Pinball cabs have been splitting corners for 80 years.

They used to arrive split all the time NIB from the distributor. We'd glue them up, and deploy them the next day. Never did we even dream of calling the local distributor.

Any game you get truly off route (not some pinball collector routing a few games, but routed by a real operator) has a 25% chance of having one of it's front corners split.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cabinet-restoration-vids-guide

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You guys know that Stern does not make pinball cabs, right?

The cabs are made by CCC, the same company that made the Williams, Gottlieb, Classic Bally and Classic Stern cabs.

Same 3/4" plywood sides, same junky fiberboard bottoms......they have been in business for over 100 years

Yes, buy a 30 year old Williams game that I already re-glued 29 years ago.

Nothing has changed.

Hide glue is still safe, legal, smelly.

Simply remember, most old pinball cabs have already been re-glued long before you bought them.

I hope not, it smells like a horse's ass.

Heat up a pot of Hide Glue - you won't miss it.

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Show me HUNDREDS (that would be more than 200) of KISS, GOT, Aerosmith that have split cabinets. You can't.

I would not be lying if I said that in my life of routing pins that I have probably glued 1000 corners.

Pinball cabs are the worst structural design for flex (think a shoebox with the lid off). They are made of the lightest weight SPF plywood to make them easy to route them in locations with stairs. They are garbage design that only needed to last the 3 years that the game was designed for.

You guys would have gone ass crazy back in the day when we would unbox some games and the bottoms were made of crappy Z-brick or wainscotting fiberboard. Stern and Williams would allow CCC to put any piece of crap panel on a game if it kept the lines running.

Yes, both of these are factory:

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No, we would have to MIG weld them, lol.

This X1000

Or how about when Williams would ship games that were 1/2 hardboard and half fiberboard?

That would get your guys panties in a bunch, yes?

Again, from the factory:

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$2300 at the time NIB.

Ah, the ignorance of youth......

It's fun to think that, but in reality, a game that was $1800 NIB in 1978 would cost $7,000 in 2017 dollars.

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1800&year1=1978&year2=2017

Because the Lemon Law concerns automobiles, and you still have to sue the company to get the buyback.

It's not like you drive the car back to the dealer and say "This is the 3rd time you've fixed this BMW door seal, you can pay me $68,000 now please...."

Close.

The spindle-router-shaper that mills the wood edge was patented in 1933.

Lock-miter corner patent is 1951.

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The strongest plywood joint is a Thru-Dovetail joint.

I say CCC offers Stern customers this as a $1000 upgrade, like they do when you order kitchen cabinets.

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The lock-miter requires 2 linear station "spindle-routers" for production.

The through Dovetail is done vertically by CNC.

Less operator work in the CNC, but the consumable bits are expensive, so it drives up the costs.

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The CNC software takes care of that nowadays.

Even resharpened bits (that now have slightly different diameter/geometry) are compensated for.

You set the tolerance (how tight or loose you want the joint) and away she goes.

My jaw drops when I see an 8 foot long dovetail joint that requires a rubber mallet to assemble!

7 ball multi-ball is hard to cradle separate.

The solution is now obvious:

>- Stern will have to stop using wrap around decals. -<

Cabinet corners have ALWAYS split (well, at least since the dawn of Pinball).

But now that the decals wrap around, even the slightest hairline movement will telegraph through the decal; splitting it and becoming **Pinside DecalGate**.

Stern even took the extra effort to change the cab joints from Lockmiter to Lockcap in order to move the seam off of the corner, but that only moves the seam, not preventing the movement of the joint.

It might be time to get rid of fragile decals altogether - and go back to silkscreen cabs.

It's wood.

Any joint is going to be where the movement is, especially on an open top wood box that weighs 250lbs and is being constantly thrust in every direction.

Even if I built the cab myself from Baltic Birch hardwood plywood, used Tightbond3 glue and Dovetail joints - I guarantee the joints would telegraph through those decals.

I'm not sure if it was Stern's design or CCC's, but decals over soft plywood joints is never going to last.

That chip is serious.

I'd call Stern right now.

With the old Lockmiter joint, the joint movement crack was right at the corner, so it was harder to see.

With the Capmiter joint, the joint movement crack is now obvious, because it's on a plane.

It does not take a degree in engineering to understand....

Lots of poor design decisions in pinball.

Stern has kept that tradition alive.

Yeah, I've noticed.

Now if CCC could just use the old fashion LockMiter with those decals, Pinside could go back to bitching about code or clearcoat.

Decals are crap.

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Exactly.

95% of all the pins I service, the owners are NOT on Pinside.

A few know that Pinside exists, but they have no interest in reading it.

0% of the coin-op guys read it. They are out there making money on their Keys and Cranes.

-

And before you guys say the above is BS, think about it:

99% of Canon camera owners are not on Canon forum.

99% of Stratocaster owners are not on Strat-talk

99% of Ford Mustang owners are not on Stangnet

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http://www.sternpinball.com/pre-pisser_army

Join Today!

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A 1/2" #6 wood screw has a 41lb pull out strength when used in SPF plywood - so I don't think a common L bracket has enough jism to do battle against the 300+ pounds of force constantly applied to the corners.

Wood gusseting secured with a suitable glue would be many times stronger, but of course the problem is that the corners are already painted, preventing the glue from properly bonding with the wood fibers.

#8 has 58lbs of pull out on SPF, so it would indeed be stronger, but I still think we are expecting too much.

The holes in the L would have to EXACTLY match the diameter of the screws; any play would fnck us.

When I do a load calculation, I like to go 4X; because nothing is going to be laboratory perfect in the field.

