HOW TO MAKE A PINBALL MACHINE: UV Printing Playfields 

I had never even heard of UV printing til you introduced it to me!

this is dang exciting

I had the same issue printing an art project on a CMYK printer for school. Besides matching the ICC color profile, you can simply boost the saturation or brightness/contrast on the artwork. I did two prints, and the second print had higher satiration in the file and printed way better and cloaer to what I imagined.

Doesn’t matter if you’re in 3 years. You’re pioneering your way through something you’ve never done before. The first trip is always a long haul.

What. A. Legend.

Ohw man, i'd like to see that on my Rokr Pinball playfield.

Beautiful! Good job. Looks great.

Pretty interesting process .. thanks for sharing

looks really cool

Amazing process to have captured. Thank you Steve and KKP for capturing this valuable info for us and future generations.

A thin coat of clear prior to printing may have made the results even better. Looks like the wood was absorbing some of the print.

22:44 Yeah, perfect. Saves me doing those tests! Thankyou.

An impressive facility and some impressive equipment! Large scale printing is such an amazing process; wow! That, and the clear coated playfield looks shiny and professional - still can't wait to see it with the inserts and all lit up.

🥳🥳 BRAVO ! Great job 👍🏻 Always a pleasure to watch your videos Steve. Laurent (France)

Really starting to live and breathe, now. Great to see, Steve!

Fantastic project, I´ve been binging all of the videos from the start. Can't afford it, have no room for it (building or storage wise) but I find the whole thing very intriguing and satisfying to watch. Keep up the good work!

I’ve been loving watching this journey from Oz. Myself I’m into my second virtual pinball build (it’s in its third major update now) since 2017 so understand the journey, joy / exploring options and mine has been all been hand made and built at home, except my artwork printing and a few parts. Your videos make me want to add a real one now to my projects. Can’t wait to see a video of it in action.

Man that final product really pops! Great video, extremely informative

As to the playfield print being less saturated than expected, you need to match the ICC profile in photoshop to the printer for the RGB to CMYK conversion to work correctly (and even print media and ink can affect what ICC profile to use.) That's a whole rabbit hole to go down though and if the final result you got worked for you than do what works! Maybe something for the future though.

I hope you put all this info into a book so I can buy it and make my own :)

nice

Watching your progression, especially on your clear lessons has been fun to watch. You have made great strides, and I'm impressed. I take it for granted on this from years of mistakes, and lessons, and your playfield is really looking fantastic. Congrats Steve, and kudos to you on a beautiful work of art. What a great job after so much frustration. I will be in that mode when I start mpf. We just have different areas of struggle.

I've been following the project since (nearly) the beginning, and just so happen to live in the Salt Lake area. Can't wait for you to set up for some playtesting, and for me to finally get to see this baby in person. Incredible work Steve!

Dude, I don't think I've ever been so excited to watch a video! Now excuse me for the next 26 minutes...

Was hoping to see you at expo.

Here's comes my insanely long comment - you knew this was coming! Awesome video, incredible results, congrats!!! I think what you've achieved is amazing and probably good enough, but I can see there is opportunity to make it even better. I agree that the clear base, two whites, then artwork looks best of the variants you tried, it came through in the video for me. And that Vanguard UV printer matches the size description that CPR mentioned, "two car garage". As nice as that printer is, I can't help but wonder if there aren't even nicer 7 or 8 color printers with 2 or 3 additional ink colors that can increase the color gamut. Like the operator commented, CMY is a limited gamut and they can't recreate brighter neon colors without more ink options. It's hard enough to find a quality shop with a good printer, so you've already hit the jackpot there, but yeah there might be even better options out there. Of course, I have questions. Is your monitor/PC/software color calibrated. I don't think you've ever mentioned color calibration before. It could be that your monitor is artificially making colors look more vibrant. I'm sure that KPP's UV printer is highly calibrated for accurate results. You should not only color calibrate your monitor, but apply the printer's specific color gamut profile to your workflow to simulate the output. That way WYSIWYG. If you don't have color calibration tools, you can get them for for a couple hundred or less, and KPP should be able to provide you the printer's color profile files to use in your software. It's weird when you fist apply the output color profile, all of a sudden what you see on your monitor looks dull, as it simulates the printing process results. By using that workflow, you can then adjust your artwork to better achieve your desired results. CPR mentioned laying down each color separately, each as a separate file. I think that matters more when emulating comic book style art. But you should at the very least separate your top black layer into a separate file. That way you can expand the black outlines a few pixels, and when it prints it will truly be overlapping your white and color layers. So you would print white 1, white 2, CMY colors, then black, so at least 4 files/printing passes. Did KPP use the varnish ink? If used, most likely it was as a topcoat. I think the varnish can help prevent color bleeding when you apply your clear coat, I read that somewhere years ago. That's awesome that you didn't have any color bleeding. I also wonder if they could do a varnish base coat to further seal the wood before printing colors. I don't really know if any of that is feasible or would even work well, but worth asking about. I did notice that you could see the thickness of the UV ink, primarily on your inserts when the light hit the topcoat, you could see ridges in the reflections. I wonder if they could print the clear varnish on top of the inserts just in the clear areas, to keep the ink thickness level across the insert. You've got 2 layers of white and at least 1 layer of color/black on your inserts, so that's at least 3 layers thick, maybe 4 if you separate out your black layer. I'm surprised that showed up in the topcoat reflections, but it did. Perhaps 2 or 3 layers of clear varnish ink in the non-printed areas would alleviate that. Not sure if they can do that, but worth asking. If they say yes, it might be best to interleave these with the other layers, i.e. white 1, varnish 1, white 2, varnish 2, color, varnish 3, black, and then a full varnish topcoat across everything. Thank you so much for producing this content and sharing your results. And kudos to KPP for letting you film behind the scenes. If I don't find a local printer in the Atlanta area that meets my needs, they will be at the top of my list.

To avoid white ghosting use "overprint" settings.

So how close are we from some company offering to exchange a worn playfield for a newly printed one?

Great to see the process you went through on the playfield print. I may use that method. What process did you use for the cabinet art? Would you do it that way again or UV print the cabinet before assembly?

I really enjoy these types of videos you do where your at a location. It was very interesting to actually see the print place and the work being done rather than you just telling us and leaving it upto our imaginations ha ha Im curious are will you be adding toys to the playfield? I dam well hope so. If so how will you be making them ?

Is it possible to prime it white and seal the whitewood before running it through the CNC machine for the cuts? That way you can put down multiple layers of white and almost eliminate the wood grain before UV printing

have u consider TWO color prints with 2 white prints?

CMYK will never pop as hard as silkscreen.