Archive for November, 2009

Touching up The Power insert

Friday, November 27th, 2009

It was back to The Power insert today. I wanted to redo the yellow and orange “ring” as my previous efforts were much too “lumpy”, so instead of painting the yellow on with a brush I decided to spray the paint on (having removed my previous efforts with isopropyl alcohol). This required me to mask off the areas which shouldn’t be painted. For this I used a paint on masking, which goes on pink and dries clear. I painted the power insert and the orange cloud above the insert to allow me to then spray the paint over a larger area and to hopefully blend it in better with the playfield.

Masked off area around The Power insert

I used a “cheap” airbrush (with compressed air in a can) to spray the yellow paint (thinned with isopropyl alcohol) which finished off pretty thick:

Spray painted - maybe a little too much?

Having waited for the paint to dry, I removed the masking and found that indeed the paint was a little thick, so I gingerly sanded it down to blend it in with the playfield ans insert:

The end result after sanding

Although the colour difference is obvious in the photo, it doesn’t look too bad in real life – not bad for my first spray job on the playfield! Next, the orange frame around the insert….

New playfield!

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

I’d been waiting so long for a “first” playfield from IPB, that I gave up in the end and accepted a “good” second, which I received today:

IPB Playfield "second"

 At first, everything seemed just as it should, but on closer inspection, I found the following damage:

I contacted IPB about these faults and they agreed to take the playfield back or give me a small discount. I opted for the discount, as I will have to have the playfield clear-coated again to even up the playfield – especially over the Mansion inserts – and intend to use this opportunity to touch up the playfield.

Update

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Well it’s not that I haven’t been working on my pinball machine – I’m just working on alternatives ways to progress at the moment and so have nothing to report. But just for completeness, here’s what I’ve been up to:

I’ve been improving my touch-ups to the playfield and will be presenting them here once I’ve completed the painting.

I acquired some acrylic “fluorescent” additive to try to get the orange touch ups around the POWER insert to be more fluorescent – with mixed results.

I cleaned the playfield with silicon remover to get rid of the grease marks (in preparation for the clear coating) which removed all of my black and orange touch ups from the playfield.

I found an interesting touch up alternative, which may be a good solution for the black and orange insert touch-ups. I’m waiting for this to be delivered. I will report on the success (or otherwise) of this solution once I’ve tried it out.

I’ve also sealed in my touch ups around the mansion inserts with thin superglue, applying it with a syringe. Although this worked fine, some of the purple and yellow colours bled into the surrounding black area. This needs to be reworked.

I’ve taken several metal parts to a metal worker to be reground (ie to remove the ball wear channels). I got these back and they looked wonderful (although the rivets for the connecting posts have also been slightly ground down, exposing a yellow finish under the chrome plating).

Reground metal parts showing the rivets with chrome plating removed

Reground metal parts showing the rivets with chrome plating removed

So next on my agenda are the following:

  1. Finish the touch ups to the playfield
  2. Apply the “cloud” decal
  3. Spot clear coat the playfield (over touch ups and decal)
  4. Rebuild the playfield

Plotter Cutter

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

I’ve read a lot of late on the forums of people touching up their playfields with an airbrush and paper masks cut from masking paper. It seems a relatively straight forward process and so did some more investigating.

In so doing I stumbled accross a Craft-Robo CC330-20 cutter plotter which would appear to do everything that would be required for playfield touch-ups and at a reasonable price. So I bought one.

The CraftRobo CC330-20 plotter cutter

This looks like it may do the trick for several of my touch-ups.