Welp, it's my first pin! I've been pinball obsessed for a bit over a year now, and as an artist/tinkerer at heart it was only a matter of time till I dove into the rabbit hole of restoration. An awesome local Pinsider offered me a great deal on this project Bally Star Trek. It came without a backglass and with boards in unknown condition, but the first challenge was just fitting it in my tiny Chicago apartment!

Here's the machine in my workshop:
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WARNING: This thread is going to be pic heavy and probably a bit overly detailed, as I'm doing this documentation for newbs like myself who are doing this for the first time.

The playfield has numerous bare spots, which i'm planning on replacing entirely with a custom printed overlay. I'm wanting to get the opinion of you professionals, however, if this level of ware warrants a sand-down or if you believe it could be saved by a proper paint match (which I myself am highly unconfident of).
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Several folks have DEFINITELY lost their entire glasses of beer down the front of this machine at some point, judging by this rust on the coin door:
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Obviously the coin mechs are also missing, as somebody has converted this machine to free-play. I believe i'll be reverting it back to it's coin operated state, but with the addition of a hidden credit button.

The coin door skin has apparently seen a few too many slam tilts, or something. Luckily I have a new one on the way courtesy of another great Pinsider.

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The cabinet art condition will definitely call for a re-paint. I intend on printing my own stencils, which is where the "custom" comes into play. More on that later.
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The tilt bob was completely detached, so why was the coin door so slammed in!? (the bulbs & plunger spring clutter is my own, after having gone over the machine with a tune-up kit)
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The boards were named as "untested" upon purchase and came disconnected from the game. From my two months of preparatory research, critical circuit board failure was one of my biggest fears in purchasing my first pin. Battery corrosion, specifically. (although thanks to the low price of the pin, I was fully prepared to buy some replacement boards).

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As you can porbably see above, former battery corrosion was indeed an issue. It looks to have been cleaned up by a previous owner, however, and fortunately things have gone well so far. After following numerous guides from PinWiki and other sources on how to power up a pin for the first time, I was very excited to see this:
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That's GI only at that point. The MPU was not booting up. The original rectifier board was functional with good voltage levels, and also showed good voltage on the solenoid driver board. No power was getting to the MPU though.

After more googling, I tested the MPU using a computer power supply and actually got it to boot & throw the proper LED flash sequence. So I ordered some connector re-pin kits and also complete high/low voltage re-build kits for the solenoid driver board. I had some decent soldering experience prior to this but was very pleased to see how easy these component swaps actually are. It's very well documented online and Big Daddy Enterprises makes it pretty much foolproof with their kits & instructions.

After those adjustments, IT'S ALIVE! It flips, it scores, it plays. I actually don't have any pics to reference it, but it was a great moment in my pinball career!

I had some display issues where a fuse was blowing, but I narrowed it down to 1 display that must have a short. The others all work fine except for a stuck segment on one of them.

Anyway, though, the playfield mechanisms are actually all in pretty great shape and seemingly clean. One of the slings was out due to a broken coil plastic (the part where the lugs are located, and the coil wire was severed). I've since replaced that coil and now the sling works nicely.

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Oh, here's a pic of the broken sling coil I mentioned that has since been replaced:
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Upon the suggestion of a local pinball technician & friend (shout out to James at Logan Arcade in Chicago), I went ahead and just replaced the rectifier board. I agree with him that the power train should be solidified all the way through, and since I already did the high/low voltage on the solenoid driver board, the rectifier for $70 really made sense. Great Plains was out of stock, so I went with the PinHead brand board from Pinball Resource.

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I've since also ordered a new power cord, power switch, and varistor for safe keeping.

Anyway, I guess that sums up the initial adoption of the machine.

Oh, I suppose I should share this photo of some previous tenants of this machine. This was one of 4 wasps nests I found within:
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After some solenoid driver board adjustments, a handful of re-pinned connectors, and a new rectifier board, I'm ready to turn my attention to aesthetics. While I await a few decisions on the artwork, I decided to test my hand at repairing the coin door.

I already know this will absolutely not be the last pin I restore, so I went ahead and bought a tumbler, rotary buffer, and a rudimentary rust removal bath (a plastic container & a gallon of rust remover).

