Expo review

Since I'm still working on my layout (and don't want to show a partial update), I'll go ahead and talk about Expo a little.

So there's 2 parts of Chicago Expo.  There's the Expo that's at the Westin in Wheeling, and then there's the extended party at Terry's at pinball life on friday from noon-6.  So being that I live literally 4 miles from Pinball Life, I often find myself there buying parts (or lately, buying 3d prints from Scott Danesi for some LCD mods I've been doing for some small side income).  So this was the 2nd year in a row that I brought a pinball to a show, both being Pinexplosion.  I've heard nothing but bad stories about what a hassle it was bringing a game to expo, or hassle getting wristband refunds from Pacak.  Terry: I drive 4 miles down the road, drop off my pin on a friday weeks before the show at my convenience (not driving 20 miles on a Wednesday night).  First year was nice, I brought elivra, it sold so I didn't have to drag it back.  This year I brought Freddy, nobody was interested (at least not at the price I was asking), so it's coming back.  I'm putting off picking it up because upstairs is packed with 3 pins in the front room (AMH, my newly picked up space station, and the blue october project).  My goal is to wait until October 30th, bring freddy home and stick that and space station in the garage so trick or treaters can play it during the day on Halloween as they come by.  I've seen other people on pinside do it, and being in Chicago it's not normally warm enough to do that.  Well this year seems like it's going to be a mild winter in the midwest (high temps in the low 60s), so even if I have to put a heater out there, the pins will be on.  I'm going to have to get a step stool so the small kids can reach the buttons and see the playfield.  I haven't had time to decorate this year, but hopefully I can at least get some purple or red lighting backlighting the pins, and hide some of the garage with cotton spiderwebs.  Like many others, I don't want to see pinball die, and if I can create an impression on a kid to want to play them later in life, I've done my job.

Pinexplosion was even more packed this year, not surprising since there is no price of admission, there's free food and beer/soda, and 50 pins on freeplay (plus deals on parts).  Expo, well.. I mean, freeplay area.. yea that was pretty bare this year.  I know Expo isn't mean as a show about playing pinballs, but seeing how there really wasn't any announcements this year (Stern game of thrones was announced early, Hobbit still isn't shipping, Lawlor's title isn't announced until next Spring, Spooky is still 3 weeks from revealing rob zombie), Pinball circus is still in development.  So unless you're interested in going to seminars, what does Expo really offer for $25/day?  One thing I like seeing lately at Expo are the homebrew projects.  I come to find that there's actually 2 Buffy the vampire slayer machines (rethemed swords of fury with new software).  At first I was sort of upset that two of this great game were sacrificed for this project, but after playing them I can appreciate it.  I mean the code is great (sound cues where to shoot), great graphics, the upper left playfield is transparent so you can see underneath.  Nightmare before christmas had great flow, though talking to the owner he did say he had ball detection issues not from hardware but some bug in the latest mission pinball framework (that was being worked on up until the moment of the show).  I actually saw Ben heck and Charlie walk over to this machine and talk to the owner for about 10-15 minutes early saturday morning.  He had the playfield lifted up, and it was as if Ben was just curious how a hobbyist chose to wire it up (lights, boards, etc), and generally what the latest FAST hardware looked like.  Peanuts pinball (which Aaron is working on) had a half populated playfield (with art) which is impressive considering about the only thing done on it the week before was flippers and a ball trough (he did a livestream).  For a while he had the playfield lifted up.  During the stream you could see that he just had the playfield out sitting on some sort of frame he welded up.  At the show you realize this is not a temporary frame, but rather a frame that stays with the playfield, and it rests on rails in the bottom.

This is actually quite genius in a couple ways:
1. It gives you a nice platform for the playfield to sit on, sort of a built in rotisserie (both for building it, and future servicing).
2. In reality, it doesn't need the hooks to attach to the lockdown bar, it could just rest at the bottom if you had something to lock it in place.  Then the only thing you'd really have to lock is the glass in place.

