Satomi San Diego Arrival

[emmadog]

Retr0bright goodness, before and during treatment. As you can see the difference is quite apparent. The pieces in the pic are still undergoing the process and it's been about 15 hours so far. By tomorrow morning it should be complete. My sophisticated set up consists of foil (not necessary) and a UVB light from a company called Repti Glo and is their highest UVB output bulb. The ideal wavelength for the bromine reversal is around 320 nm, and that is what this particular lamp puts out the most of. I bought it at a Petsmart for about 25 bucks. Of course the sun works well too but with a lamp the process can be done whenever. I also used the gel recipe since the one piece is large and I don't have a big enough container to immerse that part in plus that would use a lot of H2O2. In the future I will make a dedicated box out of all the leftover plexi I have and line it with adhesive mirror material. Or better yet, make mirrored panels that assemble into a box.

[MrGneiss]

Very Nice!!

[hanabi]

Wow that is looking super bright and clean already!!

[emmadog]

Here's a pic of the plastic trim on the machine as I received it before the whitening process and a pic of it after and reattached. Sorry about the low quality phone pic-I snapped it on the way out the door this morning. Anyway, the difference is significant and this took about 40 hours total to accomplish. It is now about as white as the laminate trim on the frame. Not bad considering 30+ years of yellowing.

[MrGneiss]

Wow, it looks totally different, nice!!

[emmadog]

As is typical with many of my restoration projects, I do a little on one machine then do something else on another. The Jan Ball Dragon was the only one that I focused on from start to finish.
I just redid the plastic accent strip that goes around the keyhole on my Satomi Robots so it was the San Diego's turn. I t was pretty beat up and the green metallic foil in particular was in bad shape.
First I wet sanded all the old paint off with 1000 grit then put down a base coat of white. I knew I wanted to recreate the metallic look of the green strips and not just paint it a regular old green. To do that I used adhesive chrome foil (which is a great product). A pic of this material can be seen on the other machine's accent piece in the last pic in an unpainted state.
Once the chrome is laid down a brand new x-acto blade is used to trim away the excess. Once that's done a q-tip or something soft can be used to burnish the chrome to bring out a nice shine.
I could have left it chrome as it's quite attractive but I wanted the original green. I broke out the airbrush and used Testors acrylic dark green pearl to put a nice even green hue down. The end result is hard to distinguish from the original. In the pics it's hard to see the metallic effect thanks to the less than ideal light due to energy saving bulbs.
For the red stripes I used acrylic again and the yellow and black stripes were done with enamel.
The paint's not yet dry in these pics but tomorrow I'm going to lay down a coat or two of semi-gloss to protect it and shine it up a little more.

[emmadog]

Here's a pic of the part after clear coating. Interestingly, I used Future Floor Wax to clear it with. Apparently it's been widely used in the modeling world for years as a clear since it's not a wax at all but a tough acrylic. It can be airbrushed straight from the container as it is fairly thin and has strong self leveling properties so no brush marks are left behind if it's brushed on. It dries in about an hour and cleans up with Windex. For this part I didn't use an airbrush-I simply poured it on and tilted to let the excess run off then set it up to dry. It brings out the green metallic nicely.
The main aspect of this post however is that I just got my hands on the schematics for this Satomi and as promised to all interested, they're free, all I need is your email addy and I'll send them in a zip file.

[Lt Teddy]

Thank You

For anyone that has an arepachi or is ever considering getting one I highly reccommend you get a set of the schematics. All of the arepachis are a little different inside but all work on the same principal. Everytime I have had mine in to work on they ask for a set of schematics. They are extemely expensive to have made and I know of no place to get any other than somebody paying dearly to get them. Thank you again Emmadog.

[emmadog]

The last parts I've redone. I mentioned some time ago that the San Diego would be my next machine to redo but I always find myself tackling other projects on various machines. Plus this machine is a lot of fun to play so I was reluctant to tear it down other than cleaning the ball tracks to prevent damage/dirt on the cel.
Ok, so what follows is the continuation after whitening of the lower marquee. The chrome strip with green and red trim needed fixing. It actually looked far worse than in the first pic. The colors were flaking off and the chrome itself looked like it had been etched.
To remedy this I sanded the surface smooth. I didn't have to remove all the old paint since I would be applying a chrome metal strip to the area that is adhesive. The surface just had to be smooth since the thin metal shows imperfections. The red and green trim lines are actually raised and that can be seen in the pic due to the thinness of the metal. Next I applied the material then trimmed it using a brand new x-acto blade followed by a good burnishing with a t-shirt to remove any wrinkles, etc.
I then masked off the trim areas and cleaned the surface with alcohol in preparation for painting. I airbrushed testors acrylic thinned enough so that the colors will go on as tinted clears so as to let the chrome beneath shine through. That required a few coats to achieve the desired depth of color. Once that dried the masking was removed and the whole strip was clear coated to protect the paint.
Next I am going to redo the red "Satomi" logo in metallic red as per the original, redo the green areas, and the orange "arrangeball" logo. I'll post pics as I go along.
First pic is of marquee as I received it
Second pic is after removing paint from trim
Third is after new chrome
Fourth is after clear coating. The white spots are reflected light and not blemishes on the colored trim lines. I spent about 6 hours at least on this to make sure there'd be no flaws!!