Mine was broken so I made a new one. Cutting a new one out of lexan is simple enough, though the edges take some work to polish. I have a good scan of the rocket ship sticker that I used to print out a new one using archival pigment inks on an epson 3800. The tricky part would be the legs that support the cover. They are all different and seem like the toughest part to fabricate (to me at least). The legs are riveted to the clear plastic. If I did not have the legs, I would keep my eyes peeled for even a broken cover just to get the legs.

If you do make one, the rocket ship is a sticker, not a waterslide decal. (Due to the fact that the substrate is clear plastic and the image contains white.) Really pretty simple to make if you have the metal legs.

Most machines (maybe all) from this era came from the factory with a variety of apron cards. When i got my space shuttle (another fabulous williams game) it miraculously still had its full set of cards and score inserts. There is a card for 3 ball and a card for 5 ball (maybe on flip sides of the same card) to give the operator options. Number of balls is a personal choice. I prefer to play any game with the number of balls that is the factory default, in the case of Pinbot that would be 3 but if you prefer five I doubt anybody is going to complain.

Sounds like we have similar taste. I have a space shuttle and a Pinbot. I like them both because they are challenging. To make pinbot play with greater forgiveness on the outlanes, put the post above each lane on the lowest spot. They are adjustable. Look under the playfield and you will see that each of those posts can be mounted in one of three holes on a little metal plate. I have mine mounted in the hole closest to the outlane (resulting in a narrower opening) and I almost feel like it makes them too tight.

CALL FOR HELP - HALF OF GENERAL ILLUMINATION OUT. The left "blue" side of the GI lighting on my PinBot went out the other day. I found the fuse for the white/violet wire blown in the fuse block below the power board. Replaced the fuse, powered up and watched it fry immediately. I have visually looked over the circuit as best I can for a couple hours and cannot see anything suspect.

Anyone ever come across this? How might I efficiently go about tracing the issue (which I am guessing is a short)?

Turns out that the most efficient way to trace an issue like this might be to get stronger bifocals. I put on a magnifying headlamp and carefully traced the circuit again. Oh - looky here - when I adjusted the position of the right eye socket kickout to stop it from shooting the ball straight down the drain every time, the corner of it wound up touching a GI socket terminal. Just barely but electrons do not seem to care about such niceties. Egads.

// Error: Image 439734 not found //

Like this....

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I have noticed a few complaints here about the toughness of the outlanes on PinBot. They are indeed very tough compared to many other machines. My four year old has decided not to play pinbot much anymore in favor of our space shuttle because he says pinbot is too hard. I decided to see if I could delicately adjust the play of the inlanes without adopting one of those over the top mods which totally close them off. (Which I would never do - this is pinball after all, for goodness sakes.)

As far as I can tell there are two things that make the outlanes on pinbot tougher than most. The first is something that just is what it is - the angle of the rubber above the inlane/outlane areas is pretty severe. If the ball bounces of either of those rubbers it is practically guaranteed that the ball is headed for one or the other of the lanes.

Here is where easy adjustments can be made. The first, which I think I have mentioned in a previous post, is to adjust the position of the bottom post for the rubber above the lanes. It can go into one of three holes. My thinking is that having the post mounted in the bottom hole makes the entrances to the lane areas smaller. It is not a huge difference, but every little bit helps.

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The other thing I have done (which makes a really big difference and makes the lanes play more like other machines imho) is to simply remove the rubber from the divider post between each set of lanes.

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This changes the bouncy bouncy roulette game which more often than not results in a drain. It also allows for occasionally being able to walk the ball back up the outlane to save it. With the rubber ring on the post "walking" does not usually work because the ball would usually just hit the ring and bounce back down the outlane.

That said and done, I prefer the way the machine plays now and my four year old is a bit more inclined to play it....BUT....I feel a bit like I am cheating playing this way. After all, isn't the bagatelle mini playfield enough of a clue that this is a game that is very much about the art of nudging? Yes, you still have to nudge to influence the path of travel in the lane areas sans rubber rings on the lane posts but it's different/easier.