The other crazy part about these 3 projects (muppets was barely started) is that the father of Aaron built all these cabinets.. like not kit form, but actually built them from bare plywood.  I realize there are companies like churchill that do this everyday, but it's more amazing for a home builder to do it with minimal tools.

So one thing I'm starting to realize, gottliebs have really good flow (and some pretty neat innovations).  Freddy plays pretty good, and not a single entry ramp (which is odd for 1994).  Waterworld also has entry no ramps (but it does have return ramps, including one that pivots), and has a neat boat that spins 180 degrees to enable ball lock, and also dumps the balls after they've all been locked.  It also has this nice flowing side loopback on the right.  Nothing innovative there (games like skateball had it), but nice that they implemented it.  You look at "lights camera action", and they implemented a somewhat large chunk of playfield that spins and completely changes that layout in that section (almost increasing the playfield size in a way).  That's the sort of flow I'm aiming for, the ramps are just icing on the top (and need to be lastly implimented).  The main gameplay is on the main playfield.

stand up target cherry switch - 3rd entry

Ok, so I started with a cherry roller switch for the ball troft drain, then I made brackets to mount cherry switches for the flipper buttons.  Now I just made my first cherry switch standup target:

It's a simple 1/8" x 1-1/2" aluminum angle bracket that I cut down to size, added some holes to mount the switch, and added 2 holes for mounting the bracket to the underside of the playfield.  There's really no side force, it's all inline force from the ball hitting it so I didn't feel like I needed the screws off to the side.  I had to drill a hole in the metal contact on the switch in order to mount the target face, but it wasn't terribly hard.  I made the face from polycarbonate (I may make them in the future from PETG, polycarb even in 1/16" thickness is not fun to cut), but this should hold up well.  I'm considering leaving it clear because I think rather than adding an insert in front of the target (which always wear bad), to simply backlight the target when hit (have a bulb socket mounted underneath it).  This should be much cleaner.

The aluminum channel is from mcmaster, I think I paid maybe $10 for a 2 foot long piece (only need 2" per bracket).  The switch is from allelectronics, and it handles up to 15A for just $2 each in quantities of 10 or more:
http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/sms-196/spdt-snap-action-switch-w/lever/1.html

I've got 4 brackets total made so far, most likely going to use these for the keyboard first.  I've made pretty good progress on my layout, but I want to get further along before I do a playfield update.  In fact it's flowing so good, I think I had about a 5 minute ball time before I drained, and it didn't get stuck on anything.

Layout tweaks with photoshop

Ok so I nearly gave up on the curved shooter lane.  I really wasn't liking how inconsistent it was shooting into the upper left.  I'm talking my target was probably a good 8" span which isn't going to work for a skillshot.  Now if I working for a "pinball company", I would probably be told "stop noodling, give up on that feature and move on".  If I were a independent pinball builder, I would probably noodle until I ran out of money.  Fortunately for me, I have almost no overhead other than my time and some building materials.  The playfield sits in a pinball cabinet which sits in an unoccupied space of my house.

So while I was making some minor tweaks to my AMH, I noticed how different the wall guides are on it.  The center bar progress lane has a vertical wall, which is mounted by the typical bent screw brackets on the bottom.  For the most part this wall is defined by the screw locations, but it can still be bent and tweaked a little.  I'm tweaking it because I REALLY don't like how horribly it drains, and as I get it bent towards the left it's been getting better, but still not consistent.  I'd say it's about Stern - ACDC bell shot SDTM consistent now.  You may ask "Why would you modify the layout?  Perhaps that was Charlie's intent, to make that area a drain monster".  Yea well for one thing, if you watch Nate Shiver's livestream he did, his almost never drains.  And even if it did, I'd still want it to be a little more forgiving since it's my game and I can do what I want.  So then I was fixing another area (the space in front of my hellevator seems to get stuck on a rare occasion), so I attached an extra piece of metal flap to the underneath of the ramp so it ensures the ball never gets stuck in that area again.  I can see what the problem is, the intent is there.  He has a piece of metal that allows the ball to roll down, but the problem is that it's not flush with the rubber post at the end, so if the ball lands just right it'll just stick there.  Another thing I noticed, he's using a horizontal wall in this space, not a vertical one.  Not like I haven't seen designers use this technique (you see it on more SEGA's and modern Sterns), but since I"m mostly a classic Williams guy I mostly see the typical vertical walls brought over from EM days.

