TR Forums

Do you keep track of how much time you're spending on the project?
Could be interesting.

meerkt wrote:

Do you keep track of how much time you're spending on the project?
Could be interesting.

That depends on whether you count tools or not. As with many projects, this has been the impetus to pick of various tools, including the HVLP guns. They will all get use outside this project, so I tend to not count them in the cost of the project. With that in mind, it's cost about $950 or so, including consumables (gloves, plastic sheeting, sand paper, etc). If I were doing it again, it would be a little cheaper as I wouldn't be going through as much paint and sandpaper while learning and figuring out the best way to do stuff. Still, most of the cost is in big ticket items that would be the same regardless. Powder coating all the metal bits is the single most expensive thing so far, then the cumulative paint cost, followed by the stencil set.

--SS

Well, I was curious about the cost myself, and interestingly, US$1k is about what I've hit for a couple of my own projects on this scale.

But he was wondering about the time?

ludi wrote:

Well, I was curious about the cost myself, and interestingly, US$1k is about what I've hit for a couple of my own projects on this scale.

But he was wondering about the time?

Doh! No one usually asks about the time. That's much harder to estimate in any real fashion as there have been several side tracks related to this project. For example, I modeled all the plastic parts for the Ms Pacman joystick and 3d-printed them. I needed the spacer for the shaft, but went ahead and did all of them and have sold nearly 100 of the various parts. I also went off on a tangent to see if I could reproduce the width coil for the monitor. Locating ferrite tuning slugs were a problem. Also an issue is that this is a learning project for me when it comes to the painting, both in the paint behavior and using an HVLP gun. I also learned how to do nickel plating to re-finish parts of the coin mechanism. I've been working on this for a year, but there have been huge periods of time where I didn't touch it at all. I would put time spent at 100-150 hours hour so.

--SS

Time flies when you are having fun so it would be hard to keep track of. Forgetting about time when you are working on a project you are passionate about is better than having tons of time and not knowing what to do with it. Besides, you find time when you know you HAVE to do something. "I don't have time to do that" is just an excuse for saying "Nah, not passionate about that".

SecretSquirrel wrote:

about $950

Without the tools?

But yeah, time is more important. 100-150 hours sounds pretty good, I think? Considering the multidisciplinary nature of it, having to learn a lot as you go, and the attention to detail (nickel plating!).

@ludi
BTW, how much time so far on your project?

meerkt wrote:

SecretSquirrel wrote:

about $950

Without the tools?

But yeah, time is more important. 100-150 hours sounds pretty good, I think? Considering the multidisciplinary nature of it, having to learn a lot as you go, and the attention to detail (nickel plating!).

@ludi
BTW, how much time so far on your project?

Yep, without the tools. Several big ticket items make it add up real fast. The powder coating was $200 or so. The stencils were $175. New glass and control panel overlay were $100. Paint is over $150 now. Adds up real quick.

--SS

meerkt wrote:

SecretSquirrel wrote:

about $950

Without the tools?

But yeah, time is more important. 100-150 hours sounds pretty good, I think? Considering the multidisciplinary nature of it, having to learn a lot as you go, and the attention to detail (nickel plating!).

@ludi
BTW, how much time so far on your project?

Well, I can think of maybe three or four that involved woodworking at the same scale as what Secret Squirrel is doing, and the cost and time commitment were both in the same ballpark ($1k all-in, 100-150 hours). I think that's probably just typical for woodworking or mixed electrical/woodworking projects of this range; assuming you're not trying to work with exotic zebrawood or soemthing, cash outflow is around $10 per hour of work, plus or minus a few re-used supplies versus "while I'm doing this anyway..." moments.

I wouldn't use the same calculation for, say, scale model building. That can vary wildly depending on level of detail and materials sources used.

ludi wrote:

assuming you're not trying to work with exotic zebrawood or soemthing

/me looks at bowls and pepper mills in kitchen, then end tables in living room.

Yeah I'm a wood snob.

And yeah, that amount of time for a sufficiently complicated woodworking/electronics project doesn't sound unreasonable at all. Especially if you've only got a few hours each week to work on it a project like that can stretch out into months pretty easily.

SecretSquirrel wrote:

The stencils were $175.

Why so expensive?

ludi wrote:

scale model building

That's the one I was thinking of.

meerkt wrote:

SecretSquirrel wrote:

The stencils were $175.

