Thursday at Pinball Expo began with the customary tour of the Stern Pinball factory.

The yellow school buses pulled up outside the Westin hotel just before the 9am departure time and expo attendees boarded for the 25 minute journey to Melrose Park.

There was a light rain falling as the visitors queued in the factory's parking lot.

Visitors wait for the tour to begin

Gary Stern came out to welcome everyone and explain how this year's tour would be different from those in recent years.

Gary Stern addresses his visitors

He explained how the market for games has changed (i.e. declined) and so Stern Pinball has had to change its production methods and schedule accordingly. That meant the next machines to be manufactured would be re-runs of titles such as Lord Of The Rings and CSI, and the next new model wouldn't hit the production line until the end of the year, in time for the European trade shows and buying season.

Visitors listen to Gary Stern's address

Thus, for the first time this author can remember, those people on the Pinball Expo tour of a pinball factory would not get to see any actual pinball machines being made. Instead, the factory was only making cable looms for the upcoming re-run of Lord Of The Rings.

Inside the factory

Instead of the usual bustle of assembly manufacturing and machine construction, the factory's production lines were quiet and the visitors heavily outnumbered the staff.

The only area where any activity was taking place was right at the start of the tour - the cable department.

Making cable looms for Lord Of The Rings

One thing that often surprises visitors is how much manual assembly takes place in the factory. There is virtually no automation, and the manufacture of the looms is a perfect example of this.

A cable loom being made

Even small cable connections are made by hand.

Short wire links are made

Once the cable runs are completed, they are cable-wrapped together and have their connectors added.

Molex connectors are added to the cables

The completed cables looms are then hung up to await testing and installation once production of Lord Of The Rings begins.

The completed looms

There were plenty of CSI playfields in the racks, joined by small numbers of Pirates Of The Caribbean and a Simpsons redemption game.

Playfields awaiting production and a reminder of the company's history

Shrek and Family Guy mini-playfields

In the absence of any full machine assembly, while the rest of our group were shown how the production process happens (look at last year's tour to see machines actually being made), we looked around the factory for other items of interest.

This skyscraper-shaped Spider-Man redemption game was designed by Dennis Nordman but the project was shelved before production, due to the high cost of the finished product.

Spider-Man redemption game

Close-up of the Spider-Man game

With Stern able to re-make a variety of past machines, boxes of parts and fixtures for those (and a future title) were found all around the factory.

Parts for various machines

Samples of each game were set up for reference in the testing area.

Examples of previous titles

To give the visitors an insight into the design process, Stern Mechanical Engineer John Rotharmel demonstrated their computer design system where mechanisms and assemblies can be created and animated in 3D on the screen.

John Rotharmel demonstrates the 3D design and visualisation software

Part of the skull mechanism from CSI

The complete mechanism was tested in a custom fixture which repeatedly loaded and unloaded balls from the skull's eyes as you can see in this video clip.

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