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Pinbot topper remake


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About 18 months ago I purchased 2 project pinball off Tony at the pinball shed.

Both just needed a general tidy up and a few parts.

 

Pinbot how ever had a really bad topper (which I knew before buying).

 

A quick search of the pinball forums and I found a few homemade remakes, and one professional remake in the USA.

I contacted a few people, and either they weren't making them anymore or postage from the USA was too expensive, due mainly to the size??

 

So below is my attempt at a remake.

 

I made quite a few mistakes along the way, and learnt a fair amount too.

 

976784517_1.Heatersetup.thumb.jpg.23ff6e19ed6fa36496ec50000c8ab13d.jpg

 

Probably hard to see what's going on here but I will try to explain.

 

A piece of PETG plastic is mounted in a steel frame , two heaters (free off gumtree) are slowly heating the plastic.

Note. Safety features such as thermostats and mercury switches on heater are removed so that they can lay in that position without turning off or shutting down.

 

Below that is my first attempt at a negative mould , made from plaster of Paris. ( it changes to a wooden mould in later post).

 

This mound sits on a vacuum box connected to a shop vac.

The vacuum box is made from some pine timber and a piece of shadow board. Reinforced internally, and twice as many holes drilled in to better distribute the suction. Also there is a seal around the perimeter.

The vacuum box and mould are sitting on a lift table.

Once the plastic is hot enough, this is lifted into the plastic and the vacuum turned on.

Here is a closer pic.

 

1710095125_2.Closeup..thumb.jpg.a5a37b854b447cffc0bc6f96897d318c.jpg

 

I didn't manage to get a picture of the plastic "sagging" as it gets pretty hectic at this point.

 

Below are a few pictures of the semi finished job.

I still had to heat it up with a hair dryer in a few places to finish it off.

 

20190106_064657.thumb.jpg.2879711ed34aaf6ae916044a02464f44.jpg

 

20190106_064739.thumb.jpg.1242bf82383a50a292c946dc72bf1d1b.jpg

 

Painted and trimmed. Wiith original topper in the background. The red color is obviously different , this is "brake light red" a from super cheap auto.

I was going to buy some red translucent paint from a hobby store, but I liked this color, it looked great on the machine with new flash builds behind it!

 

996615575_5trimmedpainted.thumb.jpg.b001855dfe52dda88408f32daf5f18ef.jpg

1433916962_3.Formed.thumb.jpg.dcd5da97d3c34fa6b0fe67530a60caf0.jpg

4.formed.thumb.jpg.6d2842257bec5edc6744f540f555d060.jpg

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