Why so expensive?

Because you need a 4'x6' printer and cutter to do them, plus you have to do the vector art that defines the actual stencils. Add to that a low volume and the result is a relatively high per unit cost. And $175 is the cheap end. You can easily cross $300 before you get out of vinyl stencils. Above that, you are probably going to get metal ones which are re-usable.

--SS

Surprising. I thought it would be cheaper nowadays, with the prevalence of DIY/makers, and rapid fabrication.

Would doing the vector graphics yourself save much?

I did some more paint testing, going all the way to 20% thinned. I laid down a wonderful, fine spray, but was thin enough that it would run horribly.



You can see the run in the above image. That didn't actually occur during the painting. It happened after I set the piece aside to dry. I came back out an hour or so later and the run was there, and if you look closely, you can see a variation in color from top to bottom. The whole layer had succumb to the effects of gravity.



It's a shame since it really does lay down a fine coat. You can even get a decent blend from color to color.

If you have something with enough texture to hold the paint, it does great. I used a piece of pink foam sheet as a test.



I did some tests with gun settings too. In general, with 10% thinned paint, I found that a wide fan, needing a high paint flow rate, needed 15-20psi. It tended to get lots of bubbles in the finish at any higher pressure. A much narrower fan and lower flow rate did better with 25-30psi. Much better atomization, at the cost of slightly more paint wasted due to the higher air pressure. With my gun, at its narrowest setting with a very light paint flow rate, I could get a quarter sized spot that looked like it could have come from an airbrush.

Anyway, there are much better experts on HVLP guns than me, so onward we go.

I did do a little touch up on the black to blue transition at the top of the cabinet after I took the masking off. Since this is an alkyd resin paint, though dry, it's not cured. A damp paper towel took of some of the spray at the transition. I didn't take a picture, but you could see the masking line very clearly after I removed the tape. After clean up, it looked much smoother.





For reference, this is what it originally looked like.



Oh, did I mention this is an alkyd resin paint and that while it's dry, it's not cured?



I had masked the rest of the cabinet when doing the black and several places the tape had left a texture in the paint surface. This wasn't adhesive residue. It was an imprint of the actual paint texture. I was able to remove the worst of it by buffing with a damp cloth. Had to be careful not to take off much paint though, so I couldn't get it out fully. You can't really see it except under bright light, but it's annoying.

Unfortunately, this goes beyond annoying.



Nowhere have I had any sign of adhesion problems, but when I pulled the tape at the bottom left of the cabinet a section of finish tore out. I have to assume there was some sort of contamination under the primer, or a very weak spot in the wood lamination, or something. It pulled off cleanly and shows bare wood. I have some ideas how I'm going to repair it, but I'll need to do a bunch of testing. I am going to repair it, rather than repainting that side.

Most stressful thing I have done to this point.







Even with care, I ended up either tearing or creasing the film in a couple of places. Tears were easy enough to address. After careful alignment, I put a bit of cellophane tape over the joint to ensure no paint got in. Creases were a bit harder and I'm pretty sure I'll have a few spots where I have bleed under, either because of a crease that I couldn't get rid of, or a spot where the film wouldn't stay laid down. Nothing big though.

I had the hardest time removing the film from the carrier and I think that was part of my problem. in some of the narrower sections, I likely managed to stretch the film a little while pulling the backing off. I'm sure the fact that the stencils have been sitting for almost nine months. They arrive mid last summer and then other life responsibilities pulled me away for over six months and so they sat rolled up in the box.

Applying stencils was rapidly replaced, as the most stressful thing done, by painting the yellow. It wasn't a complete disaster, but really darn close.

Getting an even layer, thick enough to not let the blue show through is tricky, to say the least, even doing multiple thin coats doesn't really do much to help. Some of this is a side effect of the long open time of this paint. Even a thin coat doesn't set much in 10-15 minutes. As a result, it is really easy to get runs, if not careful.

I actually ended up removing the first attempt on the front and one side and re-spraying. While the long open time make some things hard, it does make it fairly forgiving. It took a lot a paper towels, but I could completely take the paint off and with a light spray of water, clean things back to the blue.

One side turned out pretty decent.



The other side turned out reasonably ok.



Unfortunately, even after the redo, the front was a disaster.



