A lot of pinball fanatics are modifying their Stern Godzilla pinball machines with clear pop bumper bodies, bases, and skirts from our store. This is mentioned several times in the Pinside mod thread but it talked about extensively in this post.
and deselect the PopCap (14) as most people won’t need a clear popcap.
Then click “Add Selected Items to Cart” button under the parts list.
Checkout via out shopping cart system
Note: I do not sell the GZ specific popcap nor do I sell the flying saucer mod some people seem to have. This is one of the recommended mods; but I have no affiliation nor do I have a Godzilla machine. You might be able to find other UFO vendors using this link.
Honestly; I’ve been neglecting my Stern Star Trek Pinball machine. I got it new-in-box and didn’t do anything to protect the outlane hole which feeds the ball trough. My machine has seen some play at various conventions like Texas Pinball Festival since I purchased it back in 2016. The issue is that the steel balls tend to wreck havoc with the clearcoat and wood under the clear coat. I helped mitigate this problem shortly after unboxing by installing a set of Cliffy protectors. At the time; Cliffy did not offer an outhole protector so my ball return hole did get any love. A couple of weeks ago; I looked and noticed some wear on my outhole. 🙁 Stern Star Trek Outhole wear
You can see definite wear on the front and left side edges. It’s not massive; but enough to warrant some protection. I debated getting a new Cliffy outlane protector; but it only protects the front side from wear. As a result; I decided to try my hand at designing my own protector which would be cut out of 2mil adhesive Mylar (polyethylene) using my new Vinyl cutter.
I began by tracing the area with tracing paper so I could get the basic layout easily into the computer. I didn’t have a lot of room to work with so I decided to bring the mylar up to the black keyline just above the out hole. This would give me a little extra grip and make it easy to hide within the art work. I also decided I would wrap the mylar around the outlane hole pinching it between the ball trough and the underside of the Playfield. Finally; I would protect all three sides of the outhole to the metal ball guide seen the foreground. Finally; I decided to protect the outside corners of the PF in a similar way to protect the edges leaving cutouts for the legs of the metal ball guides so they wouldn’t “wrinkle” when the guides were re-installed. This was my initial design – and remains the my property (read: copy protected): Stern Star Trek Outhole – Mylar
My design choices were to add the round corners created by the endmill when the Playfield was created and then add rounded Vs on the lines were the mylar would roll onto another perpendicular surface. This should aid in preventing wrinkles from forming at those junction points.
With the design created; there wasn’t anything else to do but cut it on the vinyl cutter and install it. It’s going to be very hard to photograph this crystal clear mylar but hopefully you can see it if you click on the pictures to get a higher rez image. Here’s the top surface with the mylar installed: Stern Star Trek Outhole – Top
You can barely make out the outline of the mylar along the black keyline as designed. Additionally you can see the mylar where it wraps around the outhole sides and the two sides of the PF. Hear’s a close-up of the mylar wrapping around the PF: Stern Star Trek Outhole – Wrap Around
Finally; the underside of the pf; where the mylar wraps around to be pinched by the ball trough: Stern Star Trek Outhole – Ball Trough
I reinstalled the ball trough, all the ball guides, and put it back together. No issues what-so-ever with the installation and the mylar has no noticeable impact to the ball. Additionally; this should help minimize any additional damage to the clearcoat near the outhole.
About 3 months ago; we announced on Pinside that we entered into a distorbution agreement with Pinball.Center to begin carrying their Frosted Clear drop targets for modern Stern, retro Williams, and old school Data East Pinball machines.
You can use these Drop targets anywhere you want to backlight them with LEDs but they have much better resiliency than the 3D varieties which were available a couple of years ago. Unlike the 3D printed varieties; these are injection molded out of Polycarbonate (Lexan) in Germany for maximum resilience until man can mass produce Transparent Aluminum.
To answer the question of ultimate resiliency; we sent a set of these drop targets to @vid1900 on Pinside to put them thru some checks. He reports that after 2 months of heavy commercial use, and over 900 games none of the sample drops have been damaged. You can read more about his honest review on Pinside.