So why do I bring all this up?  Well, there's something to be said about horizontal guides vs vertical ones.  It comes down to forces, and resistance to them.  It's like the difference between bonking someone over the head with the flat edge of a knife, and the sharp end.  The sharp end isn't going to flex out of the way.  I know, this is all basic physics, why am I acting so dumb?  Often times design can get blocked by what you know, and it over influences your judgement.  So anyway, I went ahead and fabricated a chunk of steel horizontally in the shape I think I needed, adjusted it a couple times, and just held it about half an inch off the playfield in front of the shooter lane (I have spacers and screws coming from McMaster tomorrow, but I really wanted to prove it out tonight).  Know what, it works.. Shot is pretty darn consistent (so long as my plunge is reasonably the same, which is just slightly shy of full power).  If I go full blast, it might skip over, or power into the VUK.  I could leave it that way and force players to not just go full force, or I could always put a weaker spring in.  So that's the other thing I've noticed, the ball barely got up into the corner before, now it's flying up there with ease.  Again going back to physics, the less ball contacts surfaces, the less friction (probably helps that there's no loss from flexing of metal either now that it has a hard stop).

So now that I'm confident I can get the skillshot I originally intended, I took a photo I had in my phone of the playfield (still shows a ramp that just brought the ball above the record and up to the piano with no skillshot involved), and drew over it with a separate layer in case I needed to make changes.  So most of the shots are the same from before.  I'm making the keyboard in the upper right flat (not a hill).  The flat captured ball on freddy seems to work fine, and it'll help slow the ball down more than if a ramp sends the captured ball flying back at the playfield ball.  Also since this is now flat, I can make the left side of it part of the plunger skillshot (hitting targets shaped as the keyboard keys).  This also gives the mid right flipper another shot.  Bounce it off the rubber between the posts to ricochet a shot into the keyboard.  I'm also opening up the VUK tube on the backside (so only 2 walls will remain).  Seems like having an opening in only one side made it very difficult to aim, and I can use posts and rubbers to contain the ball.  I'm going to have to tweak (or possibly make yet another upper playfield) to make the exit violin neck ramp work.  I can't have an exit ramp overlap the shot into the VUK because it'll block it.  So it's going to need to change angle from 45 degrees at the VUK, to something like 30 degrees so the ramp ends up tilting out of the way.  About the only section I'm not crazy about is the dead space in the triangular area  (between the back alleyway and the VUK).  Since I have another 8 channels from the 2nd board from Hugh (at least one will be needed for the lower playfield if not 2), I can always still throw on a pop bumper or two.  It might work well having it near rubber walls.  It'll be sort of like what Charlie did on his (Pinball zombies from beyond the grave) layout.

getting back on track

Ok so it's been a crazy couple of months.  I bought a freddy about 6 weeks ago, shopped it out, built a custom topper, and designed an LCD mod that runs off raspberry pi (movie clips play on a TV in the corner).  Then a couple weeks later, I find a deal on a street fighter.  Shopped THAT out, also currently building an LCD mod (SF2 cabinet 3d printed, runs off 5v in the backbox).  So THEN, my AMH finally finishes being built, and that's been played to death (it's currently upstairs).  Well just last night, I finally cleaned up my blue october area.  I had tools and parts lying all over the ground underneath and in front, sandpaper and various parts sitting on the playfield.  I brought some plastic bins that weren't being used up from the basement, and put nearly everything away, and now my area is clear again to continue working.  Last time I left off, I was veering away from the curved shooter lane and building a ramp to go over the record player area.  I still want to somehow implement a skillshot.

