It's too bad that "balls of steel" was closed down a year or so ago.

There were all sorts of user uploaded scans of plastics for people to use to do what you are trying to do.

I think you have a great idea, help people keep machines up and running without having to spend an enormous amounts of money to replace 1 or 2 plastics.

Good luck with this, as I expect the people that had balls of steel pull down their scans; will also want to know where you are getting the artwork for your project.

Robert

1. STTNG, there is a partially U-shaped piece on the left side of the playfield that is a fragile little turd. Believe it says something about Ferengi jackpot and it goes around the side of the kickout scoop that feeds the left cannon.

2. Fragile, high breakage.

3. Might be able to scan the broken one I have, but I don't have a great scanner or a flawless plastic to scan.

4. No skills.

Yes, I understand what you're saying; and by no means was I trying to minimize your efforts.

I think it's going to be an issue trying to use protected artwork to make parts for people, and not pay a royalty.

I guess what my main point is...it's different if I have a machine with a broken plastic, where I scan it and produce a duplicate of what I have already have paid for. As opposed to getting a scan of a plastic (where the artwork is intellectual property) from someone else to make a part for a 3rd party.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/museum/1intell.htm

I want you to succeed, truly. Good luck; this is a service that we need...I'm just not sure how this is going to play out.

Robert

I too wonder about this. As you said, it's one thing to do it yourself (since the original company is not providing them, say williams for instance). It's entirely different to start making copies, and "in theory" make a profit (I doubt anyone is going to do this for the good of pinball, even as enthusiastic as we all are). At the same time, since Williams as a company (WMS) still exists, the rights to all the pinball stuff is owned by someone, yet they refuse to provide parts we need, shouldn't there be some gray area? I mean it's equivalent to Pontiac closing it's doors, and GM going "tough luck, find your own parts". Also, it seems like when movies or music aren't available by any means, it starts going black market (if you know what I mean), it's a similiar situation.

Also, Design patents are only good for 14 years (which artwork would fall under being ornamental). By my clock, even the pinball 2000 stuff only has a couple years left (unless they renew, and going by their track record, I don't see them investing money into renewing).

Sign me up for the Pilot!

- I'll scan my Arwin Plastic and provide millions of them to all the faithful LOTR owners out there

Artwork is protected by copyright rather than patent, which basically means it will probably never expire unless it was created before Mickey Mouse in 1928 (I wish that was a joke.)

The technology is certainly there for the companies to offer print on demand replacement parts, but as far as I know none of them has pursued it.

Yes, the art work is intellectual property, not covered by a patent...so the protection doesn't expire; though I believe it does need to be renewed occasionally.

That was why (as I understand it) Balls of Steel was closed down; improper coping of intellectual property...i.e. without permission.

If you Google who owns what, with regards to pinball, it's not straight forward, at least in the case of Williams. I think Illinois pinball, Planetary pinball and Mr Pinball Australia may all own some rights to Williams pinball intellectual property; perhaps even Williams themselves may still hold some rights.

Gottlieb's official licensee is Steven Young's Pinball Resource.

While I'm not positive, I'm pretty sure Stern holds the rights to all Data East, Sega & Stern pinball property.

So, in order to start producing parts for these machines, you would need to obtain the rights from the owners of them.

Robert

Curbfeeler is a class act and a great guy.

Screened plastics have some sort of white backing, that in my guess, is used to sort of diffuse the light coming through. What do you plan on doing to replicate that look and feel?

I did a Google search on direct-to-substrate printers and found quite a bit of information on them... but no price quotes. How much do these cost? Or is it a question of "if you have to ask, you can't afford it"?

Sorry if I was unclear - I meant a price quote on the printer itself, not on having work done on it at a print shop.

Yes, but you could take direct printed plastic and spray paint the back white after you got it.

If I was going to get one made, that's how I'd probably do it...get it printed and then paint the bottom white when it showed up in my mailbox.

Only would need to find out what white paint to use, so the ink doesn't "run".

