10.21.14 update - backbox

So got the speaker grill brackets from Marco, got the aluminum channels from mcmaster, got everything installed now.  I'll be picking up the lift channel and top trim from pinball life on friday for the backglass but I can still slide the glass by itself carefully into the channels.  I went ahead and printed a draft print of a temporary backglass on my printer (8 sheets of 8-1/2 x 11), so it looks washed out right now (especially with a single automotive fluorescent bulb shining behind it), but it gives me an idea of how it's going to look.

Speakers sound good and clear in the backbox (ran a test off my phone).  Still not as much bass as I would have liked, but maybe down the road I can buy a separate subwoofer and split the audio.

10.19.14 update

So I've done a little work.. Got the back wall, upper playfield, and speaker panel cut out.  The violin ramp is hot glued to the playfield for now, going to bend some acrylic to create a usable ramp.  I bought an aluminum channel for the "backglass" glass I got from pinball life on friday, but now I need another channel for the speaker panel to rest in.  I've also got brackets (for hanging onto the backbox) coming in from Marco that is supposed to be here on Tuesday.  Once all that comes together, the backbox will finally look somewhat finished.  In fact, I'm probably going to print a temporary backglass taping 8.5x11 sheets together so I have something to fill in.

Expo review time

Ok, time for a break from the project now that I've engulfed myself with pinball this weekend (minus saturday).

The hobbit - Not a big fan of the the hobbit as a theme.  The playfield feels too open (which of course is to make room for the MM trolls that pop up from the plafyield).  The drop targets in front of the standup targets is a neat concept, but there's a mode where they keep popping up and down, which makes a lot of noise (which is actually quite annoying), I wonder if they'll get it to be quieter?  A lot of people were expecting the dragon to spit balls, but obviously this isn't the case.

The walking dead - Hate the zombie theme, gameplay was so-so when I first played it.  After getting 3-4 games on it, I've warmed up a little bit to the gameplay but I still think the pop bumper area REALLY slows the game down too much.

P3 galaxy lightspeed - Still disappointed by this title.  It's honestly turned into a virtual pinball game, nearly all the things to hit are virtual objects on the LCD (using the drop-down targets as nothing but stopping points to reverse the ball since the LCD tracks the ball).  I think this is going to be a really hard sell.

Full throttle - Super fast gameplay, you can't look away for a second.  This was actually a LOT of fun to play (reminds me a lot of Bk2k).  It's so fast in fact I often found the ball bouncing over walls (and flippers) which would get frustrating as a tournament machine.  Also the right ramp is really tight (like less than 1.5") which makes it REALLY hard to nail this ramp.  I found the action to be so fast that having the LCD screen embedded into the playfield made hardly any difference, you really couldn't take your eye off the ball unless you were cradling it.  The fact that the 2nd title is Aliens designed by Dennis Nordman, and there IS an option to just buy the playfield if you already own full throttle for less than $4k, this company has a bright future.

The big lebowski - Quite honestly the most beautiful, most impressive pinball machine I've seen in a long time.  The fact that a new company created 3 working (mostly) prototypes in about a year is impressive.  The artwork is superb, the music soundtrack and soundbites are great, the animations are great, the detail of the backlit stars on the apron is a nice touch, the bowling alley with the lighting under the roof (which looks very model train realistic) is nice, the car that swings out from the building as a bash toy looks great.  If I could possibly make a complaint about this game, it's that the rug is nearly impossible to see (I really hope they end up adding a spotlight, otherwise owners will surely add one themselves).  If I had $8500 (or basically sold almost every pinball I owned), I would so buy this machine.

