I use small ME squares and 92% alcohol for the initial cleaning. I work small areas at a time. I immediately follow up the area I've just cleaned with Turtle Wax liquid polishing compound. I go through a lot of cloth shop towels, ME, alcohol, and polishing compound when cleaning a PF!

I never leave an area of the PF with the haze of the alcohol sitting on it, I remove it immediately and re-polish the top coat after I'm done cleaning an area with ME/alcohol. The polishing compound not only restores the gloss of the PF topcoat, it also provides some additional cleaning.

I think it's important to note that this kind of aggressive cleaning takes skill and judgement. When you use ME and alcohol, it does start to strip the original top coat. The trick is to clean just enough to remove as much of the marking as possible without stripping off too much top coat. This is not a trivial judgement to make and it takes some practice to get a feel for it. Many of us end up "practicing" while we're working on our actual keeper games. If you can acquire an old PF and practice on that first, it's probably time well spent.

In any given area of a PF, the goal is to get the maximum cleaning done while doing the least amount of damage. The condition of the PF topcoat varies from game to game, and the condition of the topcoat will usually vary widely across a given PF. In general the upper part of the PF is in the best condition and is the most resilient to aggressive cleaning, while the area just above the flippers is the most worn and is the most easily damaged by cleaning. So I think it's important to evaluate each area before you clean it, and to pay close attention to what is happening to the PF surface as you clean it.

100% of the time, my experience has been that it's ALWAYS better to stop cleaning and leave a little bit of marking on the artwork than to over-clean in an effort to remove all the marking. Over-cleaning might work on the resilient upper playfield areas, but that same over-cleaning will NOT work on the worn areas. The marking doesn't come off, and the artwork just gets damaged. That's why it's important to evaluate the condition of each area you are cleaning and adjust your expectations accordingly.

Over-cleaning a worn area of the PF strips all of the topcoat away, leaving the screen-printed artwork without any protection, and also causing an unattractive "burn" on the artwork. The burn effect occurs because you are seeing the raw bright ink color without the patina of the topcoat over it. The topcoat adds a distinctive amber patina that mutes the colors of the artwork. To me, this patina is an important part of making an EM playfield look good.

- TimMe

Cody, yes that does describe my experience. From what I can tell, the topcoat is getting slightly liquefied. I've noticed that if I make a random motion with the ME pad as I finish cleaning with alcohol, I will end up with an imprint of that motion frozen into the topcoat. The imprint can usually be buffed out with polishing compound, but ever since I noticed that, I am careful to finish up ME-cleaning of an area with up-and-down motions that run parallel to the grain that was created by the original belt-sanding of the PF.

After I've cleaned the entire PF, I will take a somewhat larger ME square soaked with alcohol and draw it vertically down the entire PF several times from top to bottom, quickly working across from left to right. That seems to create the best lay-down of the topcoat when I follow that up with polishing compound. I will polish until the entire PF surface has a high gloss. Then I touch-up the artwork as needed (that's a whole other topic), and finally I will wax the entire PF with Johnson's paste wax - the stuff that comes in those round yellow cans.

There is a significant improvement in the quality of the playing surface after this cleaning process, as long as you do it right. The improvement is not only visual, you can actually feel it with your fingers as you mentioned in post #25. I don't have a way to objectively measure the improvement of the game play, but it really seems like the ball action is much better.

- TimMe

That Spin-A-Card PF looks great! Did you do any touch-up of the artwork?

- TimMe

Here are before & after pics of a Wizard that I'm just about to finish rebuilding for the Seattle Pinball Museum. (Posted with their permission - thank you SPM!) I cleaned the PF artwork exactly as I described in posts #36 and #38. You can see there is still some marking in yellow area - it's very hard to get yellows 100% clean unless you do a repaint. The SPM folks wanted to keep the original art, so that's what I did.

I also did some minor PF artwork touch-up with colored Sharpies. Sharpies have their limitation as a touch-up tool, but within that limitation they work well.

Wizard as received

Wizard after rebuilding

- TimMe

Sure. I use the 24-color pack of Sharpies and do both color and black touch-ups. But, as I already mentioned, there are limitations on this method of touching up.

After doing a cleaning with ME and alcohol, there will often be small white dots and white hairline cracks in the color areas of the PF art. These blemishes are particularly noticeable in the darker colors. This happens when pinholes and cracks in the topcoat have gone all the way through, and the grime (marking) has been ground down into the ink layer. When you clean with ME and alcohol, it removes the marking from these areas but also removes the translucent colored ink, which in turn exposes the thicker base layer of opaque white ink.

These white pinpoints and hairline cracks can be effectively hidden with Sharpie ink, especially on the darker colors. Pick a cap color that is the closest color match to the PF but ALWAYS use a LIGHTER shade of Sharpie - the Sharpie inks go on much darker than the cap color! Draw the Sharpie ink over the pinpoints and cracks. While the Sharpie ink is still wet, rub the ink into the pinpoints and cracks with a clean cloth. Let the Sharpie ink dry for a minute or so. Then, use another clean cloth and Turtle Wax liquid polishing compound to remove all of the excess Sharpie ink.

The net result is that the Sharpie ink will work down into the hairline cracks and spots and it will stick to the base layer of white ink. Where the topcoat is still intact, the Sharpie ink won't stick and will be removed by the polishing compound. This will make the hairline cracks and spots virtually disappear.

As for the limitations (and other important details):

This method is most effective on white hairline cracks and white pinhole spots. It doesn't work very well on non-white blemishes, or on any larger areas needing more extensive touch-up.

ALWAYS do a test touch-up with your chosen Sharpie color on a small inconspicuous area of the PF first, and make sure you are happy with the result before applying that Sharpie color all over your PF. If you do accidently use a badly non-matching Sharpie color on the PF and you don't like the results, remove with ME and alcohol.

If the touch-up color seems too light after one application, you can usually darken it with a second touch-up application using the same Sharpie pen.

Where there are hairline cracks on a both a color area and some associated black keylines (such as "50 points" printed on top of a red background) you should only use the chosen color Sharpie to touch everything up. For the above example, you would use the orange-red Sharpie color to draw over both the red and black colors on the PF, and then use the polishing compound to clean off the excess Sharpie ink. The color ink from the Sharpie will effectively make the black area look intact again, and you won't need to deal with the problem of accidently contaminating your red color area with black Sharpie ink.

The above method can also be used to touch-up the black keylines around the inserts. Use the black Sharpie to fill in the white circular groove worn into the PF where the insert meets the playboard. Then remove the excess black Sharpie ink with a cloth and liquid polishing compound. The black Sharpie ink will fill in the white circular groove but will not stick to the insert or the undamaged part of the PF, and you'll have a pretty decent touch-up of your insert keylines.

If you keep your PF clean and waxed, the Sharpie touch-ups will last a few years. However, unless you put on a new topcoat, eventually the Sharpie ink will be worn away and you will need to re-do your touch-ups.

- TimMe

I suspect he might be even more distressed to see people posting opinions on his behalf, rather than letting him speak for himself.

- TimMe

That's an excellent reminder that every individual PF can react differently, and to always try a test spot when using these aggressive procedures.

- Tim