I'll look if there are any decking brackets that would have multiple staggered screw holes AND that would pull the 2 pieces towards each other (to help with any offset or play).

Simpson Strong-Tie HL37PC Heavy Angle Powder Coated Black, these are rated for 900lbs

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Like they always say "Never buy a NIB without fully inspecting it".

Yep, 3/4" might mound up on the other side.

I like to use a cordless drill driver on high speed

The screw starts in about .5 seconds.

No hammer needed.

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The high humidity in the laundry room keeps the static to a minimum.....

Probably the best solution is to take a T-square and with a brand new razor, make a straight, clean cut through the decal, down the fault line.

That way, the cab joint can expand/contract with the seasons, nudging, or transporting the game - without a jagged tear through the decal.

-

If you can deform an interior bracket with a pair of pliers, it's not going to keep the seams from moving - that's for sure.

If the screws don't EXACTLY fit the bracket holes, it's not going to keep the seams from moving - that's for sure (It could make it worse by pulling apart the seam).

It's going to take a lot of little #6 or #8 screws to hold against many hundreds of pounds of force applied to that corner.

Remember a little sheet metal bracket might say it's rated to failure @200 lbs, but were not worried about outright failure, were worried about how many pounds of pressure will allow the bracket to deform 1mm - which is plenty enough to crack that seam.

^this

And if your bracket is galvanized metal, weld OUTSIDE - you don't want to breathe those fumes in your garage.

Exactly.

Pinball cabs were never made by Stern, Williams or Bally.

They were made by cabinet companies like CCC, ESC or Lenc-Smith.

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My concern is that the paint won't let the glue seep into the wood's pores, so it won't have very good strength.

You could try it, but that paint looks very non-porous on mine.

Staples are only there to hold the position until the glue dries.

Sometimes you can't explain it.

This one only split at the bottom, and no amount of clamping force would close the gap again.

The thin, sheet metal corner bracket and #8 screws did nothing to stop the split.

I had to fill it with Fiberglass Resin

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It's Carpenter Bees!

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Getting ate up by bees:

Exactly.

Just quit buying them and there will be nothing to worry about.

Don't forget that epoxy is a weak glue on wood, especially on Spruce (that's what pinball cabs are made of).

Pinball cabs are already a weak design, so it's important to use a strong glue: Titebond III

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Not using 2x8 floor joists was a big step forward.

You go into a quality house nowadays and there is no I-Beam in the center. No posts to block your billiard shots.

The I-Joists span from wall to wall.

40 foot span? No problem.

You can't do that with old 2x10 lumber framing ......

There is NO hardwood on any post 1970 pinball cabinet.

They are made from SPF plywood (all softwood).

While I believe that they will sell ~1000 DIs, always remember that Jack says a lot of things that would be best described as exaggerated exuberance

Don't buy it.

Pinball is a crappy, commercial product, that is not intended for the faint of heart nor those without decent mechanical repair skills.

When I do route repairs for operators, I see such terrible repair attempts that I wonder if kids today even know which way to turn a screw or which direction gravity works in their town.

That's because you are forgetting that your 30+ year old games have already been serviced 100s of times before you got it.

The cab corners have certainly been reglued.

The regulators have been replaced with higher amp parts.

Guards have been added to MM and F14 to keep the balls from becoming stuck in many different places that were apparently unknown to the factory.

Fuses were added to magnets and rectifiers to keep the games from actually catching fire.

Fishpaper has been added to keep the coin door from shorting out the switch matrix.

Back in the day, we could NEVER just unbox a game on location and expect it to earn.

It would always have to "burn-in" at the shop for a day or so, be tweaked, repaired, fused, and then deployed.

Negative 33 years.

1984

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You still need enough weight to keep the game from traveling.

Wood is heavy, cheap, it gets a small dent rather than a cave-in, it's field repairable, it's quiet - wood has a lot of advantages over metal.

The head is a big nothing.

Back during the 70s EM-SS transition, all us operators were waiting for when the head would shrink down (no longer needing room for all the score reels), but it never did.

Pinball was very conservative, the manufacturers were always worried about changing something and spooking the ops.

Forget about putting glue on the threads, I installed these brass inserts, and then used #12 machine screws.

When the North Korean nukes hit the coast, all that will be left with be my cockroaches and my unbroken wood joints.

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Even if Stern had those 25cent B/W brackets, it would still crack the same way (same as all the cracked B/W cabs I've fixed).

Six little #8 screws offer nothing as far as holding power in soft wood.

If I can bend that thin, sheet metal bracket with my hands, how is it going to protect a wood corner when I put 300-500lbs of torque on it?

How about when I put all the torque on it 20 times in a game?

"You can't place faith in material things,
material things will fail you....."

For instance plungers are just steel rod with slot cut through it, and a hole bored into it. Anybody with a Lathe/Mill combo from Harbor Freight could make you 1,000 in a weekend. I've made plenty of custom ones at home, and I'm hardly a machinist.

If you have a need for small runs like that, look on https://100kgarages.com/ or https://CNCzone.com because this is exactly the kind of small production jobs these fabbers are looking for.

Any CNC metal, wood, plastic part can now be quickly fabricated, bent, welded, or machined.

If you are an engineer, then there can't be any mechanical pinball flipper part that you could not have quickly and inexpensively made in bulk.

Pinball parts are low tolerance, super simple mechs that mostly were designed before CAD or CNC.

The patents have all run out......

There will ALWAYS be problems with playfields.

Just like there are ALWAYS problems with auto paint.

They have made over ONE BILLION automobiles and there are still batches of bad paint.

Old games were silkscreened right on the cabs.

No way they could tear.

Decals are crap, always.