What do my fellow BotHeads think?

I don't know. I am a bit worried about that. Lots of games (including the Shuttle) have nothing more than wireform dividers where pinbot has the post. I am not sure if the post is harder on the balls or not. Probably it is since it is wider, harder and more irregular in its profile. I might look around the Marco site sometime to see if there might be an alternative post that would perhaps be gentler on the balls.

Is your current supply (sorry for the pun) bad? I am not a fan of fixing anything that is not actually broken or malfunctioning.

This is being addressed in a separate thread.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinbot-chest-arraygrid#post-2723913

http://www.planetarypinball.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=PPS-B-11152

I just tried adding it to my cart and it worked. Does something go awry at checkout?

I like my games difficult to a point. I have white rubber on mine. I took the rubber sleeves off of the posts between the inlanes and outlanes. It reduces the likelihood of a strain down to the point of an average machine vs the notorious drain monster that pinbot can be.

I would like to know if anyone had tried the Titan silicone rubbers on pinbot?

I originally took the rings off partially because my wife and four year old were frustrated. But seeing as my wife and son do not play pinbot all that much even without the inlane/outlane rings, I decided to cave to peer pressure and experiment with putting them back on. Guess what? It does not make that much of a difference after all. I thought it did, because my balls were lasting longer with fewer side drains, but it turns out that I have just gotten better as a player!

I have always thought that the mini post on the top left corner of PinBot's ramp was just decorative.

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After reading and following the directions for cleaning and waxing of a playfield as told by Vid, I have discovered that the Bot can be so fast that it is possible to catch enough air off the ramp that you could actually get the ball stuck up behind the flashers if the post was not there! I should note that in addition to careful cleaning and then waxing with Blitz One Grand (soooo much better than the Merquire's I was using before) I also waxed the balls. Like Vid warns, waxing your balls makes the game play FAST.

Maybe your shots are just getting to be a bit too awesome. Play less awesome and your glass will be safe.

Okay....on the less cheeky side, have you done anything to make the ball faster (recent cleaning/waxing)? Have you done anything that could have slightly bent the metal flap at the top of the ramp upwards (creating a jump)? Is a rivet on the ramp flap coming loose, creating a high spot to make the ball jump? Heck, I am a total rookie compared to you and no physics whiz but those things just seem like the only things that could be different unless you changed the effectiveness of the flippers recently (via new coils, sleeves, different rubbers, etc).

I have one. I replaced all my plastics with CPR stuff. Not sure if it is intact, though. The tips of that piece tend to take a beating. I will dig it out and take a look in the next day or two.

Good idea. This is also a great place for a slow color changing RGB bulb.

Have you tried cleaning them? Mine did not work either when I got my Bot. All they needed was a thorough cleaning. They can get easily gunked up by someone spilling a drink on the glass.

Super delayed response, I know. I LOVE your decal. It looks so natural that I often completely forgot that it is a mod.

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I highly recommend picking up a set of plastic protectors to go with your pristine new plastics.

Mine looks like this:

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I love this! It confirms a suspicion I have had for awhile that machines tend to "evolve" (or devolve) slowly over time due to operator error or unavailable parts. Without original photographs or diagrams from the time of production showing every little part in a machine, those little errors and omissions get copied and perpetuated until most people have forgotten how it was originally meant to be put together.

I had mine apart yesterday for some deep cleaning. Here is what mine looks like. Basically, the little screw with the rubber on it at the edge of the ramp acts as one forward support while the metal bracket attached to the underside of the helmet rests on the clear cover for the vortex ramp providing additional support. Now...is that "correct"? I'm not sure (see discussion directly above), but that's how mine is.

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Be sure to pick up a set of the plastic protectors from marco or elsewhere. No sense getting new plastics and leaving them vulnerable to ball impact.