Blues Brothers pinball

No, I'm not ditching my project.. I'm just throwing ideas at the wall since Jimmy stated on a recent podcast (gameroom junkies) that one of his dream themes is the Blues Brothers movie.  Now I have to preface that this movie is near and dear to me (and ironically my wife is one of the VERY few people that hates it).  Not sure why, perhaps she thinks it's an insult to musicals?  Anyway, this is one of the few movies me and my dad really bonded with when I was a kid.  Being filmed in Chicago, obviously the historical factor alone is enough to like it.  In fact, sometimes I'll watch it just for nostalgic purposes (Oh look at how the highways looked back then).  In particular, the scene right before they get pulled over (SCMODS), just cruising on the highway listening to Sam & Dave - soothe me brings me back to when my dad would bring me to work with him downtown Chicago (3am), and he'd be listening to oldies and it was very dark outside.

Anyway, so I've thought about this the past few days, and I think the best approach would be Stern's jukebox concept, while pulling certain elements from the movie into the playfield.  If you look at Metallica, most things are based on album art rather than songs.  AC/DC, the bell is from hells bells (but also album art), and the canon is most certainly album art.

First and formost, targets should be heavily used (and re-used) in the game.

They can be used to collect items (beginning jail scene where the clerk is listing his items.. One timex digital watch, broken.  One un-used prophylactic.. one soiled.  boots, black.  belt, black.  one black suit jacket, one pair of black suit pants, one hat... BLACK.  One pair of sunglasses, 23 dollars and seven cents.. Sign here).

Targets can be used to spell "jake", and "elwood".

Targets can be used to collect band members (Murph and the magic tones, GI turns to red for the lounge, Mr fabulous plays classical music while the lighting flickers like candles.  Blue Lou and Matt Guitar Murphy Aretha Franklin sings and trivia video mode starts to gain those band members).

During Jukebox song selection, the quote "oh we got both kinds, country and western!" should play from bob's country bunker.

Orange Whip - I'm thinking a glowing orange drink with a slice of orange, sort of like lebowski's white russian.

Bridge jump scene (car's got a lot of pickup) - This should be similiar to the jump ramp on America's most haunted, but have it actually actuate and tilt up like in the movie.  There would be a wall in the middle, and the ramps would have to move up enough to clear it (so you'd have to time your shot.. Too soon, and the ball hits the wall.  Too late, and the ball doesn't make it up the bridge ramp).

Lastly, the car chase scenes are what made this movie memorable.  There's the mall chase scene at the former Dixie square mall in Harvey (new oldsmobiles are in early this year), and then the ending when they flee from the concert, and drive all the way to downtown chicago (driving down route 43, then to I-90, past McCormick place, through lower wacker drive, then under the EL-train).  I'm thinking 2 directions for this concept:
1. Simply have a dodge monaco toy.. Maybe have it as a scoop that ejects balls.  One thing is for sure, that engine sound NEEDS to be included, and a nice subwoofer speaker.  The sound of that engine is so low and gutteral.  Seriously, go back and watch it, I bet you'll find yourself imitating the sound.  Perhaps there could be some sort of multiball where there's specific colored balls that represent the cops chasing them (red and blue), and you have to manage to not drain your ball until all the "cop balls" drain first.
2. This gets a bit more elaborate.  There would be a mini section of the playfield (perhaps just an upper playfield), but it would be specific to car chase scenes.  I'd want to do an LCD screen for the back and side showing speed, and perhaps somehow do projection mapping on the playfield (the bluesmobile would be between the flippers), and the video would show turns, and you'd have to flip the ball to that side of the playfield (standup target, perhaps a spinner lane?).  You keep going as long as you keep making your shots.  As soon as you miss, the scene ends.