We currently offer three styles of these “clear” drop targets in our store:
Already in Vid1900’s thread, several customers have begun to show how these drop targets enhance normally dark areas of their pinball machines: Fytr on Pinside outfitted his Iron Maiden with our Clear drops. See more on Pinside. roar on Pinside outfitted his The Walking Dead with our Clear drops but he went the added route of installing the stock decals over the drops. See more of Roar’s work on Pinside.
As expected; these drop targets are available for immediate shipment in our webstore: Pinball Drop Targets
A little over a year ago; we began distributing Transparent / Translucent Pop Bumper Bodies manufactured out of Germany by Pinball.Center. We announce back then that we were the exclusive distributor for the North American American Market. These transparent pop bumper bodies are available in 9 modder friendly colors and should fit most modern Pinball machines:
Bally from 1988+
Williams from 1976+
Stern (including modern)
Data East
Sega
These pop bumper bodies were imported from Pinball.Center and will ship from Austin, TX to any North American address.
Lately many people have been asking me when we’ll restock Clear Bodies instead of the frosted Clear we now offer. This is best summed up by this response:
I can’t commit at all on the Clear Pop Bodies; here’s the reason:
I was running low; so I ordered some more Williams Clear Drops, some GID Star posts, and 150 Clear bodies from Pinball.Center so I wouldn’t run out.
The Clear Bodies arrived in the frosted appearance:
Pinball.Center basically said I could return them; but they had no idea when (or if) they could fix their vendor to get them in Clear. I wanted to be upfront and honest with their appearance and didn’t want to leave no options for those people so I added the new color and put the Clear Out-Of-Stock. If you look at Pinball.Center’s original product photo – you’ll see that they pretty much consider the two equivalent. http://www.pinball.center/en/shop/pinball-parts/playfield-parts/bumper-parts/2420/pop-bumper-body-transparent-03-7443-5
As a result; I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get true Clear again.
When I’m ready to reorder (maybe in Feb 2019); I’ll ask again – but I wouldn’t hold my breath for future stock.
About 8 months later; I announced the immediate availability of translucent pop bumper skirts. At this time they were only available in translucent Red and transparent Clear:
Finally, to round out our Pop bumper products; we announced our own version of the Pop Bumper Thingys available in both silver and gold glitter. Both products are laser cut here in our facility in Austin, TX and gold is an exclusive color available only from our webshop. Because these are laser cut here; we can customize the design with any color acrylic available. If this interests you; please contact us.
When I first got my Revenge From Mars from a local Pinhead; the fan was clogged with dust and grime. At the time; I simply cleaned the fan, removed the sticker, and added some oil to the bearings. This lasted about 3months before the fan began to make some horrible noises because the bearings were shot. I “lived with it”; but it remained on my todo list.
For years; I had watched threads about Pin2k in Pinside… always feeling a little guilty I had not eliminated the risk that my CPU fan would die… overheat the cpu… and put my RFM in jeopardy of force converting to NuCore or Pinbox. Today was the day I vowed to resolve that noisy fan.
First; I did not want to buy NOS (new old stock) of some 50mm fan made back in 2000 or some china knockoff that wouldn’t last another 18 years. I wanted a high quality fan with very little noise; but a good performer. I’ve grown to like the Noctura brand of fans because they aren’t cookie cut china knock offs. Noctura does not sell a drop-in-replacement for 50mm fans. Going smaller usually means less air flow with a higher “whine” because the fan blades have to go much faster to move more air. So I decided that I was going to try and use the NF-A6x25 FLX 60mm fan:
and build an adapter to fit the larger fan over the existing heatsink. This blog entry documents my solution, provides a TAPR/NCLed DXF for my adapter, and links to a Shapeways implementation of my adapter my fellow pinball enthusiasts to use.
First, I removed the CPU box from my RFM and pulled out the existing CPU heatsink: Stock Pin2k CPU Fan/Heatsink
Once I had the CPU heatsink free; I unscrewed the old FAN from the heatsink. This was done for two reasons;
I need the heatsink to take caliper measurements in order design a 60mm to 50mm bracket.
Eventually; I’d toss the worthless 50mm fan – but wanted to keep it incase I couldn’t find a working solution.
