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Hopefully this doesn't make any of you cringe... This cabinet was so out of square and I'll say this; the maker of this machine was in no way a cabinet maker. The sides were different lengths, a groove was missing on one side to make the back line up nicely. The gap at the door was so wide, the lock was almost useless.



No worries though. It's back together and more solid now than ever.



I removed the backflash as it was so warped and cleaned up the playfield an all of the parts. The backflash is much nicer with the layer of dirt removed. I may have to put a layer of plexiglass on it as Gameswat suggested.

yaksplat wrote: ↑Sun Mar 03, 2019 10:14 pm ………. the maker of this machine was in no way a cabinet maker.

Reminds me of my Grandma's response to being told a recently deceased friend's family had gone to The Co-op to do the funeral.

"The Co-op?" She snorted "His arse'll be hanging out in a fortnight"

BP

Looking better already. It took quite a bit of heat to flatten out the backflash. 300ºF in the oven. I started at 170ºF and increased at 20º increments until it would be soft enough to flatten. The paint on the backside is very delicate, so I lost a few flakes around the existing holes. I had to drill new holes through the backflash for all of the pins and screws as everything had shifted by a few millimetres.

Looking good so far. Far better in my opinion to preserve the original back flash than put in a copy. Well done!

Looks great, did you try touching up the paint from the back of the backflash? This can work well on small areas, but always add a top coat of matt white.

The look on the girl's face always makes me think she has either just stepped in something nasty or or she's tried the crunch and it tastes like something you stepped in.

That's why this will be handing out kit-kats and not crunchs. I thought about doing some painting on the back, but for the few small areas, it won't really be worth it to acquire the paint, match the colors and then get it perfect. If I leave it at is, there's some paint flecks missing and that's because it's old. If I paint it and it doesn't match perfectly, that will annoy the crap out of me. If it does start to bother me, I can always do it later.

Great job and as BF has said, better to keep the original than use a copy. Brave of you to use the oven method but by including the method it may encourage others to be equally brave.The idea of leaving the paintwork on the back as it is in case you can't match it I think is good too. Best to see if you can live with the aged look. Well done.

I think that apart from the temperature that you found necessary to bake it at, what is equally important is approximately how long before it was pliant.
And, did you place it in the oven paint up or down?
What process did you employ to even it out? Was heat and gravity enough or did you put something heavy on it?

I ask as I could imagine getting any of those steps wrong could easily nause it all up in spectacular fashion.
I think you were very brave and thank you for bearing the mantle of guinea pig on behalf of the hobby.

BP

So, as you can see in the earlier photographs, there was one corner that was cracked off and it was a pretty decent size and it was extremely warped. First thing I did was place down on a piece of paper, held it flat and traced it. At that point I had the original size. I had feared that the heat would potentially make the plastic shrink, which would be a complete disaster. I kept putting this piece back in the oven for about 10 minutes, which was long enough for the plastic to reach the temperature of the oven. Then I'd take it out and I'd lay it on the piece of paper and sandwich the piece between the counter top and a cutting board, putting my weight on it. The temperature would drop quickly and then I'd check the piece for size against the outline I took, and deformity. The size never changed, which was great. But it was still warped for many iterations. I kept doing this, over and over, while increasing the temperature until the piece was relatively flat. Once I determined that 300 was the temperature, I threw the whole thing in, left it for 10 minutes and then attempted flattening. It wasn't perfect, but worked well enough that it no longer looks deformed. All of the nail and pin holes were completely flat.

If I was to do it over again, I'd probably keep going higher and use two pieces of glass to sandwich the backflash. I'd place a 30# weight on the glass once I pulled it from the oven and then let it cool slower between the panes of glass. I'd suspect that it would flatten quite well in that scenario.

At one point I couldn't find my corner piece. It had fallen off of the rack in the oven and was sitting against the back wall, touching the bottom of the oven. I'm not sure how it didn't completely melt. But that could have been disastrous.

Wow, you did bight the bullet!
Well done, and thanks again.

BP

Please excuse my ignorance, but for further clarity what is 30# of weight? Pounds, kilos, tons? Thanks.

Somewhere on this forum, years ago, we looked at the method of flattening warped 78rpm records without affecting the grooves. If I remember correctly this was much like your "next time I do it" using glass on both sides (although I guess the temp would have been less).
Really well done, a ground breaking repair

Before Twitter made # into a hashtag it was shorthand for pound.

Thanks, perhaps Mr.PM would like to include this backflash flattening method in the tips and tricks section?

It is done.

yaksplat wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2019 2:07 pm Before Twitter made # into a hashtag it was shorthand for pound.

....in North America.

Here's what the key should look like.

Here's how that was determined:

And the dimensions, in inches:

Of course this is assuming that the tumblers are squished together with no gap. I'm guessing that about .005" need to be added per tumbler to allow for corrosion and surface imperfections.

Now to try it out and see if my brain matches reality

And now i've got a functional key. Blanks are on the way. But this will work in the meantime.

Now to get the Machine dealing out KitKats, instead of Crunch's. I'm just rebuilding the mechanism from scratch. Never used a candy bar as a dimension before..

You do some amazing work and are clearly very skilled... but I can feel the purists on the forum squirming in their seats as you remove one original part after another and make a new one.