Chris Moates' adventures in the land of Mox » Bride of Pinbot

The Bride of Pinbot lives!

cmoates — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:51:34 +0000

Finally, tonight I was able to play my first game on my restored Bride of Pinbot. I acquired the game 2, maybe 3 years ago, and spent the last several months working on it heavily. It plays great, and it looks fantastic, considering the amount of damage it has undergone.

There’s still a few niggles; a couple of lights don’t work right, and I need to resolve an issue where a few switches don’t always register, but it’s playable and it’s as much fun as I remember.

I was also able to fix the Truck Stop that my friend Eric broke last Wednesday. So now all 7 games in my main lineup are playable again. For those keeping score at home, the current lineup changed quite a bit in the last two months. I currently have the following games set up:

Scared Stiff
The Addams Family
Jurassic Park
Truck Stop
White Water
Star Trek: The Next Generation
The Machine: Bride of Pinbot

Next up is to design custom art for the front of my cabinet and have it printed. Oh, and I think I’m gonna modify the game with a subwoofer too.

Bride of Pinbot restoration continues

cmoates — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:28:28 +0000

I spent a giant chunk of the weekend continuing the restoration of my Bride of Pinbot. I’m finally to the point where I start reassembling, rather than disassembling the machine. This is huge, as you start to feel all of the hard work finally pay off.

While the playfield will never be perfect, I’m really happy with the overall quality of the overlays I made. I just hope they aren’t too thick, as it would mean replacing them with something thinner, perhaps vinyl?

My hands are sore from all the sharp edges and my arms are tired from all the metal polishing, but I’m definitely on the upswing on this game, and can’t wait to get it playing. I’ll post pictures of my progress along the way at http://picasaweb.google.com/cmoates/BrideOfPinbot.

Pinball playfield overlay work

cmoates — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:12:51 +0000

I’ve got this Bride of Pinbot pinball machine that I absolutely love, but it’s beat. Not as bad as some I’ve seen, but still pretty bad. Since the odds of getting a new playfield is near zero, I decided to go ahead and try my hand at making some overlays for the playfield I have. It “ruins” the machine from a “collectors” perspective, since it’s not pristine anymore, but the machine was ruined years before I got it, while it lived in Romania. It’ll be nicer than it was 15 years ago when I’m done.

In any case, I did some reading, some thinking, and came up with what I think has worked out pretty well. Here’s a before and after picture of the area that I repaired:

I scanned the playfield area using my HP 4600 scanner, which is the best scanner ever made, for usability of this type. I then edited the image in Gimp, cropped out what I wanted, printed it on photo paper, laminated the top, and used my Xyron Creative Station to apply adhesive to the back side of the picture, then cut it out, and stuck it on.

The Xyron is a really neat toy, but it’s a bit spendy. it can also apply magnet to the back of any flat item, or just do lamination (but I have a heat laminator for that purpose).