Last idea: If you're playing a multiplayer game, while the ball sits in the shooter lane, a clip of jake and elwood standing in the elevator at Daley Plaza tax assessor, and plays with muzak in the background until the next player shoots the ball.

ramp FAIL

So the glue definitely made it stiffer.  Then the 1/2" walls started to curl and bend over every time I hit it with a ball.  So then I beefed it up with 1" tall steel walls, and that made the opening just a little too tight (ball would either get stuck, or bounce back at the flipper).  After bending the opening back, it started to tear a little bit.  I tossed the ball at the ramp in frustration.

So what did I learn from this?
1. If you've got an aggressive shot where the ball has to make a sharp turn, make SURE your walls are high enough
2. Even stiff walls that are very thin need reinforcing (or just make it out of thicker cardboard to begin with, perhaps a double thin layer
3. I really don't think I can reliably have a side loop shot, PERIOD!  Even if you can occasionally hit it just right (which I did get maybe 3 out of 10 shots), while it might be rewarding it's going to be very frustrating and NOT fun, and the ramp is probably going to get beat to hell during all the missed shots.  So I think my solution (since early prototypes worked great this way) is to implement this ramp so it can be shot up and down, not side to side.  If you watch people play Gottlieb Gold wings, even that ramp is somewhat hard to make, and it's as vertical as can be (and has tons of guides to keep it on track).

So that's my next goal, figure out where I'm sticking this ramp (after I rebuild it one more time).

If it plays crappy in cardboard, it'll play crappy in metal

So.. I've been told this by Mr Popadiuk.. Ben Heck repeats it because I'm pretty sure Dennis Nordman says the same thing (both taught by legends that built pinball before they did).  So I didn't take this advice, though I had my reason.  It felt like cardboard just wasn't stiff enough, and I was losing power when the ball used it's energy flexing the cardboard (hence why the ball wasn't getting through the loop everytime).  Well, after painfully building it in metal with walls on both sides, it worked only marginally better.  I'm realizing that a 4" diameter is just too large for the ball speed, plus the exit isn't nearly tight enough so the exit can sometimes aim well at the VUK, other times not so much.  So, I've re-made the loop (YET AGAIN) out of cardboard (YET AGAIN), but this time going with a much tighter 3" diameter loop.  I've made the entrance nice and wide (easy to aim) with a chamfer to direct the ball into the path, and then the exit is nice and tight (just slight clearance) to make sure the ball goes to the same path everytime.  It seems to be working a lot better just from tossing the ball into it, but to really stiffen it up I've gone ahead and brushed on elmer's wood glue all over it.  My thinking is that I'll be mimicking the same process as Papier-mâché (which creates a nice hard surface when applied to soft newspaper).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papier-m%C3%A2ch%C3%A9

Ideally I wanted to use epoxy (and maybe my final ramp will), but this is a good test (plus epoxy resin isn't cheap).  We'll see how it looks in the morning after it's cured.

TOO big of a loop :-(

 Wet ramp:

cardboard --> METAL!!!!

take two steps forward, two steps back.. opposites attract, something with a dancing cartoon cat?  The 90's were blurr.

Anyway, so sorry for the delay in the project.  So I've been hemming and hawing, go forward and just deal with crappy shots?  Something changed my mind, a gottlieb freddy - nightmare on elm street.  It has REALLY good flow, and a very simliar setup to my project in that there's a flipper in the middle right, and a captive ball in the upper right.  The only exception is that they put it all the way against the right side which makes for a nice sort of floating ball after it hits the captive ball and transfers the energy.  This makes it much easier to hit the ball where you need to without having to cradle it.  It also means being able to hit the captive ball easily with the left flipper, giving it another shot to aim for (so it's not such a heavy right flipper game).

