Hi all

Would like to share the restoration of my AFM. Cause my english isn't very good pictures will do the job .
Most cleaning of plastics, wire harness, metal parts were done with an large ultrasonic cleaner and then dried with high air pressure. All metal parts were also tumbled after the ultrasonic bath..

before restoration
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cleaning the translite (before)
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during
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after
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translite with normal bulbs and LED's
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a lot of new parts
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printed new stickers
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new decals from pinball dreams
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Soo second part:

A few pictures during disassemly
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cleaning wire harness, plastics and martians, electronic boards
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sorry for the disorder with the pictures sometimes

all assemblies got tumbled, coils with new wraps,...

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playfield will be done by pinball dreams. work is still in progress. Some befores and how i sanded the back of the PF

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Lockbar, siderails, legs, coin door, backbox hinges went for sanding and then powder coating
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all screws sanded and then painted
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transformer before also sanded and painted

before
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after
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cabinet work sanding, filling, sanding, filling,.... first sanded with 150 grain and then with 240 grain. Inside and outside of the cabinet. Didn't count the hours i sanded, but it was MANY!

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then it got dirty with black filler
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The most pain in the *** is polishing the metal rails and guides. Many many many hours of wet sanding and polishing.

1200 grain, 2000 grain, 5000grain by hand and then polishing with a pink paste on the machine (and no its not chrome )
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Also did the shooterlane parts
before
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Plastics i did with flame polish and then waxed for a wet look and protection against dirt. But they all come new anyway.
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bumper cap before:
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after
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it's not wet, but flame polished and waxed
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speaker panel refreshed, cleaned and gave it a nice dark black look with zaino
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zaino 50/50
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cleaned and treated with zaino
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also the main saucer got a new lamp and the green "insert" was glued in nicely again

someone did "nice" work here
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next steps will be the decals and then reassemble

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=> Somebody did that for me out of my original scan.

software developer, so it feels good to do something "by hand". Of course i also develope by hand

all these parts got new zinc plated

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all plastic clips are replaced. Cleaning does't help against aging
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On my last game i also bought them new,but they already had some light scratches. So had to polish them anyway to make them perfect shiny.This time i took that way of doing it by myself from the beginning.

Thanks for all the nice comments! Will post more as soon as i did something again. I'm on needles waiting for the playfield which should be amazing, they told me.

Glad to hear you like the LED backbox. Here's a pic how i did that.

grün = green
orange = orange
rot = red
warm weiss = warm white
kalt weiss = cold white
blau = blue
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I cleaned the caps, then flame polished

Be carefull with flame polishing the caps. They are more heat sensitive than ramps. If you move to slow with the flame they got burned. So rather do several runs. Flame, wait till it cooled down (aprox 5min), flame, wait till it cooled down, etc. I did that for about 6 times till no scratches were visible anymore.

Afterwards i used Lime Prime (pre cleaner) from Dodo Juice to prepare the cap for the wax. Take a little drop of Lime prime and apply on the cap with a soft microfiber towel. Wait for about 8min, wipe off with a soft microfiber towel.

Apply wax (Dodo Juice Hard Candy) (very THIN) with an applicator pad on the cap. wait for about 15min. Wipe off with a soft microfiber towel.
It's the same procedure as you do for car waxing (except the flame polishing, lol). I hope i could help you.

In my opinion it's not that hard. Nearly everyone can handle a screw driver, can do a bit of woodwork and use a camera. That’s all you need and of course a lot of time.
It’s my first full restoration so many things were new to me. What I learned till now is: Everything needs A LOT of time. Even small stuff can be pretty time consuming. Most time I spent with polishing metal, refurbishing the cabinet and of course restoring the playfield (but this is not done by myself, lucky me ). Stripping the playfield which I thought is a HUGE task didn’t take so many hours.
What also took many many hours is to order spare parts in all the different shops. Next time I would wait with ordering parts till I really took everything apart to the LAST screw. Every time you think “ok now I have really really everything” something else appears which need to be replaced.
I would also do the ordering at the same time in all shops if you have the complete list of parts, otherwise some parts could be sold out in the meantime in the shop you intended to order.
For me as a noob it was also helpful to sort screws and tumble them separate, even it takes maybe a bit longer. So I did “under playfield screws”, upper playfield metal parts, backbox and cabinet parts separate. I hope this will make the assembling a bit easier. And maybe the most important. PICS PICS tonnes of Pics, even from stuff you think is simple and not needed.
All this things are clear for "pros" but maybe helpful for beginners like me.

hmmm, don't ask me where the plastic part is on my picture . Will check it later, but thanks for the hint! I don't know where to buy it.

I'm not sure if it's plastic. Will have a look in a few hours. I guess i still have it in a box.

Ok, i searched for the round sleeve and found it . It's metal and looks like this. length is 14mm. Both sides of the sleeve look different!!
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Here you see the drop target before/after. Changed the gliding plastics (one was broken), zipties and also screws which don't look perfect. Plastic was treated with "Jeffs Werkstatt Satin Prot" to give it a dark black look again.

