Hello all. First time posting.
I work as a technician at a gaming arcade, i am entirely self taught.
I have been struggling to diagnose an issue with the solenoid on one of the claw grabbers not closing despite having 50v present
The machine is a ticket zone grabber built by coast to coast amusements. The manual is lackluster and I was unable to find any board diagrams.
What I've done so far:
The coil is rated for 48v, it has continuity, there is a bit of discoloration in the material covering the coil.
It has an internal resistance of 0.24 ohm, I have tested it on a separate 12v psu and it does pull the plunger in, slowly as one would expect.
I have tested a separate working claw on the same machine and it still doesn't close.
On the machine.
I have tested continuity from the claw down to the board, all fine.
As mentioned previously, there is power, when it is supposed to be in the closed state there is roughly 54v coming from the board without a load and over 50v with a claw attached.
I had started tracking the paths on the board starting from the output pins of the coil until my head combusted, I will get back to it if I have to.
I understand that the issue likely lies somewhere in the machine rather than with the coil itself.
With my extremely limited knowledge of electronics all I can think of is there could be some component that is allowing voltage to be there but no current to flow. If even possible.
Has anyone seen anything similar, could it actually be a board component or is it more likely to be psu related?
Please let me know if you can think of something, I will try to provide any additional information that I can. I only have access to a digital multimeter as far as measurements go.
Any advice will be greatly appreciated . Thank you.