in order to protect your cabinet decals from the legs, you MUST use the metal leg protectors from Pinball Life...

after Decal placement, place the metal leg protector on the cab and bolt it on for placement,
score the decal around the protector,
remove the protector and remove the scored cut out decal,
replace the protector with the bolts on,
apply the screws to it that will hold it...
no more leg wrinkle.

They are Screen printed cabs..... all were except mb and cc..... there were a few mb with sp tho. Screen printed cabs are much more durable and overall just better for many reasons.

My original Cv has decals, and Congo has sp

I got these back when I restored my TZ....

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These are great. I would love to see the game details on the right card, like designer, year, number produced, etc. versus the quote, very cool none the less.

Hmmm I am thinking paint would show more flaws than a decal would.

Hmmm I am thinking paint would show flaws through as well. maybe even more so.

That would be easy enough to edit. Note, though, that the playfield has most of that information in the outlane drain.

The metal protectors keep the leg off the cabinet so they dont touch anything but the metal.
The plastic ones still rest on the decal and will wrinkle them.

Not really. Paint shows a piece of sand like a piece of sand but under a decal it looks like a boulder.

I like that second set of cards better than the ones I had used. Is there a location with a higher DPI available for download as I believe Pinside downscales them.

Here are the ones I used:

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Well, sorry to say that that resolution is the same as the ones I printed for the machine. It looks good anyways.. I believe that they came from somewhere here on Pinside. the first 3 came from pinballcards.com as the watermark says and are much higher resolution. I looked through TONS of cards before settling on these!

Where do you guys suggest getting the best rubbers for slingshots and posts?

Also, do you guys happen to know the sizes I will need?

Mine are a bit dirty, and I'd like to get some new ones in there.

Download the operators manual, which has a diagram showing all the rubber sizes you need. Downloading the operators manual should be one of the first things you do after picking up a machine: http://ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2684 The rubber list is on page 2-56.

For the record, I'm about 75% sure that the cabinets were screen-printed for TZ.

It's interesting, however. Mine is definitely screen-printed. If I run my hand over the side art - especially in the dithered white, yellow, red area of 'Twilight Zone', I can feel the layers of paint applied.
*However* - I am also kind of positive that at my legs, I have wrinkling. I will have to take a leg off to double-check, though. So, figure that one out. If they ARE decals, they're very thick and stiff.

Keep in mind, also - that some cabinets may have HAD decals applied to them from the factory. If they didn't order enough cabinets, or they changed artwork, then to save speed and cost, they could just apply decals over the existing paint. (Example - Those that have a really low production number - they changed the artwork on the backbox. It's possible that they decaled over some of the backboxes that had the white door with colored decal.

Could it be that they applied a decal base to screen print on top of? I thought I heard of that being done somewhere. The decal would give a more predictable base on which to print.

Noticed the same thing on my TZ - There is a bit of pucker around the legs like decals!?!

Did some searching..

Turns out the BW cabs of the 90's were 'primed' with white vinyl, and then silk screened. That is why they are prone to fade and leave white marks when scratched.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/factory-cabinet-decals-vs-screeningstencils-bw

http://www.flippers.be/pinball_cabinets.html

Yes- Pretty sure that's what "screen printed cabinets" were.... they had a base (white?) vinyl applied to the wood and then that was printed on.. I believe the later cabs like MB and CC had the vinyl applied to the cab wood AFTER they were printed on, like all repros are today

Well, my game is from June 93 and it definitely has decals. I believe they are factory as the rails had never been removed.

Mine is from June 16th 1993, and has this:

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Looks Iike a decal to me.

Ok I use these which serve the same purpose right? Is there something about the metal ones that is better for not wrinkling decals? Thx...

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/PINCAB-DB

Good research there. Yeah, my game has a couple nicks in it - they're white, and I was wondering about that when I was looking at it last night.

Really good to know!

Right now I personally have the black plastic protectors on. The metal ones scared me away because of the hole-drilling required.

No, unfortunately those just hide the wrinkles and possibly create more wrinkles, the metal ones sit under the legs and are completely hidden once the legs are installed... the metal ones hold the leg out 1/16" from the cab so nothing pushes against the decal to wrinkle it

Gotcha. I will be sure to give them a try, thx!

Just to jump in here on the decal, screen print debate: I have a sample game made in (I think) March or April of 1993. It is definitely a sample - I have a confirmed sample playfield, white door behind Rod, etc.

My game is also wrinkled around the legs, and while I suspect the front might have a decal, the sides are most definitely original. There is a tiny bit of fade and you can tell the side rails have never been removed. So those sides have a bit of wrinkling - the white vinyl underpayment makes a lot of sense. I was always confused and a bit worried about how a there could be wrinkling if it was screen printed.