So there's flow, and then there's my mantra of (cardboard just isn't representative like metal is)

 
So I've taken the top playfield off again to concentrate on the main playfield.  I've discovered whacking the back left wall has caused a crack and seperated it from the rest of the backing.  I may have to nix the wall altogether and just extend the posts and rubber, then add some sort of wall behind that.  I've also decided rather than making the left orbit not flat, but rather a ramp that brings the ball up on top of the organ captive ball ramp, and dumping the ball into the loop-da-loop shot (unless you soft plunge, then it'll end up in a cluster of pop bumpers).  Making the left loop orbit shot higher up on the playfield has opened up more space on the left more shots too!

 

The loop-da-loop ramp is getting better, but it still needs some work (and a longer side wall).

 

Back from VFW pinball

Had an awesome weekend.  Above and beyond the 9 hours me and my wife spent at Clay's (which was amazing), we also visited Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical museum, and an arcade called "the arcade".  Clay's was simply amazing, and I did shake his hand and thank him for everything he's done.  Ok, so he's got 200 pinballs, and when I say that I mean all 200 working.  Everything from early woodrails, to solid state, to modern DMD.  Rare titles, common titles.  He's got 2 bowlers, a shooting gallery EM, a pitch and bat.  Williams, gottlieb, Stern, data east, zaccaria, a couple oddball spanish pins.  Even when pins went down, he had a staff of well over a dozen techs jumping on issues to keep them running.  Because of the limited ticket sales, it kept the crowd to a minimum.  Marvin's had absolutely horribly taken care of pins, and I posted a message on pinside to Mipinball to let them know.  I was immediately tagged as a troll, but it soon turned back my way when another local admitted the pins were getting pretty bad, and the router admitted he needed to get in there after I posted photos of how bad they were.  "the arcade" was pretty neat, reminded me a lot of "Flynn's arcade" in tron.  Lower level, and then a balcony with more games instead of an office, and lots of ceiling fans.  The only thing missing was some good music playing and some neon.

So what did I learn from all of this?  Well actually 2 things:
1. Sometimes pinball is about slight of hand (magic if you will).  Being that there were many titles with lower playfields, I really thought about my design.  Now since I haven't actually looked underneath the playfield of any pinball title with a lower level, I can't be sure how it works.  Though I'm pretty sure on old gottliebs like haunted house and black hole they really did drop the ball from the upper playfield to the lower one, then sent it back up via a VUK.  What I'm getting at is that I'm thinking I don't really need to do this (since I have one ball).  I mean I'm not dealing with silver and white powerballs like twilight zone, why would I bother transferring the ball and deal with hangups, and spend the time on building subway systems?  So what I'm going to do is create the illusion that the ball went from the ball trough down to the lower level, then back up to the trough.  When the ball drains, the switch will let the system know it drained, and it will activate a VUK scoop in the lower playfield to pop the ball waiting down there into play.  When it drains, it sits in the VUK (activating the next switch to tell the trough solenoid to pop the ball sitting in the trough into the shooter lane).  From a player's perspective, they have no idea what's going on under the curtain.  From my perspective, I keep things simple.
2. My shooter lane isn't consistent, but it can be.  I played a few titles with a similar shooter lane as mine.  Some worked 1/4 of the time, like 4 million BC:
http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=935

Now maybe this was meant to work, but the shooter lane spring wasn't as strong as it's supposed to be?  So then I played a Williams early solid state (can't remember the title, but it was around the time of Flash with a similar layout).  Much like flash, it was as if the ball was told where to go because hard or light shots, the ball always wanted to follow the path it was supposed to

In order to make my layout flow well, this is the last thing I really have to improve, so I'm going to take a cue from williams and try to get my walls closer to this layout to ensure the ball travels around the orbit.

I started working on a cardboard boat for the lower playfield to sort of lay things out but it's too early to post photos just yet.  I might post a video later this week.

