You do want to clear it.

Holds it down around the edges for one.

Here’s the Led Zeppelin playfield, photo taken just now - has a few coats of 2K over the top, and has had 1000s of plays since.

Where the trick is, you need to do some light “dust coats” when you first spray. Don’t go too heavy or you can melt the sticker. I know, because the car painter did that to my first sticker. Lol. Second attempt, no worries.

I’ve recently cleared my new game myself with 2k in a can - no problems at all. Just make sure you let it dry really well, and don’t tighten the posts too much or you’ll start tearing up the sticker. (And the clear with it).

Stickers are great for home brew/light use machines. You wouldn’t want to use it for production machines though! The punters will ratchet gun on their star posts and rip up the playfield Marco styles. Haha!

rd

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**** MIRCO styles!! Not Marco.

If you dust coat it - no sacrifices needed.

I was a bit pissed with the car painter - I told him to go light first up. In one ear, out the other. What ya gonna do ….

I’ve now done a few stickers with the 2k - did a DE Simpsons a while back that’s documented on Pinside somewhere as well. All 100% no issues - as long as you dust coat. No different to how you should dust coat any paint/art repairs on a normal playfield when you spray them, or else that’ll turn to poop too!

rd

Great resource! Thanks for doing this

You can find a printer that does color to clear film & cold laminated on top for protection. No clear on top is required further. But people have different ways for doing stuff. Do it which ever way you prefer. Did a number of overlays over the years & never was any wear to the cold laminated overlay. Sorcerer, Space Shuttle, & Eight Ball Deluxe.

Thank's all for your anwsers !
I have a sheet of playfield protector, but after some tests, i'm not happy with the ball reaction on it (seems floating).
It's why I started to look on other possibilities.
I'll try to find some 2K spray and do some test on a plank and a vinyl test.

Thank's for your help !

My method was similar to Daves. The flames, kicker protectors, pop rings, outlane music notes, and several other item are vinyl stickers. Green, pink/purple lines, and guitar necks are paint.

So 2k cleats, especially if you don't use a rattle can, have different options for activator. Slow, medium, and fast. Fast has a higher chemical reaction, gets hotter during cure, and will just eat vinyl. Slow is the key, very light coats for first couple, let dry for 48 hours, then I layed that stuff down on the 3rd coat like I was pouring water on it.

I'll be doing a vinyl overlay on a supersonic next, so I'm definitely going to experiment before I just spray that.

Oh and I'm getting intrigued on the 3d printer thing now. May pull that trigger soon, and start learning that curve as well.

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Sorry, noob question again !

When I bought my insert, it was specified : "must be sanded" (the tiny ones have little prominent letter on it).
So ok, i try sanding one (with 1000), and its now "blurry".
Is it the aspect there supposed to be ?
Or did I use a wrong sanding paper ?

(left not sanded, right after sanding)
IMG_1976 (resized).JPG

Thank's for your help !

When you clear coat them they will, turn clear again.

Finally put power to my pin. Few bugs, but it's alive!

Thanks MrBigg and Mudflaps !

So cool to play "so famous" homebrew pinball on a pinball festival !

Well you all talked me into it. Now I've gotta assemble it, and figure out what I'm going to make first.

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Totally agree! Levelling took us our entire first 24-48 hrs and we were frustrated…since then we have been 3d printing almost everyday for 2 years! so many great and helpful applications and money saved, its insane! Definitely recommend printing a “benchy” to ensure you are level. Don’t be surprised if you don’t “look” totally level by eye, but actually are level by the paper test…sometimes the machines aren’t built perfectly level. Also we use a glue stick to apply a very thin layer of glue to help the first layer stick. For us, without a glue stick we usually have a mess. good luck!

I ordered the upgraded levelers with the kit, and the upgraded bed, so maybe that will go smooth for me. Haven't even opened it yet. Thanks for the advice, and help.

On another note, I'm having some wiring bugs in my pin. Triple checked my wiring, and still having ghosts in my 48v, and issues on my special lighting. Gonna move on to checking diodes next, but had to stop a day or two, my eyes are crossed from staring at it.

So my 3d printer is assembled, loaded with a spool of plastic, powers on, recognized the media card, and won't load a program, or print. It'll home, heat up, etc.
Recognized my laptop when I plugged it straight in, hit "slice", and nothing that way either.
Watched 50 YouTube videos, and still no clue.
Any ideas, help, suggestions?

So when I install the SD card it's says recognized, then does not copy it. Says it's blank. I've erased it, formated it at fat32, reinstalled the firmware, insert, turn it on, and nothing. It sees the SD card, but not what's on it. The reason I plugged directly up from comp was to see if that would work instead. Saw my computer, computer saw it, loaded a pinball post sti just to start something easy, and nothing. I'm missing something somewhere, or so,etching is off with my printer.