I think this is all based on deadlines and capacity, logistically due to weight and size, it takes much longer to silkscreen wood than it does to silkscreen on vinyl or any other print sub-straight, also your alignment is easier in the production process so your misaligned plates are less likely to happen, you can allow for mistakes or test prints ( or artist proofs).

You could also outsource this to a specialised silkscreen company, which there where many of in the 90's, specialising in large format and high run jobs, we used to use many a standard repro house would play out photo litho or bromide plates and we would get them silkscreen for advertising or large format prints, digital large format only started becoming viable and common in the early 2000's and really late 90's, both on cost and commonality.

My point is they most likely started with doing this on the wood, then fell behind on orders and outsourced the job to screen printers, then just moved artwork production to vinyl stickers to speed things up on the production side, where screening 10 cabs in a week, you could get an order of 500 vinyls delivered flat in a week, and you can apply them at any point along the production line. If you mess up vinyl a heat gun just removes it and you can immediately stick another down, unlike wood that you would have to sand and re-prime and begin again with.

These old silkscreen oil based inks have to dry between each colour for a few hours and the size you have of a cab you would need multiple plate exposure screens and screen pulling stations, again much easier in a specialised shop.

They still do garment fabric in this old way or speicalised large format silkscreening in parts of the world today, so are most collector item rock posters (which I collect).

Thats most likely been silkscreened, base don your picture (I could always be wrong), see how you are sanding off multiple layers of solid colours other than black, that called "rich black", you put solid colours of 80-90% blue and/or 16% red underneath the black first and the result is not a boring matt black, but a dark rich colour black. Digital printing would have a fade colour pattern, not solid.

The easiest way to check also is to look at the print with a magnifying glass, silkscreen is screened at around 195-250 lpi, yes Lines Per Inch, no DPI and older digital vinyl is around 140 - 170 lpi, they cant really do more because the nozzels clog up ( the new HP indegio's and other large format vinyl printers have gotten better), how they get around that is the ink bleeds out a little and goes a bit fuzzy, where the silkscreen dots will be tack sharp

In your picture the hot point of the light is also a tell, vinyl would not have that subtle patina.

Now the same old twilight red faded problem, back in the 90's when i was doing large format signage there was a red that was in the market for about 7 years that was called "ferrari red", it got pulled off the market in 1998 because people started realising that it was prone to early fading, in those days you would supply a pantone number they would match to a RAL chart or stock ink chart if they could not get the pantone mix you needed, most of the time the standard stock red as a base to mix from was much cheaper beacduse you could buy it in larger volumes.

Now I cant prove it but the red in the cab is most likely this old prone to fade red that was pretty much the standard go to red in the 90's, but every single Twilight I have seen in the last 5 years has the same fade problem in the sunset graphic, so its kind of interesting.

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Silkscreened on to white vinyl after the white vinyl was already applied to the cab I believe.

There are posts here on Pinside regarding the "generic white vinyl-then screen printed" thing, but I do not know where. The posts all revolve around the removal of earlier ones such as these, versus later ones like Cactus Canyon & Monster Bash which were definitely decals that were printed BEFORE being applied to the cabinets.

EDIT: here's a link I found regarding cabinet printing.

http://www.flippers.be/pinball_cabinets.html

After 10 years of not touching my TZ,faded,rear back box panel trashed and all worn rubbers,decided to put it in good shape
Wow what a difference,super fast and the change for leds do it justice.Its like a new game for me and a good one

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Maybe, I did not realize this, my mistake if this is considered silk screened. But, my front decal had a tear in it, seemed like a decal to me, and my leg areas are wrinkling. Didn't know silkscreen can tear and wrinkle.

Yep, well technically the vinel underlayment is tearing and wrinkling, taking the silkscreened art with it. One of those cases where both sides of the debate are right.

I just redecaled a RFM which was definitely decals to begin with. Interestingly it also had a white underlayment but in this case it wasn't to print on it was to make it so the decal could easily be removed and have a different decal applied during conversion.

Probably will not decal my TZ anytime soon as I only have bad fading on one side so I simply arranged it so that side is hidden. There are some nicks and scratches but nothing I can't lice with.

I've just finished refitting my TZ with a new pair of pinblades. The old ones didn't stick too good, as I hadn't removed the playfield at the time (don't judge...).
It wasn't a waste though, as I didn't really like the old ones anyway. I bought new ones that line up nicely with the playfield art, and it looks amazing. I did the whole thing "professionally this time". Here are the pics:

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Waiting for my Space Ship mod...

The blades and game look great!!! They really brighten up the game. Where did you get the blades?