Let's play "spot the runs", not to mention the show through of the blue around where her shoes/legs are. I do have some ideas for fixing it at least. I'm letting the existing coat dry thoroughly for now. Since I can get such a fine spray from the gun, I think I can mask the edges of areas that need it and put another layer down. Any overspray or bleed under can be wiped off. I cleaned up most of the bleed under on the sides that way. I've also considered using an actual airbrush for finer control.

Still pondering and I haven't actually be back to look at it since it's dried to see how it looks now. Very disappointing. But, I am at the limits of my current skills, and this is the first time I've done this -- hence the limited skills -- so live and learn. We all start somewhere.

--SS

Very nice, don't hit yourself so hard over minor imperfections on the matte placements. You've done an excellent job so far.

Krogoth wrote:

Very nice, don't hit yourself so hard over minor imperfections on the matte placements. You've done an excellent job so far.

The only part I'm really pissed about are the runs and show through of the blue on the front.

This is probably a ridiculously naive question, but why don't you lay the cabinet down so that whatever side you're painting is horizontal? That should eliminate runs, right?

bthylafh wrote:

This is probably a ridiculously naive question, but why don't you lay the cabinet down so that whatever side you're painting is horizontal? That should eliminate runs, right?

Fundamentally the same reason the tape left texture in the paint. Laying it down would likely leave marks in the paint surface until such time as it is cured. Keeping a smooth surface clean on which to lay it is difficult too. Once dry, the paint is incredibly soft and hardens over time as it cures. It takes a good 24 hours for a coat to dry thoroughly, assuming the humidity is reasonable. At that point, laying the cabinet on surface with any texture (even a microfiber cloth) would imprint the texture as it would be laying there for 24-36 hours.

--SS

SecretSquirrel wrote:

bthylafh wrote:

This is probably a ridiculously naive question, but why don't you lay the cabinet down so that whatever side you're painting is horizontal? That should eliminate runs, right?

Fundamentally the same reason the tape left texture in the paint. Laying it down would likely leave marks in the paint surface until such time as it is cured. Keeping a smooth surface clean on which to lay it is difficult too. Once dry, the paint is incredibly soft and hardens over time as it cures. It takes a good 24 hours for a coat to dry thoroughly, assuming the humidity is reasonable. At that point, laying the cabinet on surface with any texture (even a microfiber cloth) would imprint the texture as it would be laying there for 24-36 hours.

--SS

I think he's asking why you don't lay it down paint side up.

just brew it! wrote:

I think he's asking why you don't lay it down paint side up.

Sounds like he could paint only once every 3-4 days if an already-painted side has to be down.

just brew it! wrote:

SecretSquirrel wrote:

bthylafh wrote:

This is probably a ridiculously naive question, but why don't you lay the cabinet down so that whatever side you're painting is horizontal? That should eliminate runs, right?

Fundamentally the same reason the tape left texture in the paint. Laying it down would likely leave marks in the paint surface until such time as it is cured. Keeping a smooth surface clean on which to lay it is difficult too. Once dry, the paint is incredibly soft and hardens over time as it cures. It takes a good 24 hours for a coat to dry thoroughly, assuming the humidity is reasonable. At that point, laying the cabinet on surface with any texture (even a microfiber cloth) would imprint the texture as it would be laying there for 24-36 hours.

--SS

I think he's asking why you don't lay it down paint side up.

It's painted on all sides. There isn't any way to lay it down without putting 150ish pounds on uncured paint.

just brew it! wrote:

Sounds like he could paint only once every 3-4 days if an already-painted side has to be down.

If you assume the 30 day cure time is significantly de-rated and that it's mostly cured significantly sooner, I might could paint every 12-14 days. I know that the paint is still significantly soft after 7 days.

SecretSquirrel wrote:

Still pondering and I haven't actually be back to look at it since it's dried to see how it looks now. Very disappointing. But, I am at the limits of my current skills, and this is the first time I've done this -- hence the limited skills -- so live and learn. We all start somewhere.

At this point it already looks better than half of all such projects. I assume a semi-automated version of what you're doing, plus a bit of hand airbrushing, is basically how they were originally painted at the factory?

ludi wrote:

SecretSquirrel wrote:

Still pondering and I haven't actually be back to look at it since it's dried to see how it looks now. Very disappointing. But, I am at the limits of my current skills, and this is the first time I've done this -- hence the limited skills -- so live and learn. We all start somewhere.

