I as well would like to see how well it would work. It says to pour it to 1/8" thickness but that would mess with the mechanisms designed for normal plywood thickness. And how could stop it from draining into all the holes?

Oh, for sure, wasn't intending to knock the product at all. Just was hit with the sudden realization that my only context for seeing new playfield finishes is on my own projects, where there's a base layer, paint layer, and decal layer - so there necessarily ends up being a heavier protective finish than if everything is on one level and can be coated in a single pass.

I'd heard about insert issues on early CPR play fields and hadn't thought much of it, but I guess the concerns were for real. Seems inserts are a likely failure point on any game given enough time - from now on, I am going to be adding epoxy behind all inserts of any game I work on. Cheap insurance.

Could you explain the process of applying epoxy to the backside of inserts? Is it as easy as it sounds? You use a 2 component epoxy I assume

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/vids-guide-to-ultimate-playfield-restoration#post-551342

not sure where the best place to post this is but a search for scanners hit here as recent. just an FYI I was able to mod an inexpensive epson scanner to do good playfield scans. focal lenght on the scanner is the glass surface so all the raised plastics had to be removed and the calibration strip attached to the surface. screen shot is a phone pic of my computer screen. View is at 100%.

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IMG_6219 (resized).JPG

IMG_6219.JPG

Very cool! What was involved, just removing the plastic housing? Was thinking about doing this on my home scanner, if it was reversible.

ok - Back with another question... Anyone have a good 'color matching for dummies' article. I'm using the Createx airbrush paints as per the guide and have the basic 6 color set. But trying to determine what color to add to how much of the other is almost an exercise in futility. I guess I always sucked in art class and it's finally coming back to bite me.

Thoughts on one of the color matching scanners that uses its own reference light to eliminate bias? https://colormuse.io/ - Is there anyway to translate the CYMK or RGB output it gives into createx? (even if it's just getting it close then eyeballing it for perfection).

Any other tips greatly appreciated.

There's a guide? Shit man...I think it's just mixing city, trial and error.
Teal is a classic shitty color for EMS. Very easy to mix the original color yourself, tough to get it aged correctly to match though

Just get a color wheel. $2.99 at the craft store.

Matching for touchups is always very difficult and takes some experience.

Most restores find a good or better match and just airbrush the whole playfield color instead of spot touchups.

I use this to at least show me what colors to start with
https://trycolors.com. Unfortunately Createx does not make a true cyan so some colors can be tough.

I know that I have posted this before in this thread but I have had nothing but good results with Golden airbrush paints and they have a color match program that I use all the time for good results. I have substituted Createx paints as long as the general color is the same.

This method may not be an exact match but it helps me get a good start in the right direction. Way better than pour a little of this and a little of that and guess.

"Try the golden paints website. They have a virtual paint mixer which will let you upload an image to pick colors. http://www.goldenpaints.com/mixer
Make sure after you pick a color out of your image to select the fluid colors as those are the airbrush colors. Now when I say air brush colors, I am saying that these colors are thinner and work well in an airbrush.
I know it will show their paints but it can be a good guide to help you mix a close match."

Dupe post - please delete.

Yeah but I'm struggling with basic Yellows and Reds. I was hoping to find something to get me in the ball park - then I could try and lock in from there. Maybe it's just experience and I'm in for a bunch of trial and error.

If I go that route - What's a good paint choice to then put on the PF? I didn't think Sherwin Williams/Benjamin Moore/etc could mix an acrylic.

It is, just not in the smaller bottles.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009MFRMSC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01

That's the truth!!!!

Yellow and reds are primary colors (along with blue). You cannot "make" them from other colors, you can only shift them lighter, darker or towards their secondary colors. Get yourself a variety of reds, blues and yellows. The six color starter set is not enough. Branch out into the wicked line or other brands if need be. You'll find that there is a wide world of reds, yellows and blues out there.

It worked well on Stern Nine Ball cab. Think I only used a very small amount on PF if any.

Remember that there's no such thing as "light red." Adding white (like you would to lighten blue, green or orange, for example) turns red into pink. I find that Gottlieb reds are really a reddish orange - mostly red with a little yellow.

Trying to match a light blue recently, I discovered that it was really a grayish teal, requiring mostly blue and white but also some green and a small amount of black to dull it slightly.

In the world of airbrush paints that's mostly true, though in high grade art paints the are definitely pure reds ranging from light to dark based on mineral grading and chemical processing. Cadmium red light, medium and dark, for example, are pure pigments (with processing differences) with decidedly different hues and tonal values. Then there are synthetic red pigments such as alizeran (very dark and transparent), thalo reds, synthetic red oxides (and the natural red earth oxides), all of which come in a wide variety of hues and values.

Pantone scanning tool :

https://www.nixsensor.com/nix-mini/?gclid=CjwKCAjwmJbeBRBCEiwAAY4VVU0SMROfSh4y4CNn3iwPk2lI5ZXf6QCVgH2iFUvhA6qeUY-gu1K6ExoCdKsQAvD_BwE

I found that mixing colors has become easier over time because of experience and I have many more colors that I have bought over the years to choose from as a base.
Many times on cabinets I will mix a color very close. I then air brush out from the repair and fade into the original paint. Makes it hard to see and does not require a full blown re-stencil.
On playfields it is generally easier to repaint an entire section of a color than to try to spot in a section.

I would add to this that you can take a similar approach on many playfield art color repairs. I'm totally comfortable saying that I've never matched a color 100%; for starters, playfield colors change at different rates depending on, for example, whether one portion of the playfield had mylar covering it. You're likely to find that a color used throughout the playfield is significantly more yellowed at the top of the playfield or in an outlane area than in the main lower playfield which had mylar protecting it (mylar apparently provides some degree of UV blocking.) So, you might need to mix two variations on the color depending what part of the playfield you are matching.