1.2 jigawatts

 So that's what I did today, added power.  First I had to make a bracket to mount the switch to (another thing the cabinet didn't come with).  Could have probably bought a bracket, but why spend $8 + shipping, and wait a week when I can get it done today?  So then  I bought a switch at radio shack, not realizing I grabbed a 12VDC toggle switch by mistake (do not wire a DC switch into AC).  Luckily, I forgot I still had a toggle switch mounted in the first cabinet I had, so I snagged that out.  It's a nice robust 20A switch too, don't make em like that anymore.  So then it was just a matter of soldering the linecord directly to a powerstrip, with the hot wire (white) going through the switch.  So now when you do the typical switch flip under the right side of the cabinet, the strip gets energized.  Right now I just havea 5v wall plug (with faston connectors) connected to the 4 measly GI bulbs on the playfield, but at least I got some sort of electrical hooked up now.  I figure I'm going to need 2 outlets at minimum on the final (one for a computer, one for the main power transformer).  In the interim, I may also keep the wall plug for temporary GI lighting, and I may temporarily wire up my mp3 trigger to some random switches just to have some sound going while I work on the layout.

 

Couple other small tidbits:
1. Backglass: Think I'm going to try acrylic. I can get a sheet for $20 from mcmaster, as apposed to real glass which would cost me $50 with beveled edges (cuts weight in half too). Then I'm going to do an array printout on 8.5x11 pages for the art (as a placeholder) before I invest money in real printing. I'm going to stick to the standard williams size that the F14 backbox had (19" high x 27" wide)/
2. Speaker panel: Going to make it the same size as the standard bezel, going to use aluminum channel to create the groove, then I need to get some brackets so it can hang onto the backbox. I'll need to re-cut the speaker holes, and an opening for the LCD monitor to show through
3. Playfield layout (Upper ramp): Since the upper playfield is going to be lower than I want, and I want the left waterslide ramp to be as high as possible so it can have maximum speed from gravity, I'm likely going to build a ramp for the far left exit so it kicks the ball as high on the playfield as possible.  This will also hopefully slow the ball down a little so it isn't slamming into that corner (though I can always add a rubber cushion stopper).  For the hidden under-the-backbox loop shot, I've decided this will be the first spot I play around with inserts.  I'd be far better off practicing on not so nice wood that I can start over with versus scrapping all the work I've done so far on the playfield.  One thing I want to try is adding switches that trigger the insert lighting to turn on as the ball rolls over it.  Sort of keep it simple, and let the ball control the lighting (I want a chase effect as it loops around so you get a cool moving background glow).  I'm picking up 30 one-inch clear inserts from pinball life on friday.  I think these aren't too terribly big.  If I really need something smaller, I can always order some 3/4" from pinball resource.
4. The ball lift to the upper playfield is going to be done with a neodynium magnet behind the back wall, which is attached to an arm, which is attached to a 2rpm geared 6vdc motor that swings it on a path (ball will appear to climb the wall).  I'll steal power from the GI line, and have it turn on by a switch (the ball activates it), then turns back off by a switch hidden in the back that is hit when it rotates so far.  I built an automatic page turner in college using this method and it worked nearly flawlessly.
5. My decals for the cabinet arrive tomorrow.  Not sure when I'll get time to apply them.  Between pinball life explosion on friday, a funeral on saturday, and expo either saturday night or sunday morning, it's not looking like I'm going to make much progress until next week.

whitewood

Still not ready to flip yet, but the playfield is where it needs to be.  The picture below doesn't look like much, but it actually took a lot to get there:

I had to move the back rails at least 4-5 times.  I started out with the playfield flat (angle only added by the rear feet),  but that only gave me about 4.5 inches of height, way lower than I originally designed.  I moved it down to give me about 6.5" of height, but then realized the rails weren't even making the left side a good 3/8" too low.  After one more adjustment, it was completely level.

So now I can actually shoot a ball, and... ram it into a couple pieces of cardboard wall.  The back wall is mounted to the playfield, though I'm pretty sure I need to lower the hole if I want the ball to pass through (unless I carve out part of the cabinet, which I don't).  I ended up routing it so I got a nice smooth and flat cut, I can always pop it back out and trim it deeper.