Robert

What format do you want the scan in and how do you know what size to make the part; unless it's in some kind of *.dwg format?

Robert

Here is one starting at $8500. http://www.sepsgraphics.com/Site/Direct_to_Substate_Printer.html

It's a real shame this thread was basically hijacked by copyright discussion. If you are not selling the material for profit then there's nothing to "come after". So I wouldn't give a thought to this issue.

I didn't mean to hijack as others have with copyright, I'm just sayin be careful how you approach this. Perhaps if u keep accurate books, and truly keep this non-profit, you'll be safe. Maybe the best thing to do is start a kick starter project to pay for a scanner and printer. Start a poll on here for top 3 wanted plastics that don't exist right now, then give supporters their choice if it gets funded.

I have the backglass art for my custom pin, but unfortunately not for the plastics yet, or I'd offer those for testing. What about just doing a generic set of slingshots? Those are standard enough that many people could test them in a game and they could be original artwork, so there would be zero potential issues.

The other thing I thought for running a test, what if you did a parody? (which in theory is protected by the first ammendment). Take the original artwork, and change it. Like if you were wanting to do star trek, do "start wreck". Who knows, maybe a parody re-theme would be more interesting than the original?
http://www.legalzoom.com/intellectual-property-rights/copyrights/are-literary-parodies-protected-under

Are we legally allowed to do this? I recreated the bride of pinbot chest plastics and sent out a couple of sets to people. I did it for free just to help the hobby but also was affraid of williams coming after me if I started to sell them. First couple of batches were "OK" but I've got it down a lot better now and may sell some if it's not illegal to do...

One doesn't need to make a profit to violate copyright laws. Just ask Johnny Gasca, AKA "The Prince of Piracy" His defense was that he wasn't profiting from copying movies. It was ruled the infringement occurred despite the profitability of the venture.

While the MPAA is far more militant than the pinball industry, the number of C&D orders handed out to ipdb (ROM links), BoS and others shows that pinball manufacturers aren't beyond pressing their rights. It potentially gets a bit stickier for reproductions of movie licensed pieces. Could/would the MPAA get in on the act if LotR, POTC, etc pieces are reproduced - particularly if they had actor likenesses or other licensed copyrighted marks?

Maybe your best bet is to contact planetary pinball since they are a licensee, let them deal with legality since they do already. You could be the oem, they sell it as an eastablished pinball parts supplier, everyone wins. Only difficulty is red tape of paperwork, especially a contract (artwork approval, quality of workmanship, minimum stock, etc)

Does the Inkscape auto-tracing tool work well enough for this purpose, or does all the tracing have to be done by hand? I know the auto-tracing tool only works well with one color at a time, but if you're doing color separation anyway...

This is correct. 300 DPI at 100% typically. Save it as a TIF, not as a JPEG. JPEG's can get "fuzzy" with artifacts. TIF typically use loss-less compression (use LZW or ZIP)

The $25 "file charge" was likely for them to vectorize the blocking layer. That's not a bad price actually. The actual artwork will be fine as a rastor image, but the blocking layers will have to be vector - as well as the outside trim lines (for plastics). Also keep in mind that you're going from a silkscreened Pantone colour print to an RGB scan, and then to a CMYK printer.. so don't expect accurate colour (though in most cases, something is better than nothing). If you're doing sling plastics for example, I'd suggest doing both sides. ALSO -- because most originals were done in Pantone spot colours, some colours would be out of the range of the CYMK spectrum. So if you're doing plastics with bright, or even fluorescent colours (ie. AFM), you're going to have a tough time matching them.

As far as copyrights... well, I've been down this road before with Mr. Pinball Australia, and don't care to go through that again. Y'all are on your own there.

Keep in mind that "license" is exactly that. The IP has been licensed for use in a product, but is still owned by a separate entity. For example, Gary Stern has said multiple times that he doesn't care if people reproduce his parts.. but if it's a licensed part (ie. a Jurassic Park logo), the original IP owners will likely have a problem with it.