If a color occupies a large area but with a lot of contours to follow, sometimes it's wise to find a spot where the color is a thinner line and just frisket to that spot. You can either feather out the transition with the airbrush or just let it be an actual edge if it's a very small area. Once the playfield is under glass and lit up from above and below the playfield, minor imperfections in how a repair blends or in how well you matched the color vanish to the player's eye.

I just tried to take a photo of this, but it's so subtle you can't really see it.

White vs clear Waterslides - is the white material made of something different than the clear material? Does it adhere as well? The way I understand the process is the decal material is "eaten" by the clear during the cure leaving only the ink. After pulling of a WSD that bubbled I found there was still WSD material not just the remaining ink from the WSD.

In order to preserve ink color on the WSD (My Canon inkjet color fades as soon as you put it in water, even on 100% settings) i've sprayed a very light coat of clear onto the decal and let that coat cure before soaking in the water.

I'm wondering if this method does not allow the decal material to cure into the clear as well.

All thoughts are appreciated!

Second time using 2 compenent urethane. Jeepers !! This stuff is badass. But anybody know the recoat window on this stuff? Its not in the info sheet.

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What product are you using?

Omni 262. Info sheet says 10 mins between coats..apllied 3 coats but I did not mix enough paint so.. figured I would block sand it and apply 3 more coats today?

So got a 1980 Roller Disco machine this weekend. Machine has lots of ball swirls.

Used Naphtha but it didn’t seem to get them.

Have used Novus 2 but I don’t want to use too much of it.

Ideas?

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For swirls like that it's ME time...so if you're scared of Novus 2 you might want to just live with it

Totally agree - Magic eraser with 90% alcohol will get out the ball swirls. Scrub small areas at a time.
Along with the dirt, it's also taking off some of the topcoat, so consider clear coating to protect the paint from wearing out.

It might get out the swirls. It won't if they are in the paint itself. Depends on how much of the original clear was left when they occurred. Either way, my understanding (please correct me If I'm wrong) is that ME+alcohol = you need to clearcoat the playfield or at least install full mylar after a thorough waxing to ensure that the mylar is removable since whatever clear is left will likely be gone when you are finished with the ME.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cleaning-and-waxing-pinball-machines-vids-guide#post-2655687

Read what Vid has to say on playfield cleaning here. As others have stated, ME+Alcohol clean by dissolving the old varnish topcoat. You *must* wax after using them:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cleaning-and-waxing-pinball-machines-vids-guide#post-2655687

Novus is a plastic polishing compound, and way wetter than you want to be rubbing into a plywood surface. Use it to polish plastic.

Next day would be fine, you need to degloss or scuff all your edges as well as blocking.

that makes a lot of sense, thanks!
In my defense, I did a search in the thread for "rollever" and didn't get any hits. I guess maybe I should spell it correctly next time!

Question: Would the grey on these 2 playfields have been the same color when original? Comet had no mylar and you can see where the mylar was on Cyclone. Did williams use any of the other colors through multiple years and titles? Thanks

20181022_193903 (resized).jpg

Presumably paints changed somewhat over the course of different years and production runs, but if I was Williams, I wouldn't put extra capital into deliberately formulating slight variations on grey, no matter how much Python swore he needed it
They probably were using the same formula for paint colors during spans of years (you can see how a lot of sys 11 games have a comparable "palette", then things start to look differently comparable in the 90s as styles changed).

Mylar would seem to offer some amount of UV protection. On games I have pulled mylar from, the colors under the mylar are more vibrant and much less yellowed. I suspect this is actually the varnish topcoat yellowing more than the paint. If that is the case, you'll be able to even out the grey with a *careful, slow, and gentle* magic eraser + alcohol rubdown. Alternately, you can do airbrush paint repairs, but you will find that you'll have to add a bit of yellow to your grey to get a good match in places that weren't under mylar.

Thanks guys. I was mostly wanting to use the same tone between both playfields on as many colors as I could. I guess at this point it is changed anyway, so I may just use the same grey if I decide to repaint all that detail around the art. The grey on Comet was so dark, I didn't want it to look completely wrong if I went with a brighter grey like Cyclone.

For what it's worth, my Comet had full mylar in the lower half of the playfield. Upon removal of the mylar, the grey on the lower half was a bit lighter than the top half but not nearly as light as your Cyclone. Mostly the difference between my mylar protected grey and the exposed grey was due to greater yellowing of the factory clear in the upper half. Once cleaned thoroughly with ME and alcohol they were about the same.

I'm almost completely finished populating that Black Knight CPR playfield. On your advice, @vid1900, I waited at least a week after the remedial additional clear coat had been applied.

My question now is, how long do I wait before shooting a ball all over the playfield? I've been diligent about pre-drilling and reaming the hole to cut away the clear, and all going pretty well. However, last night I had to move a post, and could see where the number "5" from the bottom of the post had actually imprinted itself in the clear. This suggests that the clear is still curing.

I know CPR says 6 weeks, curious to hear how long you typically allow before the game is ready to play.

Where can One find copies of these?

You mentioned this before about the Pantone colors, where do you find these? I checked the PPS site and did not see anything posted. Also is there a site that lists all the years Pantone colors?
Mike

Filling VERY deeply cupped inserts -

Is there a depth that you recommend to be the max with one cure of clear? ie... fill half way up then sand and top off? I've had great success in the past with filling, however this Grand Prix has by far the worst cupped inserts I've seen.

Thoughts? Thanks.