I may actually wire up the flippers and ball trough early just so I can start flipping (not completely happy with the way the slings are turning out).

shooter lane groove cut

This step was actually a little nerve wracking.  I was worried about not cutting straight, I was worried about getting depths wrong, but I went about it methodical.  I taped and clamped a ruler as a guide (distance from where the router tip needed to be to the flat edge), then started with a very shallow cut, going as far as I needed to make a cut.

Then little by little, I dropped the cutter and went along the same cut, stopping an inch from where I cut last.  Eventually I ended up with a staggered cut you see 



Once I got the steps, I went back with a chisel to take off chunks.  I found that scraping it perpendicular was safer that attacking at an angle which tended to take deeper chunks than I wanted to.  Then in I went with 100 grit sandpaper to smooth it out.  It's not quite as perfect as a CNC would do, but I must say it's not bad at all!

Got brackets?

I don't, at least not quite.  So I got my 3d printed brackets, yea not a whole lot better.  I mean it is, but I'm still breaking the parts just trying to clean them (which doesn't bode well for strength), so I gave up.  It wasn't a total waste, by modeling everything up I figured out what the minimal space was.. so then I went back to making aluminum brackets.  Once I got the band saw setup with guides, it went really quick to cut down the size I needed.  Then it was a matter of overlapping the 3d printed part over the bracket to mark the holes and drill it out.  I made left-hand and right hand versions for space constraints.

I still have to create the slots, but I don't want to cobble it with a drill like I did before.  I'll either beg the machine shop at work to do it for me, or I may have found a way to do it myself.  I own a drill press, but not a mill.  I had no idea a "cross slide vise" existed, effectively giving you x and y axis travel on a drill press:
http://www.harborfreight.com/6-inch-cross-slide-vise-32997.html

Granted you aren't going to have any precision (or measurement), but for machining slots and pockets by eye it's plenty.

The lockdown bar is nearly fixed (at least the plunger lines up with the ball now), but I may have to file the notch on the lockbar down a little bit (not quite latching yet).  Figured out what I want to do with the shooter rod cover, decided to put a mixing slider as the "reference scale" while still tying into the theme:


Once I get it officially mounted, and the standard V-groove cut out in the shooter lane, I'll finally be able to plunge the ball (albeit I don't have anything electrical hooked up yet), but soon.

Cobbled

That's how I'm starting to look at this project, and there's nothing really wrong with that.  I mean this is supposed to be a one-off, so I'm not worried about making extras.  If you look at Ben Heck's first pinball, his was entirely cobbled.  I mean he made his own cabinet, he made his own custom low res DMD display from a matrix grid of 5mm LED's, he made his own toys, his lockdown bar I believe is a cut up piece of aluminum angle. But he also used 24V flippers (which are very weak), and if you watch gameplay (or ever played it yourself) you'll see it's pretty hard to make some of the ramp shots because of it.  Fact is the flippers he used were likely from an EM, and there wasn't a big demand for snappy shots back then, there were no ramps to get up.

One thing I've definitely noticed is that you realize how many fit issues you have.  It's one thing to take existing parts that were all designed to fit together nicely because someone engineered them that way.  It's a completely different story taking parts from multiple machines and merging them together.  Let's take stock:

Stern early solid state trough / slings
New Williams off-the-shelf new flipper mechs. shooter rod, legs
Lockdown bar / lockdown mech from a 1978 Williams Disco fever
Coin door from a Data East LAH
1987 Williams F14 cabinet (bought all the hardware except the lockbar parts above and the side rails)

I did manage to lower the lockbar mech by creating a new hole, but that created a new problem (the carriage bolt stick in too far, so I'll have to trim that back with an angle grinder), as well as the bracket overlaps the bracket for the shooter rod by about a 1/4" that will need to get trimmed back.  With the playfield in, the shooter rod now clears it, but it feels a little low (isn't quite centered on the ball), so I'll simply add some washers under the hanger brackets and it should all line up fine.  Also by lowering it about 1/8" lower than it should be, I may have an issue with the lockdown bar engaging now.  If that's the case, I'll simply widen the slot allowing it to line up.