At this point it already looks better than half of all such projects. I assume a semi-automated version of what you're doing, plus a bit of hand airbrushing, is basically how they were originally painted at the factory?

Metal stencils and lacquer paint. Lacquer sprays extremely well and dries fast and hard. Unfortunately its pretty nasty stuff to work with and its pretty well regulated out of common use these days. Can't say whether there was automation involved or not, but my guess would be not much, if there was.

If you were doing quantity these days, either silk screening or large scale inkjet printing would work well. You'd still want to do the base color as a spray coat though.

--SS

Yesterday, I started tackling the horrible state of the yellow paint job on the front of the cabinet. After standing and staring at it for probably 15 minutes, pondering what approach I wanted to take, I decided to re-stencil and paint a second coat.

To re-stencil, I covered the front with Press'n Seal plastic film. For those that don't know what it is, it's a low tack, self adhesive plastic film for sealing food containers. If you have a roll of airbrush stencil film, that would work as well. The key is that you want an incredibly thin and easy to cut film. The adhesive on Press'n Seal is a bit on the light side, but if you are careful, it will do the job.



Note that Press'n Seal does not adhere at the very edge of the sheet well. Could be stretch from smoothing it on. Could be this is towards the end of the roll. I just went over the the edges with normal masking tape to ensure that it wouldn't pull up.

I took an X-Acto knife with a brand new #11 blade and traced the edge of the yellow. Light pressure is all that is needed to cut through the Press'n Seal. Even light pressure will leave a knife mark on the part, but since I'm painting over, I'm not super worried about it. The edge of the new paint layer will fill in any knife marks. Note here, it's key that any mistakes are into the yellow and not the blue. That way, the new paint covers any mistakes.

The rest of these will show some closer shots of crappy areas of the paint, so you can see a "before".









All trimmed and ready to paint.



I only trimmed out Ms Pacman and the banner line around the coin door. The ghosts "hands", right near Ms Pac were just too fine to cut out with Ms Pac cut out as well. I'm going to come back and do the ghosts as a second pass.

Now for the "after" pictures...









If you look closely, You can see where then runs on Ms Pac were, especially in her bow. There are a few places where I got a little bleed, but I came around with a wooden barbeque skewer wrapped in paper towel and cleaned them up. The sharp end will do very fine points, but can mar the surface. The blunt end did a very good job around the larger sections. When you get up close, the edges aren't quite as sharp as they would be with a good clean, single pass but overall it looks sooooo much better that I'm not going to complain... much,

--SS

I went through and re-stenciled both sides. I sanded down a couple of the worst runs and put another coat of paint on.





In doing the sides, I found that a slightly damp Q-tip will do clean up very well. The paint starts to set up in about 15 minutes and because there is already a bit of a ridge to the first coat, the Q-tip will follow the outline very well, if you are careful and go slow. I was able to correct all the bleed, and even a couple of places where the Press-n-Seal lifted while I was painting.

The sides are far from perfect, but compared to what they looked like before, I'm happy.

I've got the pink layer stencils applied. They seemed much easier to put on than the first layer. A second pair of hands, experience from the first layer, different application procedure... I'm sure they all played a part. Pink paint goes on this morning.







--SS

Wow, amazing job!

Got the pink layer done yesterday afternoon. Had to change out the exhaust fan filter first.



The state of the filter above also shows why PPE is important when painting in a booth, with any sort of sprayed paint -- but especially spray guns.

All dressed up and ready for the paint booth. Or maybe the grocery store... And before somebody comments, all the PPE was purchased long ago, before corona virus was a thing. In fact, its time to change the filters on my respirator, but that will have to wait. Luckily they are still doing fine with respect to paint.



It's pink!!!



So, a couple notes on the colors. First, the auto white balance on my phone screws with the colors, probably due to the LED floods and panels that provide the light in my garage. At some point, I'll see if I can get a better color rendition. Second, the pink darkens significantly as it dries. It is not nearly as bubblegum pink as it looks above.

This is immediately after removing the stencil. Paint is still pretty wet.



I did two coats of pink. I did all three sides with a first coat, then came back and did a second light coat. I didn't wait between coats, other than the time it took me to do the entire cabinet before coming back to the starting side for the second coat. In light coats, the paint seems well set by the time I made it back to that the second coat. The pink covered well and I didn't find any places where the yellow of blue showed through.

