I originally asked these questions here and here in the TBL threads but hopefully this topic will reach a wider audience.

Overall Question: Can anyone recommended a service that will do ad hoc "pad printing" for playfield mods? Specifically onto coated pinballs and/or the bowling pins used in TBL?

Pinballs:
I have a couple colored, kevlar coated 'glo-balls' (available here from Mezel Mods) that I want to make look like actual Brunswick bowling balls (for use as the TBL alley ball). I've attached a couple mock ups.

To do so, I'm looking for someone / a service I can send my glo-balls to who can pad print a white Brunswick logo + finger hole images onto them. The finger holes preferably would have some darker shading of the same color as the ball in the centers to show depth (as in my mockup) but even just white outlined circles would be fine.

I thought perhaps laser etching would be an option. So, I reached out to Lazer Designs. However, they said, "We are not able to laser in white on this, likely it would engrave and barely be able to be seen… pad printing may be the way you want to go, it is a bit outside what we could do."

bowling ball glo ball logo mockup_both_small.png

Bowling Alley Pins:
My stock TBL bowling pins kept snapping, so I bought a set of 10 tougher nylon and thicker pins a while back from the mod couple (these are no longer in production AFAIK though): Re-designed bowling pin Set of 10

See attached photo of the stock pin on the left, the reinforced version on the right. The issue is the logo on the redesigned pins is pretty bad. The logos on mine look like 2 blue fingerprints (as you can see in the attached photo) and are higher than where the logo should be.

So, for all 10 of my pins, I'm looking for someone / a service who could a) "erase" the bad logo and b) replace it with the same, blue Brunswick logo used on the original TBL pins.

I reached out to Unique Pad Printing and while they said they could pad print the logo, I couldn't go with them for a few reasons. a) I'd have to send the pins with the old logo already "erased" (I don't know of a safe way to do this without ruining the coating/integrity of the pins themselves); b) They would need at least 11 pins since one would be scrapped and I only have 10 of them; and c) They quoted me around $400-$500 for the job. I'm down to pay for the service but that quote seems a bit unreasonable + the pins themselves already costed me >$200. Not to mention for reasons a & b it's a no-go anyway.

I tried creating and cutting out my own sticker/decal but it looked bad and would probably peel off over time.

I also looked into getting custom stencils made from them which I could then use to paint the balls myself. However, given how small the printed 'images' would need to be (like 0.5 inches), I think that would be riddled with human error in the end. Plus a clearcoat would need to be applied I think.

I know I could spend like $300 to upwards of $1000 to buy a manual pad printer and try to DIY both jobs myself, but I'd rather pay a professional.

I have all the needed hi-res images. If you or you know someone who may have the capabilities for either or both of these jobs, please let me know!

tbl pins_small.png

Yeah I have an inkjet printer. If you're speaking to printing the bowling pins decals, that wouldn't work since it's clear. I would still be in the position to have to "erase" the existing logos first. I had tried this white sticker paper (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005IMAKYG) and while it worked to both cover the existing logo and print the blue accurate one, it was tough to cut / conform the sticker to the curvature of the pins and I could obviously see creases and edges of the paper itself. I suppose if I could figure out a way to use chemicals to safely strip the existing logo off the pins, I could then go with your waterslide decal film suggestion. So yes, that's a viable solution, thank you! But I still wonder if a decal of any sort is going to last or look very good.

For the pinballs, clear film wouldn't work since I want the logo to be white on those. Standard inkjet printers don't print white ink.