- B

Again, good luck with this effort.

A process for people to reproduce the pieces that they already own, that are damaged, is sorely needed.

Robert

please do continue with the tutorial - and as far as you can take it. i think it'd be very worthwhile to understand some of the details and gotchas in the entire process of trying to repro plastics - particularly since it would appear anyone wanting a repro that isn't available for sale will need to understand the whole process. The color pre-press work is a whole body of knowledge in itself - and not easily conveyed. But even details as to if it was easier to find a close match for the fonts in your above screen grabs, or if you actually traced the letter characters, is useful info for someone trying to repro plastics from their own game. Too many times I see just bits and pieces of projects like this.

and for the unfortunate souls that have spent money on titles and no plastics available to buy??

Copyright police, give me a break, if the manufacturer does not want to support their own product why should we be penalised for doing their work for them.

... so there is no money in making them, but there is in stopping others!!!

what a world!

Yeah, where the hell can I get replacement Sopranos slingshots?

I think it's a great idea Curb. Keep at it and teach us how to do it.

Awesome idea Curb! Here are a couple of screen-shots from a Baywatch plastic that I was messing around with 3-4 months ago in Blender.

blendplastic_002.png blendplastic_001.png

I agree.. unfortunately, anyone with copywright has the right to sit on their work without ever reproducing it. Is it financially stupid not to make replacements and make a profit from it, I think so, but they have that legal right. It's not unlike patent trolls, where they will patent an idea, a company will miss it during their search, invest millions of dollars into R&D, and then when the product goes to market, that patent holder comes out of the woodwork "Oh hey, I own the patent on that. Stop production, or I'll sue.. So either pay me a royalty, or spend millions of dollars in court and red tape, or give me a settlement out of court".

I like this tutorial, and maybe this should be a sticky. I know the pinball database stores photos, roms, sounds, manuals, schematics. I wonder what the legality of cleaned up artwork for plastics is (for archival purposes)? I mean then your not producing a physical object to resell.

But then it goes into that gray area, like pirates putting dvd rips on torrents "well I'm not selling it", though that might be different because that has the potential to effect dvd sales. What sales are you affecting if you post artwork files for plastics? If the companies aren't selling them, your not causing any harm.

If you own the machine and have a broken plastic. Whoever owns rights does not make this part. I don't see any reason you cannot make yourself and yourself only a replacement part if you do all the work and don't sell it. Just MHO but I am not a lawyer.

This is likely fine - even if the part is reproduced elsewhere. While technically still a copyright violation, it'd never come to the public view and is likely unenforceable. Generally you'll see enforcement once the image/part/files are made available to the public for free/a small fee/shipping/etc

Its the artwork, not the rendering, that is the copyright material.

Its not how the copyrighted works are shared/sold, but the reproduction of the copyrighted work that violates the copyright. Its not the harm being done, but the potential harm. Say a copyright holder A doesn't make a part, so company B decides they will, and they sell/give a ton of them. Copyright holder A later decides they want to to sell more of their copyright work, but come to find out there is no longer any demand because company B made of bunch of them. Copyright holder A neither received any sales or any license fees from company B. So there are still real (potential) losses.

WhatTheFont! and Identifont are both super-useful in helping find a close-match font for this purpose.

http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
and
http://www.identifont.com/

I'm very interested to see what a final plastic looks like using this process. Do you know what specific printer they're using, and what sheet size it will print to? Also curious as to the price of a single printed sheet, and pricing on multiples of the same sheet... although of course per the side discussion on copyright nobody would be running multiple sheets of the same plastics.

I'd probably settle for this, the process to convert a scan into a font can in itself cause differences with the original.

I think for the most part, that close would be good enough.

If you essentially recreate the font to match the original, are you able to save it in a library, so you can call it up again?

Robert

You can reproduce that part for yourself, since have purchased the part already, there is a chain (for that part) back to the original royalty/permission/etc.

Robert