I'm way behind on documenting my restoration work.
About this time last year I started in on a pair of Stern Lightning machines, a title you pretty much never see restored, but which is also just about always pretty badly worn out. I was pretty psyched to get two of these machines restored and back into action.

You can see here the first of the machines set up and waiting for teardown; the other is behind it. I won't get into a bunch of reference photos because that's not really all that interesting, will focus here on the more interesting aspects of the restoration...

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The inserts in these games were all cupped and wonky. Everything came out and the playfields needed a lot of time with magic eraser and alcohol, followed by lots and lots of cleaning before they were ready to have anything else done to them. Wish I'd have taken some more photos at this stage...

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Eventually I got to the point where I could glue in new inserts.
The arrows I didnt even attempt to reuse; there were warped and twisted beyond any point trying to salvage them.
I had intended to replace theh circle inserts as well, but...these measure 63/64", not 1" even. That doesn't sound like a lot, but after wasting a bunch of time trying to sand a round insert down consistently using 80 grit sandpaper, I gave up and flattened the old inserts instead.
The large blue arrows are always a disaster in Lightning machines, so i got a pice of 1/4" polycarbonate and had some new ones made. They were a tiny bit tight initially, but with some gentle sanding I was able to sneak up on a good fit. IMG_8217 (resized).PNG

Last photos show the playfields ready to get an initial clear coat.

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At that point, it was now time to start filling all the low spots, dripping in clear coat with a syringe. There were a ton of low spots, so I marked them out with tape...74A4B7A9-EDE9-4D17-AA9F-122CED62CC69 (resized).jpg

Then I had to go around and drip in clear.
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In theory, you're supposed to level sand this kind of thing with a big sanding block. In practice, if you do that you will absolutely burn through the thin initial clear layer you put down, and if you don't catch it quickly, you'll damage the already compromised artwork! So, spot-sanding with 400 grit paper it is.
There will be several more layers of clear on a project like this, so things will have a chance to get evened out over the course of subsequent layers.
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Next, it's time to start doing paint apps.
*Some* of the keylines on Lightning are nice, normal black outlines. I started with those first and took care of all the arrow inserts.
I use the Silhouette cutter to make little stencils and just work my way around. I find airbrushing painted stencils is far more opaque and looks better than using decals, all though as you will see, sometimes decals are the way to go. But in this application I did paint because I try to go that route whenever it's practical. The darker appearance of these keylines is because the clear coat has been sanded. Once the next coat goes on, the difference is almost entirely imperceptible.

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Lots of ground in dirt means painting over stuff, but on Lightning there's the extra curve ball of reproducing the dot patterns.
On the upper playfield, the dots are green. No big deal, off my scans I can isolate the green areas and do a bit of digital reconstruction.
But first, the analog work. Frisket film and airbrush.
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I used the computer to make some masking stencils for other damaged artwork while I was in this area of the playfield. I didn't get a specific picture of those repairs being made, but you can see the "after" in some of these photos.
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Before the decal can go on, there has to be an intermediate layer of clear coat. I try to do as much in each "pass" as I can, to minimize the amount of clear coating needed. It's expensive and time consuming, and contrary to a lot of popular opinion, more is not better.
Here the upper playfield is getting its white background repainted. Easier to just stretch one big sheet of frisket in this instance. Lot of time spent cutting, but then you can just hit it all and it's done.
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Ready for one more clear coat:

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It wasn't necessary to airbrush out the whole area with new yellow, so some of the green was still there as you can see before the decal went on. But, I wanted to restore as much detail as I could, so the decal reestablished the faint fade out dots on the left hand side.

Somehow I didn't document putting the green dots decal in place.
So, here's a detail photo from the fully-reassembled machine:
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I had to perform a similar maneuver on the lower playfield. The horseshoe loop had insufficient mylar and never got cleaned, so these are always in pretty rough condition. IMG_8197 (resized).jpg

As with the upper playfield, the base yellow got sprayed with the airbrush and frisket method.
I really didn't want to have to get into redoing a lot of lettering unless I absolutely had to, so I very carefully cut around it, leaving frisket in place precisely outlining those details.

