Train wreck plastic
I built in my first custom plastic today.
Based on the instructions here (in German) I took the custom Train Wreck plastic which I had already had made (see here for more information and as to reasons why) and applied the graphic and white backing to it (which was extremely difficult, time consuming and required me to develop my own methodology). I was however pleased with the results:
New Train Wreck plastic
The new (larger) size of the hole for the flasher bulb holder (it turns out) made the plastic very fragile and dropping it once actually cracked the plastic at the thinnest points of the plastic. However, the plastic flasher bulb holder held everything together nicely.
Installing the plastic with the new bulb holder brought with it a new problem however, which I hadn’t thought about: the new bulb holder was actually lower than the original. Directly underneath the flasher is a GI bulb, which, because of the lack of clearance from the playfield to the base of the bulb holder, meant I couldn’t use a normal GI bulb. So instead I tried out an LED solution.
pinballcenter.eu produces a range of LED based lighting solutions for pinball machines. One that took my fancy was the BA9s Noflix PLUS L – Superflux:
BA9s Noflix PLUS purple L - Superflux
By using this LED based solution (in yellow) instead of a standard #44 bulb, I was able to solve my head-room problem under the Train Wreck flasher.
Not only did I solve this problem however, this solution gave me an additional advantage: by pointing the LED vertically upwards it shone onto the flasher housing and cap (which I had also chosen to be yellow), thereby making the flasher cap glow yellow.
Yellow flasher cap "glowing"
Fantastic.
This combined with my earlier solution to use aluminium foil behind the back GI lamps really made the corner under the ramp light up – thereby overcoming one of the major criticisms of the TAF pinball machine.