Obviously; the 60mm fan wouldn’t fit within the 50mm cavity of the heatsink; so I knew I wanted to use some 1/4inch clear Acrylic as an “adapter”. I went into qCAD resulting in a DXF file which I could then send to my laser cutter. I wanted to reuse the 50mm fan/heatsink screws and the 4 qty Vibration-Compensators provided in the Noctura kit. My second proto resulted in success and looked like this: 60 to 50mm Fan Adapter
Reusing the 4 qty 50mm countersunk heatsink screws; I attached the clear acrylic bracket to the top of the heatsink. Then I put the 4 qty Vibration-Compensators provided in the Noctura kit thru the acrylic bracket and into the NF-A6x25 fan. The whole assembly fit together quiet nicely. 60mm Fan Adapter – Test Fit
I carefully; reinstalled the fan-sink combo back onto the cpu and socket. This was a little tricky because the 60mm fan is bigger; but as you can see the whole contraption fits well: 60mm Fan Adapter – Motherboard Install
Conveniently; my Pinball 2000 motherboard had a FAN header right next to the cpu socket; so I simply attached the CPU fan’s 3pin PWM connector to that unused mobo connection: 60mm Fan Adapter – Fan Header
I powered up the Pin2k system on my bench with both the original and the new fan connected. !That old fan really needed to be replaced! This new fan is ultra quiet; I don’t think you can hear the fan over the PSU fan even when the box is open. You won’t be able to hear the fan at all when its in the backbox behind the backglass. Success!
A customer of mine graciously agreed to sell me his Shooter housing decal from aurich‘s Alternate decal set; as a result, I was able to finally finish my custom shooter housing and knob.
custom 50th Anniversary Shooter Knob – Stern Star Trek
I had a shooter housing custom powder coated LE blue and installed the Decal. The knob is 3D printed at Shapeways from my custom design:
in polished Nickel and I powder coated it LE blue to match the housing.
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of our Star Trek: The Next Generation Popcaps for the 1993 Williams Pinball machine by the same name.
This Popcap kit comes with three high quality Popcaps made of all metal, Zinc Alloy construction and feature a highly polished raised metallic plating for the insignia with a black enamel for the cap’s background. The kit comes with two round caps and one “cut down” cap to fit under the STNG’s beta ramp.
Go from this:
to this:
In addition to the metal popcaps; the kit features a set of laser-cut acrylic Undercaps in your choice of colors. The stock kit offers the Undercaps in uniformed colors – IE one red (Command), one yellow (Engineering), and one light Blue (Science). There are also options to go All Red, or all Purple Undercaps to create a specific look for the game. For lighting; the kit comes stock with a 4-SMD #555 comet LED lamps but offers an upgrade to the 11-SMD popbumper LEDs in either Purple, Red, or uniformed colors. We actually offer two versions of the uniformed color 11-SMD configuration – the first being standard Blue:
with the other intended to match Troi’s uniform color: .
Comprehensive, step-by-step installation instructions are included in PDF form on our product page. This PDF also feature modification instructions for the BriteMods’ BriteCap EVO LEDs as they are the recommended LED product to use with these Popcaps.
Check out KnockerLover’s independant review of our Popcaps on Pinside in his STNG Full Title Modding Thread which is a very impressive read on it’s own. He decided to go with an 11-SMD, all purple configuration which looks stunning when combined his re-imagining.
Pinball-Mods.com is pleased to announce we have reached an agreement with Nycon to distribute his laser etched decals for the Star Trek: The Next Generation Pinball machine by Williams in time for the 30th Anniversary and exclusively for the North American Market (USA & Canada). This 18 decal set will provide a much needed face lift for the two VUKs, several brackets, and the three flipper bats in this game. Each decal set is laser etched by Nycon in Germany out of high-quality brushed aluminum decal material to reveal the black plastic underneath.
The decal set dresses up the Left and Right Vertical UpKickers (VUK):
Decals for all three brackets and the spinner:
Flipper-Bat Toppers are also included for all three flippers:
For more information; please see Nycon’s thread on Pinside.