As seen before, some 80s era beer spills have lead to this catastrophy:
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Like I said, yup, I bought a 400 model tumbler from Cabelas. Small parts went in there:

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And larger parts went into a bath of "Rust Rescue" rust remover. About 18 hours later:

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PROGRESS! I was so stoked to see the difference here. It really instilled some confidence in me that I could ACTUALLY get a restoration done inside this tiny living room workshop.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I thought I could bend this coin door skin back into place, but yeah after about an hour of struggling to get it back into shape with my body weight & a rubber mallet, I threw in the towel. It's just too janky for the restore I have in mind:
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So I put up a quick Wanted ad on Pinside, and fortunately within just a few hours I got a response from a great Pinsider who has agreed to send me a buffed door skin for a great price. I've really lucked out so far, and am absolutely loving this community! Thanks guys!

So yeah I'll wait to re-assemble the coin door till I get the new skin, but in the mean time I've done a bunch of work on the backglass & playfield artwork. Stay tuned for those posts.

In regards to my custom plans, I'm looking for some community input on what I'm proposing. As a digital artist & also a huge Trekkie, I can't help but consider the improvements that could be made while also preserving the authentic nature of the game.

I personally am not a big fan of the yellow cabinet. Maybe it's just the faded result of the yellow, but I dunno, I really prefer the blue of the backbox. What if the entire cabinet followed the same color scheme of the blue backbox? Furthermore, I do like the grey enterprise that Zitt used in his Mirror Universe machine.

Also, I do intend on using the prototype versions of all the artwork.

Here's what I propose for the cabinet:

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Chrome legs have already been ordered from Steve Young, and i've pooled some resources to create a good backglass.

Using online backglass resources, I started by creating this (UNTESTED) backglass image in photoshop: (also, this is 72 DPI as uploaded but I created it in 300 DPI)

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With the help of the same guy who sold me the machine actually, an awesome Pinsider by the alias of Trekkie, I received a few photographs that helped me piece together this prototype-esque backglass. It's not quite authentic, but I hope it comes across as such once printed:

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My printing options are a bit up in the air right now. I'm going to try to use FedEx Kinkos since they're local and repeatable, if they can do it for a good price, but I also have a friend who works in a print shop. I'm just afraid of committing to him if it isn't a service I can repeat in the future.

And lastly, there's the playfield, the most controversial portion of the artwork. I, obviously, truthfully do not have the professional eye to judge this playfield as a goner or it if it's savable. Since I have zero paint-matching abilities (as my artistic ability is 90% digital), I initially called this playfield a total loss. However, before I take an orbital sander to it I would like to hear confirmation from more seasoned Pinsiders that it indeed warrants that. I mean, I'm still definitely not going to whip out the paintbrust, but i'd likely consider CNCing my own playfield if it meant selling this one to a guy who could potentially save it.

Anyway, here are a few detail shots again:

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My plan is to sand the playfield down to wood, level the inserts (only a couple are raised), and apply a new overlay. I'm not a fan of the re-production overlays so I have since scanned one in and eidted the colors and artwork to my suit. I'm still working on specifics, but this is the general direction that I'm considering for the playfield. I'm still working on hashing out details with local printers, but we'll see.

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For the playfield artwork above please note that i've proposed the following changes to be implemented via a custom printed vinyl overlay:
-A series of halftone gradients in the blue, red, and orange sections of the playfield to add depth and a more intricate level of detail.
-Yellow/green triangles swapped out for Starfleet insignias.
-The male's green uniform swapped out for a blue one (when were there ever a green uniforms in Trek?)
-All "B-A-L-L-Y" references replaces with "S-P-A-C-E" with "The Final Frontier" text added below the center lights)
-"Jump to Hyperspace" left orbit text replaced with "Jump to Warp Speed" since it just sounds more Trek.
-"Proceed at Warp Speed" text on the right plunger return lane replaced with "Proceed at Full Impulse" since I moved Warp Speed to the other orbit.
-"Fire Photon Phasers" text at the kick-out hole replaced with "Fire Photon Torpedos" since it just sounds more Trek.

More changes to come. I'm open for additional suggestions!

reserved 03

Yeah you're right, it was pretty silly of me to say that. Kirk DID have a green tunic for short period of time. It would probably make a lot of sense for me to keep the uniform green to match the glass!

