Our Playfield Rig

During the first pinball renovation we undertook, we struggled mightily with flipping a heavy playfield over on its side countless times. It's not possible to lay the playfield flat to work on it; you don't want to damage either the playfield parts or the art on the top, or the mechanics underneath.

So we came up with a number of different solutions: Rig Mach I was nothing more than a balanced playfield on top of two plastic sawhorses. Not very sturdy. Rig Mach II incorporated the use of some pipe fittings screwed on top of the sawhorses to allow the playfield to be rotated during renovation. This worked better, but the thumbscrews we used to hold the rotating shafts in place wore out their threads quicky, and the whole thing was unstable.

This led to our latest incarnation: Playfield Rig Mach III. The Mach III incorporates two very heavy metal sawhorses, to which we have bolted some pipe fittings that rotate and lock through the use of pipe unions. The playfield clamps into an L-bracket, and can rotate a full 360 degrees. This is the best design so far, and still fairly inexpensive to construct. There are many in the restoration community who have far better designs than this, but the Mach III works for us, and is able to fold away into a very small space (space being a strong consideration in our workshop).