Painting the Fightstick (With Krylon or Vinyl Dye)

Tech Talk
1

**Edit: Feel free to post your painted SE/TE or whatever project in this thread. Provide tips on your experience or any questions. If ya mess up, it’s cool cuz then maybe someone can learn from your mistakes like I hope others learned from mine. Let us know what you did, what paint you used and anything you learned from it. :tup:

Krylon Guide
http://pages.videotron.com/thief/

Vinyl Dye Guide
http://www.gideontech.com/content/articles/202/1
**

Spraying my Madcatz Fightstick SE down now. 90% of the entire thing perfect. Looks beautiful, except for three drips side by side on the front of the case. All the guides say they will eventually vanish, these pooled up and dried like that. Now the drips themselves are darker than the rest of the work, and are very noticeable. I do not think they are going to vanish on their own.

Sanded it down with 800, then 600 grit as I would with regular spray paint and respraying does nothing. It’s so much darker than the rest of the work that it’s totally visible. Kind of dissapointed in this stuff. (Krylon Fusion)

Spray paint, when sanded down, at least covers up when resprayed. This stuff won’t. Not as “simple” as everyone raves about it. The stuff is so thin I can still see the lettering on the plastic. I thought it’d be a little more effective at painting than this. 4 coats of it and it’s as if the last one wasn’t there.

What can I do?

Edit: Apparently Krylon Fusion is NOT Vinyl Dye. Like 3 different places on this forum set you up to think so, but it’s not. I just ruined the damn case. All Krylon is is a Vinyl Dye wannabe. Regular paint that adheres to plastics better. No wonder the damn drip didn’t “seep” into the plastic.

Let it be known here, that Krylon Fusion, regardless of what the guy at the damn auto parts store tells you, is NOT vinyl dye. Why is this topic so unheard of with people? I went to three different auto parts stores, and did searches on many forums and everyone reccomended Krylon as Vinyl Dye, when it’s not. Now I can’t use Vinyl Dyde ever, ever, ever on my case cuz it’s been painted on.

Maybe this thread will be of use to someone. I got sanding to do. -_-

2

Dude, that sucks. You should learn the guy at the auto store a thing or two. Good luck on fixing it. If you can’t get it off to be able to use the dye, maybe you could get a primer and go over it a couple of times and then reapply the color coats with a different spray paint brand.

3

The bright side, since you just painted your stick, is you can always sand it down and prime it and paint it like normal. I was told that stuff was Vinyl Dye too. I picked up a can, saw it wasn’t and then got it anyway because I thought it would work on my project. The paint just did not hold up to abuse at all. I don’t see what’s any better about it than any other paint.

4

You have pictures?

5

Managed to wet sand the area with the drip with some paper and it’s done. I got pictures for all the phase. So when I’m done with it all I’ll post up pics.

All in all, the Krylon doesn’t look too bad. It’s a good looking paint, and it’s made for plastics, so it won’t chip like regular paint. For a mistake, it could have been worse. Just after all the reading on vinyl dye I’ve been doing, I was really excited to work with it. Poo.

But I’ll post pics when it’s done. Oh, and if you sand the plastic before ya do it (Don’t have to), but if you wet sand it with some 600 grit before you spray it… comes out with a piano like gloss. Not hard to do tbh. Just more time spent.

6

^^ looking forward to the pics. Would be great if you could post the steps you took to get it all done as well.

I’ve been looking at some guides for vinyl dye but haven’t found anything specific to arcade sticks (mainly computer parts). So would be helpful to have a more relevant guide.

7

Not really much of a guide. Turns out Krylon isn’t too bad at all. It’s basically regular spray paint made for plastics. Stuff bonds decently with enough coats and given time to dry. I definitely didn’t do this perfect, so don’t take this as some kind of gospel. Nobody in my neighborhood knew anything of paints, so I had to go off Google and luck myself. ^o^

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/8071/stage1u.jpg

Basically cleaned off the entire thing with soap and water. Making sure to clear it of dust and any kind of debris. At this point I didn’t know anything about sanding or priming, and I thought I was using Vinyl dye so I did no kind of prep before hand. Knowing what I know now, I might have sanded it down a bit with some really fine paper, like 1500 grit to smoothe down the plastic for a smoother first coat. Krylon works decently without it though, but it would have helped.

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/894/stage2.jpg

Coat it about 75%, like all the guides on the net say, go side by side. I liked to spray away from the project slightly and then ONTO the project. Basically start spraying off the case then onto it, and then when you stop spraying be off the case. The beginning and end of a spray are more likely to leave “speckles”. If you’re using Vinyl dye this probably is a non-issue (I hate myself sometimes lol)

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/9923/stage3.jpg

At this point you can now cover it up with a decent coat, remembering to go side by side and ensuring proper time between coats. Wait for the thing to dry. My can said 15m, but it’s still cold out in my garage, so I didn’t give it the time I think it needed. I ended up doing this by overdoing the front and not waiting till it dried.

