Thing’s Metal Box
In my endeavours to get everything clean, I used some abrahsive cleaner to clean Thing’s Metal Box (which resides under the playfield). Unfortunately the cleaner that I used (Stahlfix) was way too agressive for the zinc coating and so etched through to the metal underneath:
Zinc plating etched away after cleaning
More etching of the zinc coating
Having made a few enquiries online as to what I could or should do, I decided to get the zinc coating renewed on the metal box. So I looked for a local works that could do this for me.
To cut as long story short, I went to pick it up today and was disgusted by the finish: the coating wasn’t uniform at all and there were like pieces of grit under the zinc coating making the finish extremely rough – both inside and out – just right for a pinball – NOT!
Needless to say I declined the part and asked them to rework it. I’ll see next week whether they’ve been able to correct the mistakes.
Incidentally – and this is a very important point, I had the metal box “hot-dip galvanised” when I should have had it galvanically galvanised (using electricity) – this latter method results in a more uniform and better looking coating.
If I had only known that before (or the work shop had actually told me)!