In cura, you’ll slice a file which will create a gcode file from the stl file you load. Once you slice, you have to export that gcode to your sd card

and be sure to power on the printer only after you insert the card. If you power up first then insert the card it won’t see the files

Hey crew,
So my playfield design is close to locked but so far have only rolled the ball by hand. experiencing quite a few airballs. in your experience, do you get fewer airballs when the playfield is pitched and also coming off of a flipper vs by hand (perhaps rolling by hand gives it air?). I know I will need airball protectors at the tight ramp/wireform junction, but even getting airballs off of targets right now if I use much force. While I gear up for wiring the flippers, thoughts are appreciated!

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Yea - as mentioned above, sounds like you are trying to print STL files directly? The ender won’t recognize those files because it’s looking for gcode. So your card will appear blank if you only have stls on it. The gcode contains all the stepper movements, etc .. to execute the print. Could have sworn the ender came with a card with a few benchies o it to test print tho.. huh

So how do u send the slice to the SD card as a gcode?

Are those new PBL mechs? I find sometimes I need to bend them a bit by hand to get them the way I want them, which may be a bit of why you're getting airballs. That and the playfield being pitched should help a lot.

You have to use Cura, have you set that up yet?

The SD card should have had a gcode already on it from the factory with test files on it.

yes all fresh PBL mechs. agree I do feel some components (particularly the targets) could be bent down towards playfield a bit. will report back!

Thanks for the tips and advice! Will report back once we are really flipping!

I like the Stern POTC approach of just put a giant clear plastic in the game lol

Looking awesome. May i ask what the flap and hinge trick is?

I had creality slicer installed, but just installed cura, and we'll see what happens.
Still not clear on how to take the stl file, make a g code, and put it on the SD card?

I honestly suggest just taking 20 minutes to watch a tutorial. Here's one for Cura:

It will be so much faster and easier to get up to speed. None of this is hard, but you're brand new and just need a general foundation to understand what questions to even ask.

damn sexy!

OK I just got it to finally print. So one last issue, even after the leveling trick, the pre heat trick, etc, my filament will not stay stuck to the bed. I saw a gluestick tri k, but what do you all suggest?

Btw my stl not transferring correctly was because my directory was too deep. You need to keep the directory close to the top of you directory. More than 3 files deep, it will not recognize.
You guys should never have started this "gotta have a printer" thing, now all the newbies will be driving you crazy with questions.

The creativity and ingenuity in this thread is both mind blowing and inspirational. Kudos to everyone in here!

I do have a bit of a question for you gurus. I have been offered a sinbad, which is very much a project. I'd like to do a retheme, with possibly very minor layout changes. I would be keeping all the original mechs though. The game will need all new boards. I looked at the pascal board, but I'm wondering if I may as well take the time to learn and implement a custom setup. I'd be fine with keeping the numerical displays, or possibly going with a very, very, very basic lcd display. At this time I wouldn't be worried about adding modes and more code. I would want to keep it pretty simple overall.
I feel I'd be comfortable with the cosmetic parts of a retheme, but its the programming that I'm unsure about. I have done very simple rethemes in the past, as well as a playfield swap. But never really dived into boards/code.
Based on the idea/project I have envisioned, what approach would you take? I'm open to hearing any ideas, as well as direction on where/what I should start reading up on.
Cheers everyone!

If you’re not sure if you can code a game, I suggest reading Mission Pinball Frameworks basic tutorial. Then try Visual Pinball with the MPF bridge. You can download some else’s Sinbad, tear out their code, and try out some of your ideas. Bonus: you can reuse that code if you did install a custom controller later.

awesome thread - a new one

I had a thread running for a while that capturing homebrew builds and thread links for 2013-2019 and then I sort ran out of steam. Feel free to include this in any indexes or in the first post if you want.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/homebrew-pinball-games-released-2016-to-current

I created what I call Trigger Fingers - small 3d printed bracket that fits over a stern / pinball life style switch and then uses a similar specific micro switch to fit in as there is a sweet spot of ensuring the main sweet works and not stop a ball due to the extra tension of the second switch. Was able to experiment and fit to a Stern Ghostbusters to trigger lights or a motor.

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trigger finger 1 (resized).png

I experimented with targets on games notorious for airballs like Ghostbusters, Turtles etc. The issue with those games is that the 90's targets tilted forward and sat higher especially the target face rivet.

I designed a different target playfield bracket to support these existing games as Stern games target is vertical and not tilted forward and also the rivet sits lower so the ball higher the rivet and not the target and also when the ball hits a vertical target it leans back beyond vertical and then almost encourages the ball to gain some air. The last factor of airballs comes of the pan angle of the target where it say is not dead square with the ball path and turning the target a little can reduce that airball.

You read my write up explaining a little more about my target base mount upgrade here:
https://www.shapeways.com/product/GRBNG4DQK/stern-pinball-target-bracket-5deg2mm?optionId=63971960&li=marketplace

I'd love to have a copy of this file if you don't mind?