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/603/stageoops.jpg

Ugly isn’t it? I was pretty angry at this point because the case itself was looking good as hell by this point. This is where I waited nearly an entire day for it to “soak into the plastic” and realized that it wasn’t Vinyl dye. Normally with Vinyl dye you would leave this alone and it wouldn’t be an issue. However since I’m using special paint and nothing more, this means I had to sand the entire front of the case down.

Avoiding this would have been preferred. Don’t spray too close to the thing. Make sure you’re nice and dry before you do another coat, and don’t linger on a spot. Make sure you start and finish off the case. In this case I think Is tarted and ended in the same spot, (Since I go left to right and back).

No pictures, but basically I took some 1500 grit sandpaper and dry sanded that part down, trying to get off the biggest part of the drip down as close to the plastic as I could. Then after some time with that, took some 600 grit sandpaper and wetsanded it (sanding it down with some water applied. I actually did it by a sink.)

The entire thing disappeared, and now I was cool to respray the front. This time being one patient mofo. :slight_smile: Do yourself a favor and get vinyl dye if you do your case, you won’t have to deal with this BS.

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/6108/turbopaint.jpg

The turbo area was fun. It’s very, very easy to take apart. Just take it out of the case. Don’t have to unplug anything. Just unscrew the side screws to remove the plastic housing out of the case, and the 4 metal screws on the PCB to remove it from the turbo housing itself.

There will be a bunch of plastic pieces. The Guide button pops off, so does the turbo button. The plastic “lights” are one big plastic rig that pops right out if you tap on the front with a pen or something. Easy mode. :tup:

In the end, I had some light chipping on the top “thin” part of the case where the panel ends around the edge of the frame. Not alot of coats there (I was terrified of getting drips again! lol), but I can retouch it by spraying into a small area and soaking a Q-tip I hear. Sorry that it looks so ugly in the final pics. The chipping happened when I was putting the plate back on the case. Takes seven days for Krylon to “cure” so another -10 points for not using Vinyl Dye! lol

Well this went on longer than I think it should have considering that I’m not a pro and this is a lamo guide. I think my end result turned out pretty ok. :slight_smile: Thanks to all the people who helped me make this awesome stick. It’s 5am and I’m tired so I’ll edit the post with proper credit when I can.

If you do a vinyl dye job though, post a proper guide for those that want to paint their SE. It was fun as hell, and really makes your kit feel special. :slight_smile: Unless you like white, in which case more power to you.

Happy moddin’!

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/3717/finishedtop.jpg

LS-32-01 /w Seimitsu PS-14-KN’s. Artwork Printed on Lamilabel by Kinkos.

8

Wow! Nice job, looks really awesome!! :lovin:

9

awesome! :open_mouth:

10

Thanks for letting the community know. Great job on recovering those drip spots and killer looking stick!

11

Welcome to the Krylon Krew. 8)

http://kimcicle.net/images/irohastickdone.jpg

12

That’s a nice color of Krylon there. :smiley: Did you clearcoat yours or let it be? A piece of me thinks I should clear the stuff, but I’m not really sure if the Krylon will have a negative reaction to it.

But I worry about it chipping. How long before the odd paint smell leaves it too?

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I let it be, which was the wrong choice really. I think I want to clearcoat it too, but if I do I’ll probably get all the paint off and redo it. I had a bit of excess paint on it that was rubbing off so I used some rubbing alcohol to take off a few layers (but accidentally took off too much in 2 spots on my stick, whoops)

The odd paint smell was gone after 2 days. It’s chip resistant after 7 days, but I couldn’t wait that long.

14

I’m thinking about using krylon too. So what I should do is sand it down then spray how many coats on there? Then finish it off with some clear coat? Going to paint mine green :slight_smile:

15

lookd good man I might give this a shot

16

Go for VHT. It is actual vinyl dye. Duplicolor is kinda close and they also sell a plastic prep coat that will make the plastic more porous.

17

Here is a nice guide on how I SHOULD have done it with Krylon.

http://pages.videotron.com/thief/

He paints the top part of his laptop the same colored red. :slight_smile: Uses clearcoat and all. This will help you better if you choose to paint your case with this stuff.

http://www.plastikote.com/plastikote/indust/template.jsp?searchcode=HMP&product=plasticBondEnamel&t=2

Just got recommended this stuff too. Check the “Where to find” on the bottom to find a store near you. Wish I had used this earlier. :slight_smile:

18

Thanks for this post I plan on modding my SE when i get it and this REALLY helped.

19

i’m going to start on my project today.

20

Good stuff man! I can understand your frustration because I messed up on the red part of my TE.

All in all, that is one sexy SE! :smiley: