Disaster strikes yet again!
Saturday, July 7th, 2012Having completed the ground braid installation today, I was so pleased with my efforts to-date that I thought I’d see how the pinball was looking with the backbox on it. So I carefully took the head and placed it onto the cabinet – my idea being to take a few photos for this blog. But then I noticed something weird.
Around the screws which I had put back into the backbox there was a kind of halo:
Delamination of the decal
More delamination
Another example of delamination
I was gutted to say the least!
Removal of the screws and closer inspection revealed that the delamination (ie the detachment of the upper protective layer of the decal from the printed layer) was caused by the pressure of the screw head squeezing the top layer out, whilst holding the printed layer firm.
Delamination caused by squeezing
More squeezing
Delamination rather than rippling
With hindsight and something which I didn’t read or hadn’t found on the net, is that when installing decals, you should only tighten screw finger tight and then a touch more to prevent ripples from forming in the decal. Interesting to note however, that in my instance delamination occured as well as rippling. The reason for this is because of the quality of decals I used. It turns out that I had bought a no-name brand of decals instead of quality ones!
I contacted the supplier of the decals and he promptly exchanged the decals for me – in fact he even offered to re-decal my cabinet and backbox for me as it had been so difficult for me to do. I didn’t take him up on this offer, but instead decided to see whether I could repair this delamination, with the worse case being, that if I wasn’t able to do a good job, I could then re-decal the cabinet and backbox with the new decals.