Sorry for the lack of update posts this last month. A ton of progress has been made, but figured i'd hold off to do larger batch postings as strides are made!

Picking back up where I left off, I got the coin door all re-assembled. I've re-wired it since I took this pic, but i'm very happy with how nice and mostly shiny it is now compared to how it looked before. Pinsider Gnatty sold me a nice buffed out coin door skin that's in much better shape than my old one:
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I got the backglass translite printed at FedEx Office for $75. I got a couple pieces of acrylic to sandwich it between, and picked up a lift-bar and trim pieces from Marco Specialties.

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The details printed out nicer than I expected actually.
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I'll post more about this later when it's complete, as I'm still searching for a way to get the blackout matte printed. I created one based on the original, but I'm having a surprisingly hard time finding somebody to print on a transparency material this large for an affordable price. If anybody knows where I can get a black image printed onto a 28.5"x25.75" transparent medium, let me know!
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I took the plunge and moved forward with my first complete playfield teardown! Pretty scary task, but once the process is broken down into simple steps, it ended up seeming pretty straight forward (hopefully I still feel the same way when I go to put it back together!!!). Luckily I took 418 photos between the top and bottom halves, and I feel like i've done a decent job organizing and labeling.

The one mistake I might of made was snipping up the bare-wire strand. In such a tight space, I was having a hard time removing staples & numerous solder joints. I figured the strand would need to be replaced anyway, and I drew out a detailed map of it before hand, but it's still sort of the one worry that's sitting in the back of my mind (as far as re-installing the new one and getting it linked up correctly to all the required points).
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Here was my method for removing the wire harness. I de-soldered all the solenoids & major components, leaving all the leaf switches and lamp sockets attached. I broke the playfield down into various "zones" based on the branches of the harness.
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I worked through the zones one at a time, labeling and loosley zip-tieing each group of components together. Once everything was free of the playfield, I carefully slid a hard surface beneath the harness, lifting it away in one piece. Now that it's separated from the playfield, I'll work my way through each switch & socket to clean and place as necessary.

Hopefully I can just plop this back onto the playfield later, undo the zips and screw everything back down.
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Almost down to bare wood. I'll be re-painting it grey for a nice clean look.
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These side-rail staples were a huge pain in the butt. I don't think I'll be re-installing them!
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Here's a few shots of the blank playfield:
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With the playfield now flat, I scanned it in so I could triple check the alignment of my touched up artwork. FedEx Office offers really cheap large-format black & white paper prints, which was crucial for making sure the alignment is good. I ended up doing three test prints, each time having to nudge a few elements around to line up correctly with inserts. A flashlight from below let me see what was lining up or not.

I saw somebody else's method of running Photoshop's "Find Edges" filter over the art for the tests, which did indeed help a lot:

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(obviously the image above was during one of the initial tests as an example of how some stuff wasn't quite lining up before some tweaking)

Once satisfied with perfection, I sent the art file over to John at greatpinball.com. He's going to print me a nice mylar protected overlay, which i'm hoping to receive in the next couple weeks. Luckily i've got plenty to stay busy until then, cleaning everything and tumbling the metal parts.

I ordered a giant batch of new stuff too (new stand-ups, drops, pop-bumper plastic parts, flipper re-build kits, chrome legs, etc.). Next post should include some shots of new shiny tumbled parts & all the new stuff.

I'm holding off on starting on the cabinet until I finish the playfield, for the sake of simplicity and not having too many things going at once in this tiny space!

Also, since i'm very much learning as I go on this first pin project, I'd be very eager to hear any tips or suggestions based on what I have going!

Yeah sorry i've been so slow on updates and lacking on the progress details. I expected the project to move quicker too! Thanks for the bumps guys, sorry to keep you hanging.

I've been waiting for the overlay to come in. In the meantime i've finished cleaning all the playfield parts and mechanisms and ordering new ones as needed. I'll post some shots of those! I also learnt how to produce my own playfield plastics, but aside from a test I've held off on printing the plastic artwork until I get the playfield overlay in (to make sure I get the color matched correctly). I'll post some pictures & information regarding that process this weekend.

