ROBOTRON (My first Williams game!)

Wolfinator

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I bought this beat up shell of a Robotron from a buddy of mine for $20 including a new 20' roll of black t-molding! He had bought it at a storage auction, planning on turning it into a m.a.m.e machine. $20 seemed like a good price until I started adding up all I'd have to buy:


Upper and lower coin doors
Bezel and Marquee
Control panel, cpo and all parts to go with 'em
pcb and wiring
leg levellers
lots of carriage bolts and other hardware
monitor
and everything else!

Oh well...I wanted a Robotron!
 

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As I began to sand down the sides, I realized that, having no legs on it for who knows how long had caused the plywood on the bottom to splinter and seperate! rather than try to glue it, I just pulled it off! Also, it was once painted as a Joust!
 

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Luckily, I used to work in a bodyshop, so I'm no stranger to bondo. I put a fair amount into both sides and the front of this badboy! God, that smell brings back shitty memories! Thankfully I don't have to inhale bondo for a living any more!
 

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Today, I got 2 nice coats of primer on. My original lazy-ass idea was to bring it this far, and then paint the black parts and wrap the rest in silver metallic vinyl. I was going to do the red and blue in vinyl as well. This idea would have cost me zero (I work in a sign shop) and it would have looked pretty good as well.

I decided I didn't wanna be heckled by everyone on here for doing it the wrong way...plus I need the practice for stencilling my Joust project next spring. So I have the stecils on order, and the silver paint will go on next weekend.
 

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I was unable to track down a nice bezel for a decent price, so I decided to try and make my own. I got a piece of tempered glass locally for $36. I matched the colors off my arcadeshop cpo and applied the vinyls to the backside of the glass...ended up looking pretty good once I got the spacing right!

I then applied the black vinyl over the top of the colors. I had to do it wet, rather than dry as I usually do. The dry method is prone to showing the squeegee marks through the glass. The shitty thing in this case, is that the colored vinyl lines made a good place for moisture to remain trapped, so it has taken 4 days so far of going back over it in spots and pressing it down tighter. It's looking alot better than the pics show. I will take a better pic once I get it home from work.
 

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I got a smokin' deal on a hacked-up control panel from a KLOV member. It took very little time to get the holes bondo'd up and the rusty plates wire-wheeled.
 

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Great work man, love the bezel idea. Wonder if it would have been easier to spray the black with paint? Just a thought, not knocking what you did. I'm thinking of doing similar things with my extra machines.
 
Great work man, love the bezel idea. Wonder if it would have been easier to spray the black with paint? Just a thought, not knocking what you did. I'm thinking of doing similar things with my extra machines.
My coworker suggested it, I was just worried it would flake off really easily. If the black vinyl had looked crappy, I was going to go that route...
 
I've got a robotron in the queue thats going to need just about as much work as yours will. Keep us updated on the stencils.

You plan to spray with rattle cans?
 
Today I sanded the primer (Zinsser) with 220, it was abit of a pain to sand...now I know! I sprayed on the black and abit later on I rolled on the Tremclad silver. The silver was really thin and rolled on super smooth! I backrolled it a few times to keep the metallic look of the paint nice and bright. I'll do a second coat of each color tomorrow, and hopefully my stencils show up this week sometime...
 

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Well, like the colored vinyl...did you cut it out by hand from large sheets, have it cut at a sign shop, etc? How did you do the layout so the lines were where they should be? Stuff like that.
 
I work in a sign shop, so it was easy to cut on a plotter. I just cut each color with and extra line from the previous color, and used that extra line as a registration mark to line it up with the previous color. I used 24" rolls of vinyl. By some stroke of luck, we already had all of the colors in stock!
 
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Found out yesterday that I have to re-paint my beautiful looking cabinet :(

After a week of curing, the silver still rubs off on your hand if you rub it with abit of pressure. It warns right on the can that this can happen, but I never noticed before...lol
It also says you cannot topcoat it with clear, or anything else. I'll have to put on another coat or two of Zinsser stain-block and then repaint it.

We don't have a Lowes around here, and nobody else carries the recommended Valspar pewter pain, so I had to search for an alternative.

What I found was this overpriced can of paint. If it works as good as alot of people told me it would, It should be beautiful when I'm finally done! Pity though, it looks really nice right now...as long as you don't touch it!
 

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Since you have to re-do it anyway, would it be worth your trouble to hit it with a clear coat regardless of the warning, just to see what happens? Worst care I guess, you have to strip it and start over.

Either way, bummer....
 
Since you have to re-do it anyway, would it be worth your trouble to hit it with a clear coat regardless of the warning, just to see what happens? Worst care I guess, you have to strip it and start over.

Either way, bummer....

Haha...yeah, I did it last night! It just mottled a few areas. The perfectionist in me wouldn't let it pass though!
 
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