If you don't find one, they are pretty simple to make. I made one by modifying a standard Simpson Strong Tie angle iron. It works perfectly.

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Who knows? My machine did not have one when I bought it.

I'm not sure that's allowed. Section 2.3a of the pinside code of conduct clearly states that, "the originator of a club thread shall from that moment forward and forever own said fanned game in his or her collection."

I hope we don't have to send a squad out for enforcement.

Even if you delete the thread, you'll never be able to sell or trade your Pinbot. Once you start a club thread, pinside sends a tech to your place, disguised as one of your buddies. When you are off getting snacks or beers or something, the tech fits your machine with a little device that causes the game to malfunction if you attempt to trade or sell it. Sorry, I thought you knew.

Wait a second. I just found a sub-rule (2.3b) which states that creators of threads can sell or trade for qualified medical reasons. Fun deficit disorder is on the list of eligible conditions. Apparently this is a common "disease" caused by repetition and long term exposure. You might need a note from a qualified fun expert to get pinside to remove the anti-trade/sale device referenced above, though.

There are SOOO many subtle things that can affect the skill shot. IMHO this makes it a true skill shot. On mine, even when everything is tuned well, gradual wear to the plunger rubber or a slight warp/misalignment of the plunger can be the difference between hitting the middle or top hole vs never making it up the ramp. The thing I have found that helps most if you cannot make it up the ramp ever is to put a much smaller rubber on the posts for the shooter lane part of the bumper nest and making sure the shooter lane gate is free and easy. I see stretch marks on my lane rubber it's so tight. Also, if at all in doubt, totally rebuild the plunger.

Do you have the broken off piece? There is a standoff bracket at the top end of the ramp you are missing if you don't have that piece.
I made one of these for myself as mine was cracked and badly scratched. I have a good cleaned up scan of the rocket ship to print onto sticker paper of you decide to fashion one yourself.

When I get a chance I will dig through my stuff and see if I saved my old one. It's easy to cut a new one if you have an intact piece to use as a template.

Okay - I still have my old one. It's broken in three pieces but still usable as a template. Let me know if you decide to go the homemade route. I could send you a tracing of the profile and rivet hole locations and email you the scan for the sticker.

I don't have the sticker but I strongly recommend reading Vid's guide to playfield restoration if you haven't already done so. There are invaluable cleaning and touch up tips to be had there.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-ultimate-playfield-restoration

This is helpful, too.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cleaning-and-waxing-pinball-machines-vids-guide

Count me in if this becomes a reality. I'm confident that he would get quite a few customers for these stickers. I have yet to see a helmet that was not bubbled.

Do you happen to have a higher resolution copy of this? This one seems possibly resized (maybe automatically by Pinside during the upload process - there is a resolution option in a drop down box in the attach images portion of the post window). I have a pretty good printer that can do large stuff if I can find appropriate stock to print on for the helmet. If the forum won't allow you to upload a high resolution version due to file size or if you have a scan that is an unsupported file type (not jpeg) could you please send one to me via pm?

Anybody else here order one of those blingy backglasses from cpr and receive absolutely zero response?!? Not only did I not get an order confirmation but three follow up emails from me to them have been ignored. I just needed to know that my money went to the right place and that they would not be shipping it to arrive when I am out of town so it does not get stolen off my porch. Wtf?

I totally agree. I got one too. I am really picky about color. To me, it's the lightness of the blue and an overall lack of rich color saturation, particularly in the blues and reds that bugs me. For the money, I want to love it and I don't. I'm not letting go of my original translite anytime soon as it was in very good condition. Maybe I'll let it go if the new backglass grows on me. I do like it that it's an actual glass. Translites always look kinda cheap. I also like that pinbot now has a mirrored glass like the neighboring space shuttle and comet.

Seems like I saw some comments elsewhere about some of the blue in their repro space shuttle plastics being way too light also. Odd. I have no complaints with the colors on the repro pinbot playfield or plastics. CPR is feeling a bit hit or miss to me at this point though. I will be proceeding with greater caution with them in the future.