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I didn't want a "hard edge" where the yellow meets the rest of the playfield details, but there really isn't a line to cut the frisket to. In cases like that, I like to go ahead and overspray by a little bit, then come back with a Q-tip and some isopropyl alcohol and "erase" the paint, blending it in so that it looks natural.
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After an intermediate clear coat, my decal was ready to be applied. The repair is very nearly seamless!
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Honestly I can't remember where I sourced these. But it didn't require a ton of research, either - these probably came from either Marco or Pinball Life.

One of the biggest pains in the rear on this was redoing the keylining and bonus numbering.
I curse the graphic artist at Stern who thought it was a swell idea to have concentric circles instead of plain black keylines, and that to use white numbering *with a black shadow line.*

I couldn't see how this was gonna work any other way than to use waterslide decals. Way too much potential for error using masking and aiirbrush. You'd have to align each one perfectly, and I just wasn't convinced I was going to make it through all that without blowing it at some critical point in the process.

So...decals. If you have a vinyl cutter, decals like these become a lot easier to manage. I used white waterslide paper, and with the keylines just allowed for a bit of "bleed" so that there wouldn't be any white edges. The numbering wasn't perfect from the factory, so I figured any white edge I got there would look on par with the original. It takes some time to place everything, but in the end it worked really well. No, the decals aren't as opaque as painted keylines and lettering would have been, but it still looks really good and isn't terribly noticeable when you're playing a game.

Here are sheets of decals, fresh from the printer and cutter. Not sure what I was thinking, trying clear paper. White paper won out.
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First decal down. It works!
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Working my way down until all the keylines are done. IMG_8422 (resized).jpeg

Now it's time for numbering.
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Placing these was a hold-your-breath type of affair.
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Looking decent!
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Once the playfields had a bit of cure time, they were ready to re-populate:
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I used Yoppsicles throughout for the controlled lamps. I'm never going back! If David can figure out a way to eliminate GI sockets, I'll be over the moon.
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I made sure to make a mylar label to cover the whole horseshoe. The ball drops here many times per game and presumably has a ton of spin when it does, if the worn spots on these playfields were anything to go off. It's a hard to reach area, and even a diligent owner is probably gonna shirk on cleaning back there as well as they ought to.
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Playfield coming along nicely. Looking great!
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At some point in this process, my spray booth curtain arrived, after many weeks of supply chain problems. I'd been running the playfields back and forth to a local cabinet shop to use their booth, since mine was unusable until it could actually be contained.
It's really nice to be able to do spraying in-house, and not at someone else's convenience:
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First thing I did in there was finish up a long delayed Joker Poker cabinet repaint.
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But then I moved on to repainting this Lightning cab.
Base coat and blue stencil layer:
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Yellow stencil layer:
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Both layers, prior to semi-gloss topcoat.
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Finished with a semi-gloss topcoat:
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I love designing custom instruction cards. These were fun.

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Hrm...I didn't get pics when I corrected the legibility issue with a drop shadow effect, or a restored apron.
My bad...

Looking lovely and playing fast. Unfortunately, the new BG Resto backglass didn't arrive in time for me to get a photo with it installed. Alas.

One of these is currently at DickHamill 's house, waiting for him to program a proper rule set for it. It's a cool layout that is just screaming to be made better use of! After what he did with Galaxy, I'm pretty psyched to see what kind of a game Lightning will become...

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Nice thing is, you won't have to burn any chips - the new code will run on an Arduino daughterboard which will plug right into the existing MPU. It'll work with Weebly or Alltek boards as well as originals. Sound package will be all new as well, run off a WAV trigger board (unless Dick comes up with an even easier way to do that.) He's got a bunch of irons in the fire currently, but I'm really eager to see what he comes up with; Lightning is crying out for a code re-write!

I have to say, these playfield restorations were among the hardest I've ever had to take on. The more work you have to do and the more layers of clear you have to introduce, the more potential there is for trouble. I would never do this much work on a game if a decent reproduction playfield was available.
But, doing this kind of intense work on a title that is otherwise not very in demand is really satisfying. I like giving the more neglected titles a leg up!