Gottlieb Playfield Art Package & cnc code

[greatwichjohn]

I have been away from this group for months. Looking for someone in Australia or elsewhere to help out. I have the go ahead from Robert Fesjian & Steve Young to provide some new sample playfields. Working with Gottlieb LLC has been a dream of mine for years. Now all things are coming together with another couple of cnc choices in my area. The playfields will follow the direct ink process, which has been proven over the years.

I should be wrapping up my direct ink playfields this year for Sorcerer & Space Shuttle. Plus a number of Bally, Williams, & Stern titles, not yet seen. My printer has done an overlay for a Sorcerer which couldn't be inked.

I thought my problems with Wayne Gillard would end with planetary pinball. But it looks like I won't be doing any new product for Rick in the near future. So I will focus on direct ink for Stern, Bally, Williams, & others. Hopefully new playfields for Gottlieb LLC, which I now have a limited company: Great Pinball Limited. So that I can meet their product insurance requirements.

So the art can be anything Gottlieb, from em to electronic. I will compensate with some new playfields. Looking as a fall project so email me at greatwichjohn@hotmail.com

www.greatpinball.com

[Redback]

Hi John,

Great Company Name.
Great news.

Looking forward to updates,

Red

[ddstoys]

Gottlieb playfields how good would that be      What were you after from us?  Scans of good payfields or actua payfields etc?  Have a few hanging around the place 

[vinito]

I haven't been following pinball much lately, so for what that is worth.

But has anything besides "testing" happened with this direct ink thing yet in the past several years of poking at it?
You're still collecting art. I guess art has to be done before it gets printed. But does that mean you not received any workable, finished art packages from anybody yet?
Seems like Space Shuttle and Sorcerer (your two project titles from the very earliest days) should be wrapped up for sure. Seems like they should have been wrapped up some time ago actually.
I'm not complaining really, despite what may appear to be me stepping on a land mine maybe. It just seems that FOCUS might be the winning term of the day. In terms of completing a project, jumping around and letting yourself get distracted at every turn hasn't worked out for me ever. YMMV.

Anyways. Good luck with the efforts. Stay focused if you can. It would indeed be a good service for pinball enthusiasts if it ever gets some legs.

[Retropin]

Its an awful lot of work to scan the PF and then remake the artwork so its a high quality "printable" file .. and then the vectorised CNC routing path too.
Its normally something that is done by the reproducer ..OR.. $$$'s are paid for someone to sit in front of a computer for days and hours to actually do this work.
I have seen computer files for playfield overlays and the such... ive never seen one that is "correct"... all have had short cuts taken because fonts that are on file already are used etc... not the original texts that were mainly hand drawn.
If you want to be 100% sure of authenticity and accuracy, then the only way to ensure this is to do it yourself im afraid.
I cant honestly see anyone prepared to just hand over such a large amount of work for a playfield in return... i would want a fair amount of money to even contemplate handing over any of my reproduced artwork

[swinks]

I agree with some of what the guys are saying but I would love to be involved in the preservation of pinball and some of those classic playfields. I agree the hours of effort to reproduce the playfields graphically would be huge per playfield and you may want more than just 1 playfield in return. The work in drafting the playfield for cnc is also very important as both the front and back need to be considered which I am sure where things may go a little pear shaped.

Having my own cnc I understand the need for accurancy to then be able to repeat something especially a pinball playfield as your reference point for cutting and printing need to be the exact same point and if the playfield is rotated just a degree items at the opposite end of the playfield start be misaligned. Thinking about it, I think if you were going to reproduce a playfield and you want to minimise the in-accuracy of reproducing a playfield you would have to:
- take a photo or 2 of the graphic side with parts, then again without parts to allow the knowledge to pass on to another person who may be doing the artwork or the cad work
- take a photo or 2 of the underside with parts, then again without parts for the same reason.
- scan the graphic side
- scan the underside
Note: this should be all from one playfield so this playfield can be reproduced because if you scan one and then work from another for the machining things can start to get messy.
- then work can start on the graphics and cad, based on one single playfield.

So I don't know what John thinks but maybe if people want to help that if not supplying the playfield as much detail needs to be gained so guys know why a hole is for something and what to avoid. I am sure there were variations in the playfield from the original production of the day as press stamps would wear etc all contributing to mm variations etc.

Let us know what you need John and I sure people can help, I know I have a Totem playfield that I could get scanned both sides and send to you.

[multiball3]

Wish you all the luck with this - I'm a graphic artist so I know how intense reproducing artwork can get. There certainly is a market out there.

[greatwichjohn]

The art can be in photoshop, AI, Corel, etc. at 300 dpi or better. The cad files could be done here comparing the art package with a worn out playfield. The main thing I need is a good art package, in return the person would get 2 playfields (maybe more).

I talked briefly with Gary Stern at Texas Pinball Festival, about inkiing & clearing playfields which they have had problems doing. Haven't heard from him since, & I have learned from my mistakes over the first 2 years. Also people have destroyed $50k inkheads, so you need to be carefull!