I haven't started on the cabinet just yet. Being my first project and with limited work space, I didn't want to overwhelm myself by stripping everything down all at once. I'm hoping to get the playfield 100% complete before diving into the cab, which is of course contingent on the arrival of the overlay.

ANYWAY, I'll post an update this weekend! Saturdays are usually my pinball podcast & project day.

Yeah FedEx has a "backlit sign" service where they will even build a frame & light it with LEDs. I of course said I just needed the print, and they were totally fine with that.

Awesome, I will definitely do that, thanks for the tip! I just ordered a bunch of frosted retro warm white LEDs from Comet Pinball to install in the backbox. I might put them in the GI as well but will need to make a judgement call on that when I see them in person. The playfield lights will remain incandescent.

OK, we're in business!! My overlay print came in from Great Pinball and it looks fantastic! Extremely high quality print and feels very durable.

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Sorry pinball Gods!
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The inserts look really great all sanded flat. No cracks.

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Following John at Great Pinball's instructions, i've sanded the playfield and sealed the wood with a couple coats of waterborne polyurethane. Next step is to apply his supplied masking and lay down the white base color (since the overlay is transparent). After that a couple more coats of polyurethane before the overlay goes on.

I had mentioned I was working on plastics. I scanned in the originals, vectorized the shape outlines, and sent the CAD vectors to BigBlueSaw.com. They sent back the set of laser cut 1/16" acrylic.

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I've been trying different methods to print and apply the graphics (which I also touched up from my scans). One site mentioned clear adhesive spray, which turned out TERRIBLY. It just semed the simplest, so figured i'f give it a shot. But yeah the spray had way too many air bubbles and was way too milky for me.

I've also seen a few people mention the packaging tape method, so I bought some book tape (available in a 4" width and acid-free) and tried that out. It's much better, but I'm still not satisfied. It leaves a halo around the edge of the artwork where a tiny gap of air remains. No matter how much you use your fingernail to try to press that out, it remains. It's not super visible unless you look closely, but it isn't going to fly.

I initially tried printing on transparencies and then painting on the white backing.
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But it turns out that just printing on regular white paper works just fine. However, the paper is still thick enough to form the halo around the artwork with the tape applied. Here's what it looked like:
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I suppose I'll try the water slide decal method next. I was sort of afraid of trying that method because I've heard horror stories of the decal paper melting onto the laser printer's fuser (and i'm never satisfied with inkjet printing quality as the alternative). I've heard many success stories as well though so it's worth a shot. I'm also actually going to reach out to a local print shop to see what they would charge me to have the graphics printed onto a sheet of adhesive vinyl.

Anyway, as mentioned before I'm finished cleaning all the playfield parts and replacing a bunch as well.
-New pop bumper caps
-New pop bumper bodies & skirts
-New drop targets & springs
-New standup targets
-New flipper buttons (white housing & transparent red button)
-New clear red plastic roll-through lane dividers
-Flippers completely rebuilt
-All other mechanisms taken apart and cleaned, new sleeves
-All mechanism metal parts tumbled
-All visible metal playfield parts buffed
-New chrome legs, casters, and bolts (I know, original machine had grey legs. Steve reminded me of this before I confirmed I wanted chrome legs! I think it's going to look really sharp with my new cabinet color scheme.)

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So yeah, feeling good about the progress but am eager to get the overlay on and start re-assembling! Unfortunately i'm going to be out of town for most of this next week & weekend, so I'll get back to that the following week.

Woohoo! My biggest pinball milestone yet. The playfield is back together and fully functional.

After three coats of waterborne polyurethane, using the masking supplied by John at Great Pinball I prepared the playfield for the white base coat.
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White sprayed.
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After the white was sprayed and masking removed, two more nice coats of waterborne poly went on top of it.

Dangit, sorry, I unfortunately did not get any pictures of the white with the masking removed. My buddy Bobby (ominoustoad) was helping me and we were too concentrated on the task at hand, I guess!

But here's the artwork overlay applied:

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It went on fairly smoothly. We used the soapy water technique as outlined here http://pinballmagic.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=6&chapter=0

The insert registration isn't absolutely perfect, not due to our application technique but rather due to my apparent haste in not quadrupedal checking every millimeter of the art before sending it to print. When I did my low quality black & white tests I recall feeling 100% confident in the alignment, but it ended up being only about 96% correct. Still, it looks darn good in person and I'm very pleased with the results! That's pinball, I say.

