between the Premium and Pro. That’s the VERY least. I would also think a lifetime warranty for Node 10 would be in order if they ever “fix it”. Frustrating.

The cost of the Node 10 board needs to be addressed, before the problems with this game it was priced similar to other motor control items, this almost doubled once they were being sourced to rectify problems.

It's nothing more than blatant profiteering where there is a desperate market to exploit. Someone should be ashamed of themselves.

Really at this point they should be free to any Rush owner. On par with cheap Chinese made crap.

They should be free at the point of exchange or sold at cost to owners as a spare ( 1 per owner, documented ) for when it goes wrong indefinitely until Stern come up with a recognised final solution.

Until that point in time is reached, the pin can only be viewed as not fit for purpose and should be either recalled or open to acceptable warranty claims.

All,

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted anything. I had been requested to measure the stepper motor current and finally got around to doing that today.

For this test I installed a current clamp around one of the motor wires for the Ramp. ( I also repeated the testing for the other motor coil) Please reference back to an earlier post of mine where I was measuring voltage across the motor coils to show, that on my machine at least, the currents are similar so to save from photo overload, I am only showing two screen captures.

For those who do not frequently use an oscilloscope, in these screen shots, the vertical scale is set to 1A per division. So basically if you look at the horizontal lines, every line you move up or down represents 1 A. Similarly, the horizontal scale is set to 500 mS per division, so as you look left or right, each vertical line represents 0.5 seconds. (I know, the description is confusing, talking about horizontal scale and then telling you to look at the vertical lines)

I also have the scope set up to display the maximum positive AND negative current present on the screen.

rmptst_01 - This was taken with the machine in the diagnostic mode for the ramp. I moved the ramp up and down using the maintenance menu. We see a total current delta displayed for the 6 seconds shown here of 1080 mA.

rmptst_02 - This was taken when exiting the diagnostic mode for the ramp. For those familiar with this mode, when exiting the mode, the ramp will rapidly move to the home position. If you look carefully, you should be able to tell the difference in the frequency of the waveform in this example when compared to the other image. Since the ramp is moving more quickly, the frequency of the drive is higher, this is normal. Here too, the current is 1080 mA so the increase in speed did not impact the current.

Some of you might notice that when the ramp is NOT moving, there is still current being sensed. This is due to the "hold" functionality of the driver chip. Basically, to keep the ramp from moving due to contact with a ball, there is a small hold current maintained on the coil(s) to "lock" the stepper motor. Please reference one of my first posts #985 for information I posted from Stern and my personal observations after my ramp was being forced down during gameplay.

I then used this information to set a trigger on the current to allow the scope to wait for any excursions above the measured current. I set the scope to trigger at a positive going current level of anything greater than 800 mA. I then played the machine for nearly 2 hours without a single trigger event. What this means is that on my machine at least, the current being provided to the stepper motor seems to be well controlled.

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Thanks @necro2112, that's good info. Looks like it might fall inline with the numbers for the 0.22 ohm Rsense resistor next to the TMC5041 (depends on how they set the up the software too) pasted_image (resized).pngpasted_image (resized).png

Since La Villa Strangiato blew up two boards in a row in that mode on a user's machine where he was paying attention to what mode was on when the board blew, maybe try just playing that, resetting, playing that, etc. To see if you can get a possible code-based condition (or combination of conditions while that mode is playing) with that mode specifically that will cause a catastrophic issue.

FYI -

I just picked up a Rush Prem what has 3k plays and no node issues (fingers crossed!). I also have limited access to one of the machines that is blowing boards on the regular.

--> If there is anything you'd like to compare and contrast between the two, please reach out.

*tinfoil hat* I am looking at the thread about excessive clicking due to off-spec capacitors in 2023 builds and starting to suspect there is some "invisible COVID induced configuration change" thing at play here. It's clearly not the motor connections.

Yes. For sure 100% on the last 2 boards it was in La Villa mode. Interestingly, one board blew and it was detected. The other failed with no error message, but is completely unresponsive.

I would love to know if anyone else knows exactly when the board goes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. You have to keep an eye on the clock and listen for the call out for the ramp. As mentioned I am 100% positive.

The reverse EMF filter boards showed up today. Time to try to replace a bad TMC5041 (ugh), make a mod or 2 to the node 10 board, and populate the filter boards.

Then pray to the pinball gods and test.

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ALL of them, just to be safe.

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except to the god of [node 10] death
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