- October 25th, 2011, 5:28 pm#355450
So when Matty put out the PKE last year I did a teardown and comparison (here: http://www.gbfans.com/community/viewtop ... 90&t=23527). Since I'm one of the lucky ones who got a trap with doors that don't work I figured I'd do it again with the trap and hopefully figure out what's wrong along the way.

Since I'm making this a full teardown I started with the Pedal. The bottom comes off easy enough:

The pedal switch is a side-mounted momentary which should keep it from breaking through overenthusiastic play (the switch at least, the pedal will still probably break eventually)


The connector, as people have pointed out, is just a mini-jack plug:


All of the detail peices come off easily with screws which means substituting in real parts shouldn't be overly difficult:



I poked at the cable briefly but the connectors are glued together and I'm not ready to completely screw up my investmen....I mean my adult collectable.
The trap body comes apart easily:


The internal connector comes out with 2 screws, then there's a screw underneath it for the further electronics:


The toggle switch... isn't. It's a pot-metal piece that transfers the motion to a slide switch. It'd be relatively easy to grind out the mounting points and replace it with an accurate switch.

The cartridge is another story:




The forward indicator is connected by a ribbon cable and the switch is mechanically attached to a regular slide switch:

The "screen" is painted white on the back with surface mount LEDS around it. I couldn't capture the blue "electricity" lights as they're too fast:


Underneath that is the brains of the trap. It's labeled Rev2 so they obviously went through a few design changes. There's two empty spots for capacitors they didn't bother to take out.


The rear motor is the shaker motor that jiggles the wheels. It's just a simple mechanical offset:

The door motor is also a fairly straight forward mechanical setup with a rotating cam that moves the pegs up and down.


After putting everything back together my doors worked a little better but still didn't open very far. I'm gonna have to take it apart again and figure out how to power it up so I can watch the movement. Something has to either be binding or catching somewhere. Also, the two momentary switches on either side of the door motor assembly that keep track of "open" and "closed" may have something to do with it. There's really nothing mechanically wrong with the setup so it's gotta be something stupid like a loose screw or badly positioned switch. I did notice when putting the cartridge back together that you have to be careful how you position the ribbon cable for the forward indicator or else the cartridge release won't work correctly.
That's it for now, I'll putz with it some more and see what I can figure out.

Since I'm making this a full teardown I started with the Pedal. The bottom comes off easy enough:

The pedal switch is a side-mounted momentary which should keep it from breaking through overenthusiastic play (the switch at least, the pedal will still probably break eventually)


The connector, as people have pointed out, is just a mini-jack plug:


All of the detail peices come off easily with screws which means substituting in real parts shouldn't be overly difficult:



I poked at the cable briefly but the connectors are glued together and I'm not ready to completely screw up my investmen....I mean my adult collectable.

The trap body comes apart easily:


The internal connector comes out with 2 screws, then there's a screw underneath it for the further electronics:


The toggle switch... isn't. It's a pot-metal piece that transfers the motion to a slide switch. It'd be relatively easy to grind out the mounting points and replace it with an accurate switch.

The cartridge is another story:




The forward indicator is connected by a ribbon cable and the switch is mechanically attached to a regular slide switch:

The "screen" is painted white on the back with surface mount LEDS around it. I couldn't capture the blue "electricity" lights as they're too fast:


Underneath that is the brains of the trap. It's labeled Rev2 so they obviously went through a few design changes. There's two empty spots for capacitors they didn't bother to take out.


The rear motor is the shaker motor that jiggles the wheels. It's just a simple mechanical offset:

The door motor is also a fairly straight forward mechanical setup with a rotating cam that moves the pegs up and down.


After putting everything back together my doors worked a little better but still didn't open very far. I'm gonna have to take it apart again and figure out how to power it up so I can watch the movement. Something has to either be binding or catching somewhere. Also, the two momentary switches on either side of the door motor assembly that keep track of "open" and "closed" may have something to do with it. There's really nothing mechanically wrong with the setup so it's gotta be something stupid like a loose screw or badly positioned switch. I did notice when putting the cartridge back together that you have to be careful how you position the ribbon cable for the forward indicator or else the cartridge release won't work correctly.
That's it for now, I'll putz with it some more and see what I can figure out.
Jack Doud
http://www.bloody-plastic.com/costumes.html
My Oddball props:
Statue of Liberty Controller, Slime Scoop, Keymaster Colander Helmet, KUD Meter.
http://www.bloody-plastic.com/costumes.html
My Oddball props:
Statue of Liberty Controller, Slime Scoop, Keymaster Colander Helmet, KUD Meter.