Cool thing happened today. Upon finding a broken slingshot link one of the kids whipped up a pattern in solidworks and printed a new one.... we'll see how it holds up... have a new link on order in case (looked great but 3d print material seems brittle)

Didn't get a shot of it though because he re-installed it all while I was out tonight.

Had family come into town and wanted to check out a deal on another project pin... it was super tempting but a much more sparse game that wouldn't have a lot of parts to donate and not really interesting enough to restore. I think the owner has good plans for it though, hope my checking it out and not buying it wasn't too much of a disturbance.

So yeah... basically I came in, setup workstations and projects then left and didn't come back until clean up time.

Oh and this happened!

IMG_5773 (resized).JPG

Were trying to decide what exactly to do for the stencils. Were thinking about creating our own both as an exercise and also were thinking about incorporating the school logo and the lab logo into the art somehow... but don't have anything large enough to cut them on, so thats being mulled over.

Might run a small contest within the group to see what we come up with.

This afternoon we gathered to remove the clamps from the playfield and evaluate the our success essentially re-laminating the bottom 6 inches or so of the playfield.

Overall we were very pleased with the results. All the wrinkling is gone, no signs of peeling and the edges feel solid. We are giving it a pass.

So with that we placed the order for the hard top overlay and started prepping the playfield. Will be laying down a coat of 2k clear this friday and hopefully get the hard top on next week if it's here by then. Unfortunately that pretty much blew the last of the budget.

IMG_5778 (resized).JPG

Yeah... i think from here on out... anyone who complains about some microscopic nick in their shooter lane gets a pic of this one LOL.

Going to be giving it a good scrub and sanding before we clear.

Awesome!!! Thanks so much!

Tis the season that's for sure. We have a few different people out every week but fortunately the group is large enough we always have at least a couple working on the pinball project tasks.

Once we get to project 2 I expect we will have quite a few more since there is a lot of interest in ardrino and raspberry pi based projects.

The lab is thinking about opening up for a couple weekdays a week as well over the final few weeks of summer. There's a push to get projects wrspped up or to a level we can take them out and put on public display for an evening coming up.

LOL ... kinda fits the game actually... in lab now will show the pics...

Btw...
Shooter lane love.

IMG_5785 (resized).JPG

The vote is yes, we will go for it.

Even if the paint falls off in shipping at least we will have a good reference for mounting the displays

Edit: if its going to cost a lot to ship... not sure if it would be worthwhile.... but, we'll need something. Please let me know what you'll need to ship, would hate for you to be out anything if it ends up falling apart.

Last time I had someone ship me a backglass they packed it a kind of crate they made with two 1/8" pieces of cheapo plywood and four 1/2" x 1" boards... with some thin foam between....

Like a backglass sandwich.... board... foam... glass... foam... board... hold the mayo.

A coat of clear to seal it all up... once it cures we'll do a light sanding and wet sand and polish the inserts.

IMG_5787 (resized).JPG

Oh yeah... first I had to remove what I can only describe as a poor mans cliffy?

IMG_5782 (resized).JPG

FYI: There is a backglass on ebay right now fairly local to me... bidding ends in a little over a day.

Well sadly I got sniped... held the high bid for a day, last 5 minutes watched bids creep up to my max so I put a 50% increase on with 15 seconds to go but someone beat me by a couple bucks.

SUPERBEE ... let me know how your gut feels about it surviving a trip in it's current condition. I TOTALLY appreciate your offer and effort but would feel real bad if after all that it ends up degrading more and becomes unusable.

If you think it a high risk, I don't mind going ahead and getting a repo.

Damn... time to hold a funeral... maybe a small plot in the backyard.

The overlay arrived. Since I'll be at CAX this weekend, a couple of us came in to appy it tonight and leave a list for students to work on while were out.

Getting the placement right...
IMG_5803 (resized).JPG

John's quite nervous about my approach...
IMG_5804 (resized).JPG

Its down! Time to remove the protective film...
IMG_5805 (resized).JPG

And it's bueatiful! A couple holes are pretty far off, but all the inserts line up nicely and that's what matters.
IMG_5806 (resized).JPG

Thanks! Check out upper middle by bottom of pops on the edge of black and white... complete airball.

Yeah, that hard top is pretty incredible. Way easier to apply than mylar overlays and looks great. I like that it covers the entire playfield, although all the clear areas have no adhesive, but hardware should hold it down good. Hope they keep coming out with titles.

So I think I need a backup/interim plan for the backglass. We would like to show the game in 2 weeks, so anything will be better than nothing...

Here's my idea... make a large print of the backglass art and afix to a properly sized piece of plexi ( SUPERBEE 's newly clear glass would also work lol)... sorry some things ya just gotta laugh off.

Anyway... anyone know if a good quality scan of the backglass is around anywhere? It doesn't need to be perfect as this is an interim solution until we can find something affordable.... the overlay kinda blew the last of our budget.

Awesome, thanks beatmaster !!

RCA1 ... cool! Actually our center drop target's coil stop/bracket is trashed and I can't seem to locate anyone with a replacement in stock (its kind of backwards from normal brackets if memory serves me).

Lab Night!!

Not much to report, reassembing the under side of things, hardly glorious. We'll be open all this coming week though to finish up projects.

Also a little Aerosmith during down time...

IMG_5847 (resized).JPG

Crunch time as it needs to be ready to show Friday.

Tonight's focus was the top side of the playfield.

IMG_5853 (resized).JPG