Good advice. I just thought from the description that it would look a lot better than it does (to me).

Me too. If someone here could scan one, I would like to try cutting a stencil on my cameo silhouette to airbrush it on the underside of the ramp.

#2 is the strongest design IMHO, but the cost is more than I would entertain for a speaker panel cover. Not much to be done about that given material costs though. Nice work.

Yes, the ramp shot can definitely be made as a left flipper backhand.

No way can I backhand the ramp from a dead cradle. From a standstill I would have to bounce the ball off the post, catch it and slap it up the ramp. Not easy for me but it is possible.

Mine was missing as well when I got my shuttle. I ended up making one out of a sawed off, drilled Simpson strong tie bracket. It has worked perfectly for the past two years.

Oops - I meant pinbot. Anyway, good luck. I hope you find one. Consider making one in the meantime to tide you over until you find the real part.

Has anyone come up with a good way to limit the amount that the shooter rod can be pulled back? My original vortex ramp is unbroken and I would like to "beginner proof" the shooter to keep it that way.

Which spring do you recommend?

Congratulations - funny you should mention it because I just had the hood up on my pinbot for the first time in ages today doing some routine maintenance and decided to take a picture of my homemade replacement for that adjustment bracket. It works perfectly!

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Could someone please take a picture of how the knocker is assembled/wired in the backbox? Mine has never had one but I just found what i think is the bracket and plunger. I need to verify this as well as the coil size and setup.

Good idea - thank you!

Let them laugh. People need to get used to the fact that restoration work done well is incredibly time consuming and requires an investment of new parts and other consumable materials that add up. Folks seem fine to pay really big money to places like high end pins for over the top back to new in box condition restorations (10k+). There is valid middle ground in the market for good restorations that make a machine super pretty but not pristine new. A pinsider near me recently sold a space shuttle for somewhere in the neighborhood of $2500 as one example - CPR playfield and plastics plus a fancy custom speaker grille (and it went fast). I am thinking about selling my pinbot but for all the parts and materials that went into it even if I charged $3000 I would be making less than minimum wage on my time. (Of course, I am not doing this type of thing for the money. It is just a personal interest/hobby but I am also not interested in giving my time away as I do not consider this to be charity work either.)

Charge what you truly believe is fair and stick with it. Keep the game if nobody buys it for your price.

Yes, but this playfield is fully populated and functional. $900 is for a bare restored playfield that would need to be swapped in - every single piece above and below transferred over. I've done that. It takes forever. Saying a playfield is worth $900 is true but it's like saying a rebuilt engine for your car is worth $900 (or whatever). Parts are only part of the price. Installing it has is own additional value.

Exactly.

"Big blue" can be tough to find. Keep asking around, save a search on Ebay and cross your fingers!

The vortex switch may or may not need adjusting. The start up alert is telling you that the switch has not been triggered in awhile. Manually trip the switch and see if the alert goes away the next time you power on. You could also test it in switch edge diagnostic mode. Could be that the vortex entrance needs tweeking if the ball is simply never making it up the ramp far enough to drop through a hole and trigger the switch.

Often the service switches get gunked up by spilled drinks. Try taking them apart and giving them a good cleaning.

Yup. You'll need to make one. If you use acrylic you can flame polish the edges. Polycarbonate must be sanded and buffed for a clear edge.

CPR did at least one run (maybe two runs?) as recently as a couple of years ago. They seem to work on a threshold of demand. Maybe everyone who wants a full plastic set should email them to encourage another rerun. I bought a set along with a playfield and mini playfield the last time they ran them. CPR can sometimes be a bit hit or miss in terms of color and overall quality but the pinbot plastics were spot on perfect.

Redoing it in illustrator would be a waste of time unless you have some unusual need to scale it up or down. A high res scan 1 of an undamaged plastic like this really only needs color adjustment prior to printing.

