Saturday, January 11, 2014

Am I anal?

Why yes, yes I am.  So I took my usual friday trip to pinball life in huntley.  I'm sure I've mentioned this before, I'm spoiled living only 5 miles from there.  I was motivated to go because I won the T2 LED mod on the spooky pinball podcast.  Do I have a T2?  No, but you never know, I might get one someday.  Terry had my parts ready, I pet his dog who probably thinks I'm family at this point, and $100 later I was on my way.  I bought 2 williams flipper assemblies with the standard solenoid size, about 50 clear posts (10% discount on top of the already deep discount for picking up in person), and a couple lane guides.  Also needed a new skirt for my pop bumper on black knight so I picked up 4 because they're so cheap it's good to have extras (can't beat 33 cents a piece).


I chose data east lane guides because I like the clear, and the posts could come in handy if I decide to mount plastic art over the top, and they have nice steep angles for blasting the ball across the flippers.  Also at $6 a pop how can I say no to that, surely cheaper than trying to get custom ones lasercut out of aluminum.
http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=3202

Now although I could probably plop the lane guides onto the playfield and eyeball it, I like to measure thrice and cut once so I went ahead and modeled it up so  I could put it in my assembly.  Hey, you never know, I might do another pinball layout and if I do the grunt work up front it will make it easier in the future.  I'm also trying to go clear on as many items as I can since I won't have inserts.  Yes I will have GI (that's not hard to do, add 6V to a bunch of sockets), but you never know I might want to add LED lighting to posts and anything else that's clear.

Funny how components start forcing you to move and adjust things.  I had to back the waterfall ramp a good 2 inches, move the flippers down an inch, and change the text to 2 lines to get it fit properly.  I thought about continuing the playfield art to plastics over the inlane guides but I can only imagine the alignment nightmare that would be.

3 comments:

  1. Is the lane guide reversible for both sides? or are they a left + right only type deal?

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  2. Fortunately, DE actually had some good ideas. It's completely symmetrical so one part, flips over for the other side

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  3. sweet. Ill pick a couple up. I love DE+Sega pins!

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