I removed the stencils as soon as I finished painting. Again, starting with the first side I painted, so the paint had maybe 15 minutes of set time. Even so, I got some pretty sharp edges on the paint layer and some places where I had very thin bits of paint standing up at the edge (hard to explain). I went over all the edges with a damp Q-tip and everything smoothed up nicely. Once the paint is set, it's actually pretty easy to work with. The damp Q-tip, with light pressure, would knock down sharp edges, but wouldn't really do much to the surface unless overly wet, or too much pressure. With a bit of practice, the Q-tip would just ride the pink edge, making it relatively easy to do.

I have to wait until at least tomorrow evening to do the black. I'm actually thinking that I'm going to cut the black stencils into sections, rather than try to apply the whole side at once and get everything to align. The black alignment is the most critical and I'm afraid, even with the alignment marks, that it will be impossible to get the sides to align well as a single sheet.

Looking sweet. Going to be a great conversation piece even when nobody is playing it.

Applying the black stencils took way way longer than expected, just like so much else in this project. I did opt to cut out the various pieces of the stencils.



The various pieces were applied individually to get the registrations as close as possible.



The smaller sections helped minimize the amount of repositioning necessary after application.



The large border pieces we a pain to put on, and in many cases needed a little stretching and flexing. Invariably this would result in waves in the material. Very little ones could be worked out, though they had a tendency to come back. I stressed about this for a bit and then figured out they were easy to fix.



An exacto knife inserted in the middle of the wave, putting a slice in it, allows it to lay right down without issue. Its pretty straight forward, though you want to take the slice a bit further back than you might think, if possible.



After slicing and pressing, I applied cellophane tape over the seam. This helped keep it from lifting up and helps to keep paint out.

I probably spent 10 hours on the black stencils and still didn't quiet get the registration right everywhere.

Yesterday morning, I masked off the little bits of the cabinet not covered by the black stencils.







You can see where the various seams between the various outer sections were. You can also see that I figured out that bubbles and creases in the film, anywhere other than the edges of stencil... they don't really matter. Don't stress over them. Get the edge registration right and don't stress the rest.

And then came the black....







I mentioned in an earlier post that the camera was misrepresenting the colors a bit due to the white balance. I took a picture with the white balance adjusted to be more representative of the actual blue colors though it's still not perfect as then the pink is a bit wrong.

Left is uncorrected. Right is corrected.


I'll have a good bit of touch up to do, unfortunately. With the yellow and pink, removing the stencil just about as soon as I could was the right thing to do. It left a decent edge that wasn't super pronounced. I learned that doing the same for the black was the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately, the black doesn't really adhere well until it starts to set up. As a result, the first sections I pulled also pulled some of the black paint.





Those are two of the worst and will definitely get fixed. Other areas just leave sort of a rough edge, like you would get when if you enlarged an hand inked drawing. I actually like the effect in areas, even though it's not entirely true to the original cabinet artwork. Not sure if I will try and fix those areas, both because I like it and because its not nearly as bad and will be more likely to cause more harm than good.

Of course I also found all the places I screwed up the registration. These were mainly on the right side of the cabinet, which not coincidentally is the first side it did.

It looks great in pictures. Less polished in person. I both pleased and annoyed with how it turned out. Considering that large parts of this project have been learning exercises for things I haven't done before, at least at this scale, I'm pleased that things worked as well as they did. My perfectionist nature makes me disappointed with the outcome as I know I could do better now. I'll take some more pictures of the oopses for a later post.

--SS

That is pretty. Didn't spend much time in video arcades growing up, but have many memories of Pac-Man consoles and tables everywhere, even in the lobbies of restaurants. All of that massive panel artwork is a lost experience these days.

Wow. That's a pretty balls-ey achievement - a full restore and cabinet rebuild. I am sure that most people won't notice the odd blemish, they probably left the factory with similar stuff. Certainly at glance viewing (I know pictures will hide some of it) that looks really nice. You should be more proud! I'm pretty OCD myself, but sometimes you have to take a step back and say to yourself "that is good enough"!
You should get it back together and enjoy the fruits of your labour (I'm British so you get my spelling!). During this lockdown time I wish I still had all my pinball machines, but I have to confess I preferred to restore them rather than play them, but that market got way too rich for my blood. I can barely afford a wrecked machine these days!

Thanks for taking time to document your progress, I for one have really enjoyed following it. Now makes me want to do one......