Archive for April, 2013

The cracks start to appear – already!

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

Well what can I say, despite my best attempts to prevent anything else from going wrong (the last one being my decal issue on the backbox) I was horrified to discover that the decals at the front of the pinball machine had started to wrinkle under the pressure of the legs. The bracket which I had fitted to prevent exactly this problem hadn’t worked:

Score lines in the decal from the legs causing premature wrinkling

Score lines in the decal from the legs causing premature wrinkling

So I had to cut around the decal underneath the leg and remove the decal, to prevent further wrinkling. Having completed this exercise, I was pleased that not only was the wrinkle no longer apparent, but also the cut away couldn’t be seen once the leg had been re-fitted.

Leg replaced - a tight fit even with the metal leg protectors

Leg replaced – a tight fit even with the metal leg protectors

Backbox lighting

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

In this post I reported on the sorry state of my backbox lighting tub. As a reminder I had the follwoing to deal with:

How the backbox lighting looks

How the backbox lighting looks

The two connector solution

The two connector solution

Well, having bought the correct coloured wires and the plug-in bulb holders (which are very expensive, by the way) and the correct connectors, I got to work repairing the disaster as was. The result:

Completed light tub, with all bulbs present and correct (sort of)

Completed light tub, with all bulbs present and correct (sort of)

Reverse of light tub showing new connector

Reverse of light tub showing new connector

Two things to notice: firstly I only spray painted the front side of the light tub with Rustoleum plastic paint (I love Rustoleum!); secondly, the 4 bulb cluster bottom right (where a plug has come out of its hole in my photo) should actually form a square shape and not the reverse ‘L’ shape as in my example.

Fitting the legs

Sunday, April 7th, 2013

As you know (if you’ve been reading through this blog) I’ve had problems with the decals which I applied to my machine, meaning that for all screws which go directly into the cabinet, I’m having to cut away the underlying decal to stop it from “squashing”.

Famous for causing problems with all decals (not just sub-standard ones, which I appear to have) is the area behind the leg mountings. This area comes under varying amounts of pressure during its lifetime, due to the way pinball machines are played, which decals don’t like. As a result the decals crease in next to no time around the leg mounts. This is also apparent in WPC factory cabinets where decals were used for the first time (most Monster Bash machines for example).

Investigating on line, a solution appears to be, to make a cut in the decal around the leg mount. Well this is what I would have be planning to do anyway (and to remove the cut away part instead of just leaving it on the cabinet – as with the screws).

But then I found the new STERN leg mounting plates. I’m guessing that as STERN is using decals now 100% on its newest machines, they’ve had to find a solution to this problem. And I think they just have. The solution appears to be a touch of genius.

It consists of a metal angle plate which fits between the leg and the cabinet. This plate keeps the leg away from the cabinet (and therefore the decal). The plate itself is screwed to the cabinet, thereby preventing any movement and stopping the decals from creasing.

So I purchased a couple of sets to try.

Attaching them was quite straight forward – fitting them onto each corner with the screw provided; cutting away the decal underneath around the edge of the bracket; removing the bracket again in order to remove the decal from underneath and then re-attaching the bracket.

Decal cut away for the bracket

Decal cut away for the bracket

With bracket attached

With bracket attached

Mounting the legs onto the cabinet was then pretty straight forward and once they were fitted and tightened, each leg was distanced about half a millimeter from the cabinet thereby preserving the cabinet decal…

0.5mm clearance from cabinet to leg

0.5mm clearance from cabinet to leg

Mounted leg - with Martian Eyes

Mounted leg – with Martian Eyes

…or so I thought….