I also just completed my game. I am adding one more airplane mod. I really went crazy with the mods. Not sure what got over me. I had fun doing it that is for sure. I did blades, backboard decal, leds and led strips, color dmd, new rubbers, springs, rebuilt flippers, new clock boards and leds, etc I have had the game a month. It was just a basic original game. Good playfield but tired looking. See before and after pics

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Got mine from Judge Dread's. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/282072974853?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I used to have the ones that you have, but they were too dark for me. The LEDs really bring out the colour of the game, and I wanted to pinblades to do just that as well. I'm setting money aside for a TAF now, but the next upgrade on my TZ will definitely be a ColorDMD. I really like the mods on your game - you did go wild!

Do you guys suggest using traditional rubber rings or silicon rings for TZ?

Also, any recommendations for changing out my flipper rubbers?

For flippers, honestly it's personal choice.

Me, personally, can not STAND 'superbands'. They are so dead it's disgusting.

It's personal taste. There is no agreement on "best". There are adherents and detractors for every type of rubber: white rubber, black rubber, Titan silicon, Superband poly. The only thing you can do is try the different types. If you don't feel like experimenting, go with traditional rubber in the same color your machine currently has.

I personally have liked the Titan rings on other games and also enjoy adding a bit of extra color with them, usually color matching with playfield areas if the stock color is too contrasting for me.

My game currently has stock white rubber rings that I put on a couple weeks back so I've gotten a good feel for stock. Ordered a variety from Titan that I will be experimenting with next.

I'm a bit of a paradox pinball-wise, as even though I prefer novelties, such as playfield protectors, LED lighting, etc. when it comes to rubbers - traditional. IMO it just plays more like it was designed to be played. I haven't played on anything with silicon rubbers, but it could change bounce distance etc. So I always stick to traditional ones.

As for flipper rubbers, I mostly use traditional ones that match the colour of the game the best. For playfield bands, I always use white (my TOTAN is up for a refit) for one simple reason - it tells you when your playfield is getting dirty.

I'm about to start fixing a friend TZ, it just has a few issues...

It resets a lot during game play, figured the wpc reset fix board would be good for this issue,

F112 fuse keeps blowing, I'll look for high resistance to see what the deal is

The power field doesn't work in game, the magnets work in test mode though; any help?

The game isn't seeing the ball enter the powerfield. Check the ''Mini Playfield Enter'' switch (#44).

Word, I'll check that, thank you

I still haven't figured out the auto-launch issue, but thanks for sending the link on the Lock fix.

I bought some .5" magnetic tape from Home Depot, and it did nothing. Bought some 1" on Amazon, put it in tonight, and so far it seems to have fixed the problem. I did not have to add the magnet on top, as it seems the magnetic strip alone is working.

Cheers!

Was watching this guy play, and he's unreal!

Curious to know how he keeps getting the Piano Jackpot over and over? I thought that you could get it once, then relight by hitting Lock, and then get a second Jackpot only?

Can anyone tell me how he's doing this?

You normally have to hit the camera to relight JP in MB. But, I think there is a bug where you can actually relight it by hitting the dead end shot. It looks like he tosses the ball up into dead end whenver he hits a JP to relight it instantly. Just my guess. The video is kind of dark and hard to see...

I haven't watched it, mainly because of the length. (Hey! That's 45 minutes I could spend playing my own TZ!) If ya'll have a time fram of when this happens, let me know.
Off the top of my head, it's important to know that every shot that is shot up the Dead End hole ALSO runs over the camera switch. So, while it's not really a 'bug', it is something to be taken advantage of. Moreso in Power Multiball -

For example - the game does not keep track of the number of balls entering and exiting the Powerfield. Once the top exit opto is triggered, there's a few seconds (3 or 4, I believe) where any subsequent hit on the camera switch will award the powerball jackpot. So, by shooting a ball up into the powerfield, and keeping it there as long as possible while getting it to break the top exit opto, any other ball shot into the Camera or Dead End will award a jackpot - as long as the timer remains.

This comes in *extremely handy* during LITZ - shoot the first ball you get up into the powerfield. Every ball after that that is dispensed from the gumball machine will give you the jackpot.

Want a *really* good LITZ score? Try to get Powerball Mania, Clock Millions, and TSQ Madness in the same ball, before starting LITZ. When LITZ is finished, your three mode scores from the Powerball Mania and the two modes will be *added* to the scores you get for those modes DURING LITZ. This will bump up your LITZ score a LOT (depending on how good you are, of course!) and make you LITZ champion!

I digress. Sorry.
Yeah, during normal multiball, the camera shot has to be hit to relight the jackpot. If there is something wrong with the dead end switch, and the game doesn't see a ball hit that switch first, then it will think the ball was shot into the camera hole and re-light jackpot.