Today I want to give a precious hint about a foil called stretch-wrap.
A product that many of you might have used and others might never heard about.
If you pick cabinets regulary you have the problem to transport them and even if most of them are scratched and harmed we should care not to damage this old games anymore.
Some of you use blankets (which is also not a bad way) but I think the best overall-solution is to wrap the cabinet.
Especially if you plan to store the game for a indefinite time you cannot do anything better than to wrap THE ENTIRE CABINET, from all sides, with stretch foil.
My technique is to apply cardboard on the corners and the surfaces which will held in place with proper wrap of stretch foil.
That got 2 very important effects:
First off all the cab is perfectly sealed. If you did a proper wrap-job from all sides, the machine is not only saved from dust, it is even waterproof.
The second thing is that the cardboard adds a little bumper-layer to the cab that not even saves the surfaces, edges and corners of the cab - it also saves your flat or house from collissions between the cabinet and walls or door frames when you bring the game in your game-room or basement.
Also - you can lay the game on just every side you want and the wheel-barrow cant scatch the cab.....I always go with a wheel barrow.
I wrapped my first 3 games I picked the perfect way but more I went lazy and picked them just they way the was.
Now that I pick arround 25 games I realize again that being lazy is the biggest mistake you can make.
If you got helping hands from you friends, never guess them to care for your games the way you do, I had that problem 3 days ago when I picked the last lot of machines.
We DID make a slightly wrap-job, but only with the foil but without cardboard and I already regret it.
It saved the game from the rain.....but the foil alone does not protect the game from hits or scratches.
For the future I going to cardboard/strech-foil-wrap every single game again.
That is the simple explaination why stetch-wrapping is the arcade-collectors best friend....
SO HOW EVER COULD SUCH A PERFECT THING BE THE WORST ENEMY OF OUR BELOVED VINTAGE-MACHINES???Believe it or not, that foil is so extremly elastic that it can scrunch a cabinet with ease.
Usually stretch-foil got a elasticity-rating of 200% but you can stretch good products up to 500% before the foil collaps and rips.
So lets make a little calculation:
I wrap a box all around with a force of 10kg (and to pull with 10kg is not a big performance for guys that play around with 100+kg machines), the wrapping applies a pressure of 10kg on the box.
Now we dont stop wrapping after one layer, we going to wrap the entire box and do that using 10 layers....we now have 10 layers with a pressure of 10kg each layer which results in a total pressure of 100kg.....
Who would lay a weight of 100kg on his cabinet, especially on the big side-surfaces which got no support inside?
The biggest problem occurs when I cabinet got
no back-door!
The back-door supports the 2 side-panels from being pushed towards one another buy the stretch-foil and break to the inside of the cabinet.
There exists a picture on the web.
It shows a plole-position cabinet that got no back-door which has been wrapped until one of the side-panels collapsed under the huge pressure of the wrapping.
It did not happen to me yet, but it made me reconsidering the mechanical forces of an elastic foil that is applied in multiple layers.
I think its worth sharing before one of our members runs into that problem and stating afterwards "I saw that happen before on a picture on the web"
If I find the picture I post it, if anybody of you guys know that picture, please provide it.