So we then began re-assembling the playfield, working in reverse through my 314 photos taken during teardown. For our first time doing this, things went off pretty much without a hitch. The system of organization I implemented was a pretty big success, making for an easy time finding the necessary photos for each region of the playfield:

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She lives!!!!!!

A few bulbs were out in this lamp test photo, but the machine booted up basically on the first attempt. Ok well, second attempt; we had a power cord issue the first time (zero power initially, but wiggling the ancient power cord plug made it flicker on, so we just replaced the entire power cord with the new one I had ordered).

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Truly, we were surprised as well as incredibly relieved when it all worked on the first go. My worst nightmare was some sort of terribly incorrect re-soldering of the components with weeks of troubleshooting to fix it. So it's a giant weight off my chest to have it functioning straight away.

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(one error that slipped past me on the artwork too... /sadface)

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Having an extra set of hands help me re-assemble the playfield mechanisms and electronics was a huge help. We did it in about 9 hours spanning over the course of 3 days. It was 80+ degrees in Chicago during that time and I don't have central AC, so we had to do it in shorter sessions. Pinball is hard! But so awesome.

Awesome, thanks Vid! I got the paper, I'm going to give it a shot within the next week or so.

Holy cow, I'm so sorry for the delay in updates! I really fell out of the habit of posting.

The machine is finished!!!

Well, 98% finished. Still need to install plastics. But anyway, I'll pick up where I left off:

After finishing the playfield, I finally tackled the cabinet. I thought this was going to be the easy part, but turns out it's quite tedious work. It took way longer than I expected.

Here's the nasty cabinet ready to be torn down for painting:
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And here it lay ready to fall victim to the sander:
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Remnants of years past...?
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Just about down to bare wood!
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Shoring up the front corners:
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Patching some holes and rough patches:
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Primer sprayed and now the cabinet is back inside. Sorry for potato quality.
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So I know some people feel strongly about spray vs. rolling paint, but I simply had no choice. I had to roll it. The backyard space photographed above is my friends, and there's no way I was going to spend days and days over there spraying this. I opted to roll the paint on in the comfort of my own living room (my only workspace) using high density foam rollers.
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I ended up picking up a stencil kit from Twisted Pins. I've read mixed reviews on their stencils, but I was pretty happy with them. The only troublesome part for me was how difficult it was to peel off the backing after applying the stencil. It took way more effort than I anticipated and the delicate parts would lift very easily without close attention while peeling.

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I'm really happy with how it turned out! There's some orange peel, but I'm totally fine with it from average viewing distance. The lines came out way cleaner than I expected.

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A little Klingon Warnog to celebrate a glorious victory!
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I was finally able to get a black matting printed for my custom reproduced backglass. I created a matting in Photoshop based on my previously printed translite, and luckily a friend of mine who works in a print shop was able to print a few layers of black out on a thin piece of acrylic. I bought a trim kit & lift channel from Marco and assembled it all together sandwiching the translite and black matting between two layers of plexiglass.

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I had planned on re-using the original aluminum shielding in the backbox, but I ended up replacing it and am very happy with how clean it looks. The only part of the machine I did not re-paint is the back of the hinged display panel, which is a bummer, but I truly did not feel like removing that GI wiring.

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I did go ahead and pick up a X-Pin 7VOLUTION display set, though. Two of my original displays were out, and I really wanted to upgrade the game to 7 digits. It was an excellent purchase; I love how the displays look!

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Obviously the final missing piece is the plastics. I was going to try recreating them, but I've had limited success with getting the artwork printed & applied to a level that i'm satisfied with. I see now that Marco sells genuine print-screened reproduction sets for this game. I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and grab one of those.

The lighting in my apartment is not great for photographing pinballs. I'm planning on moving this pin to a different location soon, which happens to have better lighting, so I'll be eager to take some good looking final photographs.

Oops sorry for the massive bump. Today I suddenly feel like doing what I should of done 2 years ago: post better photos of the final deal!

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Here's also a bit of gameplay footage: https://vimeo.com/163858989