Keep in mind it sounds like I'm really eyeballing a lot of this, and quite frankly I am (taking ruler measurements) which is way out of my style.  I'm very much a "model it up in CAD and make sure everything lines up within half a millimeter" sort of a guy.  But to model all this up for the sake of doing it, or documenting it just seems like a waste of time.

Whenever I finish this project and consider doing another one, I may seriously think about buying stock parts JUST in case the theme is desirable and boutique pinball building is still alive.

Tomorrow I should have my new 3d printed brackets, and I'll be "re-engineering" the lockbar mech.  If I get all that done I can get everything back together.  Oh I'm also painting a shooter rod bracket (the thing that prevents the ball from dropping through the playfield in the shooter lane) tonight that I stole from an extra high speed playfield I have.  I'm pretty sure it'll mount just fine, I just have to think about how I want to do the art for the plunger position notches.

brackets printed

So I modeled up a couple brackets, one for the ball trough, one for the long switches that are going to replace your standard leaf switches (slings, targets, etc).  The ball trough mounted great and feels strong, the other bracket has strength issues.  I already have the 3d model updated,  but the printer at work had clogging issues, so although they're printing they didn't finish before I left work, so I'll have updated brackets tomorrow.  Anyway, here's a quick video:

playfield in

quick update.. Decided to pop the original backbox on, and install hangers from a spare high speed playfield onto my playfield and see how it looks in the cabinet.

Marked the positions, everything lines up... but the shooter rod position is too low, it doesn't fit underneath.  My only guess is that because the lockbar mech is from a 1978 pin that perhaps everything was higher back then (coming just out of the EM era with very flat playfields).  So it seems I have 2 options:
1. Attempt to lower the mech.  It does seem higher than usual, but I'm lining it up with the bolt that holds the coin door.  If I can drill a new hole, maybe this is feasible
2. Make custom hangers that lower the playfield.  Not something I really want to do, those hangers are pretty thick steel, and both of them have to match otherwise the playfield won't be level.

I will say, it IS nice seeing the playfield inside a finished cabinet.  I think it'll help motivate me to keep going.

10.05.14 update - cabinet

Decided to finish assembling the cabinet.  Got the legs re-painted yesterday.  Had to re-adjust the position of a couple of the inner threaded plates for the legs.  I was stupid to trust my eye to line them up, if I were smart I would have stuck a bolt into the hole to not only act as a way to hold the bracket, but to line them up.

First comment from my wife as she walks by "I don't like the backbox, it's too narrow".  Now that I see it all together, I think I agree.  I only made a narrow backbox so that the LCD wouldn't have borders, but I think it looks sorta goofy.  I think it might also look weird when it's got a gap between backboxes in a line because you need space for the flipper buttons.  So most likely I'll be soon sanding down the backbox it came with.

 

Update 10.4.14

My apologies to the viewers of the blog, particularly those that have a vested interest.  Between traveling for work, and finishing up a bathroom project that I’ve put off for 4 years, making / selling a pinball mod I started a while back (cash never hurts in the pinball hobby), I’ve had little time to work on any other pinball projects in between.  The cabinet is nearly finished, all the hardware is on, I’m just waiting for updated vinyl decals.  Even though the playfield will likely be mounted on a rotisserie for a while, I wanted to make sure I got the cabinet done first so I can occasionally drop it in to test for maximum height of playfield objects.

I’ve also been trying to finish stripping my high speed playfield so I can do the overlay and get some practice since this project will also have an overlay for artwork.

