Adjusting The Convergence Rings

Most of the time when we hear symptoms such as color bleeding or shadowing, our first thought might be to install a cap kit. While cap kits are known to solve problems such as these, it could just be that our convergence rings are out of alignment and need to be adjusted to correct the picture. In this post, we will discuss how to adjust the convergence rings on your monitor so that you can correct these type of symptoms as well as other convergence issues.

Adjusting The Convergence Rings

Before we begin adjusting our convergence rings, it is important to note that the monitor must be on during the adjustment of these rings if you want to be able to see happening on the screen. With that said, make sure that you take the necessary safety precautions to keep yourself from getting shocked during the process. As we talked about in our post on Adjusting An Arcade Monitor, we would highly recommend either getting a friend or a mirror to help you with the adjustments. This makes it much easier to know what’s going on with the screen when you are making adjustments to the rings.

Our first step is to locate the convergence rings on our monitor tube. If you are looking into the back of your arcade cabinet, you may notice several sets of rings wrapped around the neck of the monitor tube. These are what we like to call the convergence rings. You might also hear them referred to as the purity rings as well. These rings are magnetized allowing them to direct the CRT electron beams to the desired locations on the screen. Before we actually turn the rings for the first time, it is a good idea to take either a lightly-colored paint pen or some correctional fluid and draw a line across the rings so that you know what your starting point is. You might also have a different color of pen or fluid handy to mark across the rings again once you have found the correct position for them.

Once we have made the mark across the convergence rings on our monitor tube, we can begin adjusting them. If your PCB has a video test mode for convergence available, we would recommend putting the game in that mode so you can easily tell when the convergence is correct. Watch the screen as you slowly turn each ring until you feel that the picture is correct. When you have adjusted the convergence rings to your liking, you can mark across them with the other pen or fluid that we mentioned above. If you don’t plan on making any more adjustments on the rings, you can also take some glue and apply it across the rings to hold the adjustments into place for years to come.

Color bleeding and shadowing is a pretty common problem with arcade monitors in general. Before you decide to install a cap kit on your next monitor with these issues, you may try adjusting the convergence rings as the starting point for your repair. If you have any other comments, questions or suggestions about adjusting the convergence rings, feel free to leave a message in our comments section below.