Thinking about it more, it's possible that the lines might be blurry and need to be traced since the protective film was still on them when they were scanned. Certainly the colors (including black and white) would be adversely affected by the film. I would wait until Plumonium is ready to install his plastics. Maybe he will rescan them for you without the protective film at that point? Then the job becomes really easy.

Some more options. Not my work. I wish I could give proper credit but it has been a couple of years since I downloaded these....

PinBot_credits 1 copy.jpg

PinBot_rulesheet1 copy.jpg

Pinbot_credits v2 copy.jpg

PinBot_free play copy.jpg

Pop bumpers build ENERGY value which is collected by hitting the target under the ramp. SOLAR value increases with each ramp shot and is collected during multiball when you lock one ball in an eye socket and then shoot the ramp before the timer expires.

You could scan the art off the original, print it on glossy photo paper, cut it out and adhere it to the underside using optically clear adhesive film.

Multiple columns how? Adjacent columns or columns separated by one or more columns? The ball is big enough to hit two columns at a time if the hit is not dead center on a target.

Looks like a CPR bronze. Some of the bronzes were really bad, specifically the sun insert. I bought one (quite inexpensively with a set of plastics) where the sun was actually partially melted. I had to swap the sun insert out of my original playfield, touch up the keyline and clearcoat with 2pac. Note- if this is your situation, the original sun insert is slightly larger than the old one. You will have to either CAREFULLY enlarge the hole in your new playfield or CAREFULLY reduce the circumference of the insert. Still - you got a total deal. Congratulations.

If you decide to try to fix it be sure to get a good scan of the lettering graphics on the insert as you will need to replace it if you sand into it, which is quite likely. Swapping a pinbot playfield is a lot of work. If I were in your shoes, I would just have fun playing the machine as is for a good long while. If you decide to swap in the new playfield take care of the funky sun before you swap.

Looking more closely at your pictures I would guess that insert is not salvageable. Probably better to swap in your old one if it's in better shape when the time comes.

Me too. Mine was so bad though that it really affected ball travel so it had to go. (The cloudy spots were actually wavy melted plastic in places on mine.)

Looks awesome Plumonium

What did you do to make your ramp glow like that?

(And yes, the plastic you asked about is for the mini playfield, left bottom if I recall correctly.)

What rom version are you using? How does it differ from stock?

Just got my custom roms and installed them today. I love finally being rid of the carry over solar value! Now high scores are not so random. If you don't have these installed, I highly recommend getting yourself a pair.

Glad you tracked down and solved the problem. Nearly every time I have tried to save one minute by not laying a towel under my work I have spent a bunch of time looking for that missing screw/nut/spring etc that I then dropped or cleaning up stray solder.

They are okay imho but I wouldn't get one if you're translite is decent.

Pros: good quality actual glass with mirroring.

Cons (for me at least): blues are different than the original artwork, particularly where greys were replaced with light blue, mirroring is pretty minimal.

Like most titles, TPA Pinbot is waaaaay easier than the real thing. Definitely go get your flipping fingers on the real deal.

I don't think the risk of paint loss during Mylar removal is worth it unless you REALLY want to undertake playfield restoration and clearcoating. That one is nice as is. Clean it, wax it, pop in a couple new balls and have a good time!

I believe Freeplay40 is planning on making the ramp (maybe even in transparent blue) when he returns to health.

Unless you stumble upon a rarity you'll have to make them yourself.

Going through my parts stock and cleaning some stuff out.

Pinbot roms (u26 & u27 rev 3) that I no longer need.

I also have what I think is a motor cover and adjustment plate for the chest target bank.

Also a brand new (still has plastic protective film on both sides) visor plastic.

PM me with offers if you want any of this stuff.

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Right you are - I forgot that PinBot was a later game with alpha numeric displays. I'll edit the post above accordingly. Thanks!

Bracket and motor cover sold. Roms and visor plastic still available.