Today I didn't get much done, and I really wanted to.  I mean I got some GI installed on the inlane, I finished routing the sling slots and got the solenoids mounted, then I realized I hadn't made all the brackets for the switches on the slings (I made one to test), and looking where it is I realize the bracket is too wide and I'm not sure it's going to be ok with just one if I narrow it down.  I would make some more brackets, but I left my aluminum angle stock at work so it's going to have to wait until Monday.  The other thing I need is a way to mount the roller cherry switch for the ball through to activate the solenoid.  Thankfully I can just model that and print one easily at work.

There’s also a couple of things I felt I had to research in order to get some of the parts done in the near future for this project.  Fortunately a couple projects at work have required me to look into prototyping vacuum forming packaging and prototype molding, exactly what I need to learn about.

The first part I haven’t had much luck with in the past.  I’ve probably contacted 5 vendors in the chicagoland area, and none of them have responded (and this is from my work email with our logo in my signature).  For some reason, if you’re just some engineer looking for some info, thermoforming vendors just don’t care.  Unless you’re in purchasing and can start tossing volume numbers at them, they won’t even listen.  Well I may have found a somewhat local vendor that does both volume and one-off prototype parts:

http://www.centerlinemodels.com/vacuumforming.html

Vaccuum forming is obviously exactly what you need for making clear ramps (I actually prefer this to steel), but it can also be used for 3d plastics (think whitewater, or congo).  Heck, it can even be used for playfield toys (space shuttle).  My first “dipping my toes into the water” will probably be something I’m not just throwing money away to practice.  I’m going to try recreating one of the 2 broken ramps that nearly every Williams Fire! pinball has.  The mod I just did was some aluminum support brackets (because the hole mounted to the post always breaks), so this adds strength to tie it in, plus the way I did it makes it look like an industrial framework which adds to the aesthetics at the same time.  So basically in order to vacuum form, you need a positive mold.  From what I’ve been reading, the cheapest yet most effective way to do this is honestly just filling it with plaster (the denser the better so it doesn’t break during molding).  Once I have my positive, I’ll ship it to the vendor and have him run off a few dozen parts.  If it works out well, hopefully I can start selling them.  Not sure if I’ll sneak them on ebay as “NOS”, or try contacting Rick from PPS and officially license them.

Ok so 2^nd part.  We have a project at work that is low priority, but it’s still a priority.  We don’t want to spend money on tooling because the solution will be resolved on a future product, but that product is still a year away.  I made some prototypes from an RTV mold shot in urethane material, but vendors charge a LOT of money to do this (but 10 parts is still 1/50^th the cost a permanent tool).  So obviously this isn’t a part that we can mass produce, even in the hundreds.  Well I’ve been looking into what hobbyists do for molding at home, and it seems like the company SMOOTH-ON is one of the bigger ones, which also have very informative videos.  Now while I’m sure I’ll eventually be able to do a 2-part mold, I’d prefer one that’s one sided (meaning it’s flat on one side).  Well the part I’m working on at work I was able to modify it to do just this, so next week I’m likely going to go to the local BLICK store to pick up some materials to make both the mold and pour the material.  For about $25 you can buy enough rubber material to make a mold to fill a 32oz cup, and the black urethane is the same price.  Urethane doesn’t have quite the durability or strength as a polypropylene or a nylon, but it’s many times better than any 3d printer can produce.  So if I have the ability to start making molds, that means I can make playfield toys, I can make custom mechanisms, and I can even make inserts!  Yea, the same company sells optically clear material (same $25/32oz).
http://www.smooth-on.com/Urethane-Plastic-a/c5_1120_1156/index.html


32 ounces of material = 57.75 cubic inches.  I just modeled up a typical 1” insert, and it’s so little material.  So little in fact that I could mold about 400 inserts, or just .06 each

I’ll likely try to use standard inserts wherever possible, but it would certainly be neat to create some custom sizes, or custom patterns that nobody has ever seen before because every manufacturer uses whatever is available in the market.