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Here the wire ramp polished with Autosol. Replaced the clear plastic tubes and heat shrink tubes.

before:
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during:
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after:
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slingshot contacs also replaced. Of course also every switch which didn't look perfect.
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And if you get bored you start to polish the keys. lol
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hmm i just put the martians for about 20s in the ultrasonic and they were clean. Maybe my ones weren't so dirty or i had another mixture. I don't know what kind of mixture they have in this ultrasonic.

Finished polishing all the metal parts and sealed them with 2 layers of Chemical Guys JetSeal 109. Makes the metal ultra slippery and a a tiny bit more shiny.

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Even if you think the metal is clean, a bit of dirt could be removed with vertua bond.
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also the scoop was polished

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impressions
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waiting for the playfield...

There won't be any mods except LED's for the inserts and backbox. It'll also get a black trim (lockbar, siderails, legs), but that's it.

Just got the message today that my playfield is finished. It's still not at home, but pinball dreams made for sure a great restoration job

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My PF arrived and it looks just awesome. Henrik and his guys made a perfect job

What was done on the PF:
- green is mostly original
- all grey new brushed
- all orange new brushed
- bright red ca 50%
- many inserts were taken out and new glued
- about 50% of the wood is brushed with wooden structure

Here are a few pics (before / after):

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wanted to have it signed by "the man"
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Assemblies mounted. Have to wait now till the cabinet is finish.

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Playfield is finish on the back side. Was easier than i thought with a lot of fotos.

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@Magic_Mike: I'll lift it in with a friend. Shouldn't be a problem. The top of the playfield will be finished after it's in the cabinet.

@yuriijos: No idea how much time i already spent but it's A LOT. Would guess more than 100h for sure till now.

Finaly finished the ramps. Had troubles with riveting, because of the dies. The die always touched the washer before the rivet was fully crimped. Had to shorten the die and now it works perfect.

Because the dies are too short if you wanna clinch ramp flaps, a friend made dies- extensions for me.
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The cow ramp is new and the other 2 ramps are flame polished and then waxed with a hard carnauba wax to be nice slippery and shiny. All ramp flaps are new, of coures also the zip ties and heat shrink tubes.

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with flame polishing you can't take out too deep scratches, even with several passes. But the result is pretty nice
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Did the silkscreen of my backbox with my new set from here: http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fs-williams-wpc-backbox-warningpatent-silk-screens

To do the silkscreen was piece of cake, but no comment for the cleaning afterwards. A short description would be ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH I don't no any job during a restoration which sucks more.

Took me more than 1.5hrs to clean it and 1 liter thinner and 3 rolls of paper towel.

But anyway the result is superb i think.

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the "funny" work began
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Did the patent screening and didn't wanna spend so much time with cleaing again. So taped the surrounding area. Cleaning took me just 10min this time.

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The decals are from pinball dreams and pretty shiny. To prevent scratching i wrapped the squeegee with a very soft microfibre towel which i normaly use for car detailing. To improve gliding Zaino Z7 was used.

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Because the front decal could be difficult to apply i made my self a little helper.

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Centering the decal works fine if you shine trough it with a flashlight.
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Metal cabinet protectors
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The whole cabinet (inside and out) was sanded and primed and finaly painted. So the surface is very smooth everywhere.

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new powder-coated
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assmbling the cabinet (all clips new, ground wire new, all metal parts zinc-plated)
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new tubes for ground wire
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new glass guides
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and here a litte teaser from the playfield assembling
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Hi PhilGreg: Nono, i already started nearly one year ago. The problem was that the playfield took 8 month to be restored and also the cabinet took several month to be painted. So that's why it took so long. But yes, i for sure spent more than 100hrs on that. In my opinion you could do such a restoration also in 2-3month if you really push and don't have to wait for parts. The most time consuming is the metal polishing to a mirror finish and also the cabinet work.

Here are a few before/ after from assembling the playfield. I think the difference is visible 2.JPG

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Henrik from pinball dreams which restored my pf

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new beerseal and lockbar powder coated
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powder coated in gloss black
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the edges of the playfield and backpanel have a thin felt strip so they don't scratch the cabinet
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All plastics are also new and got a treatment with a very nice wax and precleaner. Just the best for my precious The plastics are VERY smooth and shiny afterwards. Also dirt won't stick so easily on them, if there will be dirt once in my pinball machine.
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It's DONE, almost . Need to install a new subwoofer and install the stickers. Made the first games and it plays absolutely amazing. Played already a few clear coated pinball machines, but didn't like the rock hard surface. On my one it's not like this. It plays fast like a fresh waxed new playfield, but the ball rolls nicely and smooth.

More pics will follow:

from this:
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to this:
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Here are a few pics of my Attack. It's shining a lot, but hard to catch on the pics. I love the shine of the polished ball guide rails when playing in the dark.

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Adapter plate for new cabinet speaker
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Just realized that one mini saucer is missing . Was so fucused on small details that i not even noticed . But that will be added of course.

@cooked71: To sell? not in 100 years

Just did a little video of the restoration and also end result.