Pinball Plastics Protectors make your own demonstration

Hi all.

This is a video of how to make your own sling protectors. You can make any plastic / protector you like, in this video I also create a protector for the "boat" that _always_ gets destroyed on Fish Tales.

The plastic I use is Polycarbonate which is also called Lexan. It comes in sheets of various thickness, what I'm using is slightly less than 2mm (about 1/12 inch). I would recommend slightly thinner than what I have used (I guessed when I purchased my sheet).

I make my plastics larger on the side that takes the impact (from of the slings typically, the boat base in Fish Tales). You probably don't need to add as much as I have in this video, indeed you may not even need to add any. I use the marker pen thickness as the amount that I add but my marker pen had gone fat and fuzzy with over use and created a fatter than usual outline.

Remove the marker pen from your original plastics with Methylated spirits (denatured alcohol).

This process is useful for also replacing clouded / cracked clear plastics as well. I replaced a couple of plastics in Apollo 13, including a huge one that's about 600mm long over the shooter lane and they came up amazingly well.

I've even made a plastic (with graphics) for a "World Cup Soccer" using this process. The graphic I printed on high resolution paper on my inkjet and sandwiched between two clear plastics. While not identical in colour when held up beside the original plastic, you would never know that it wasn't original. Fortunately the thickness wasn't easy to see where the plastic was placed.

For a bit of a laugh, if you look really closely at the last shot (of the boat plastic in place) you might see me in the captive ball. :)

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Pinball
• Tutorial
• Demonstration
• plastics
• protector
• shop

[bigblackhemi]

Hi Clark. I enjoyed watching your vids. Well done.

Have you tried to flame polish the edges of the plastic protectors?

There are some vids here on utube how to do that.

It makes the those milky edges to look clear like glass.

I really like it because it is very easy to do and the result is great.

Tom

[ClarkMills]

@bigblackhemi Excellent idea, I can see that that would work quite well! Thanks! :)

[HaikuAutomation]

Just love the industrial nature of the work you do, hack and slash. The black sharpie around the original with the markings on the edge makes me smile. That is a lot of work to avoid breakage. Just put some washers on the posts that are the same radius as the plastic or a little larger and no worked needed like you have shown.

[ClarkMills]

@HaikuAutomation

Hi there.

The washer trick works well but is just a little to visible for my liking. I think you can get polycarbonate (clear) washers which would alleviate that to a large degree, (which may be what you were referring to). Also a washer will only take care of a corner strike, though 99% of the time it will be for the slings.

Kind regards... Clark

[HaikuAutomation]

I agree the full plastic protection is likely worth the effort if the plastics are indeed likely to break. I just think that is a LOT of work to get them protected. I have seen most plastics break at the flipper corner and not much elsewhere. Nice work putting together the vid. Keep up the tips.

[Therezz]

Good job man! Love that submariner of yours too. Show us a cleaning and waxing of the playfield too....dying for a cleaning video.

//J from Sweden