James’ Blog

DIY Plastics – Day 1

Posted on October 16th, 2006 by James.
Categories: Pinball.

Today I embark on the quest for the plastic fantasic.

That’s right kids, I’m going to attempt to make my own flipper plastics.

If MacGyver can blow up a castle with a popcorn kernel wrapped in selotape with a toothpick fuse, then I can make pinball plastics!

Step one. Search the internet for 600dpi scans of your pinball plastics

— 5 days later.. Square eyes bleeding… fingers, sore from typing…  —

Next I had to find somewhere that sold inkjet printable transparancys that are sticky on one side! After ages of searching in vein my girlfriend finally spotted an art shop in london called the London Graphic Centre. We went in and found a minion. He told us they didn’t have anything like that, but was very friendly and we ended up chatting about what kind of glues I could use to stick down regular printable transparancys without leaving huge air bubbles and misty layers of glue. As we were leaving the shop, minions friend showed up back from his break and we asked him of his thoughts.. “oh you want to use this stuff” he says, and pulls out a packet of sticky printable transparancy paper! WooHOO! 7 quid for 10 A4 sheets, not bad!

And here are the results of the print run:

Not to shabby eh! In our next installment we’ll be hunting for 2mm polycarbonate plastic! Stay tuned!

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