Good layout update - 5.8.15

Beyond getting my loop-da-loop ramp working decently, I had to redo the left side and move the incoming VUK entrance to the right.  I still think the wall needs some work (perhaps open up the VUK on the back too) so you have a better chance of hitting it.  I also had to deal with killing any dead zones early (equivalent of having plastics) so that the ball won't get stuck somewhere.  So far the ball hasn't gotten stuck any where (at least nothing I couldn't lightly shake the machine to get loose) which isn't bad for cardboard walls.
















































Here's a video showing the latest gameplay:

what a productive day!

Ok, so it all started with getting a good loop-da-loop ramp made.  I shrunk the diameter from 5" down to 4" (I may not be able to fit the violin neck through anymore).  I still built it from cardboard, but this time I just used thin manilla folder cardboard (easier to form and curve).  But because it's flimsy, I ended up stiffening it by adding ribbing.  Ribbing on the sides, ribbing down the middle, support walls (closing off dead areas).  It works, FINALLY it works (most of the time).  Out with the old, in with the new:

I was so excited that I  rebuilt the VUK, but now have the entrance hole on the right side instead of the back (going from the back at a weird left angle was just too hard to shoot for, especially with a loop right just behind it).  I just continued to fix other walls, and then started really shooting for everything, and I stumbled upon a pretty nice flow (with multiple options for getting to the upper playfield).  Plunging will either go into the orbit shot, or a soft plunge will hit a bank of targets on the left.  You can bounce of the back wall separation (pops to go behind there) to get to the VUK from the lower right flipper, you can shoot directly through the loop-da-loop ramp from the middle right flipper into the VUK, or choose to go up the loop-da-loop ramp for a 2-shot comb.  The middle right flipper will also still shoot up the piano captive ball ramp.  There's also a shot from the lower right flipper into a left side lane target.  The lower left flipper still goes into the spinning record (not shown yet), and if you shoot for the loop-da-loop, you get a neat effect where the ball goes halfway up and pops back onto the playfield (sometimes causing a left outlane drain, that'll teach you to shoot the loop ramp wrong!)  I'm going to get a balcony wall installed on the right side of the upper playfield, clean up a few more walls, and I should be able to shoot a new video showing the current gameplay.

cardboard has it's uses, very few

Ok, so I'm finding out that cardboard is really flimsy.  You can make a wall, but if the angle is fairly critical, good luck getting it to keep it's shape for repeatable results.  As for the loop-da-loop ramp, it's really becoming futile.  This has nothing to do with "lining up my shots", no pinball simulator is going to help me because everything is rigid in a simulator.  I really need to start fabricating certain things in real material, whether that be metal strips, round rails, or 3d printing rigid structures (like loop-da-loop ramps).  I really need to take a step back and figure out how I want to continue prototyping my layout and still have the ability to move things around as needed.

backing up (not an update, but an undate?)

So I really had confidence the layout in solidworks was going to just work, then there's that funny thing called gravity that changes the ball's trajectory.  I felt like I was getting nowhere with trial and error, so rather than fight myself I did what any good designer would do, go back to basics of the flipper shots first instead of constantly failing.

I've learned many things during this first try:
1. I really fabricated things backwards, I made the dippingramp first (which dictates where the ball can go on the first level), and it limited it so much so that shots just didn't work no matter how I laid out the walls.  It's time to go back and draw lines from the flippers to where it can shoot (about 5-10 degrees from the tip).  Also the shooter lane is entirely spring force driven, there is no control.  That means transitioning from the shooter lane, over to the left has to be fairly precise, and lots of tolerance for error.  Looking at a williams flash, I see that I may need a tighter radius to direct the ball better.  I may also need to commit to a steel shooter lane wall so I can lock in my angle (cardboard just isn't cutting it).

2. Hot glue sticks, REALLY good, so don't glue directly onto the playfield unless you want a mess to clean up when you have to start moving walls.  A spackle tool will get most of it off, but you're still left with residue.  My suggestion, lay down a layer of masking tape first.  This will stick good to the wood, but not so good it won't come off.  Then glue to your heart's desire.  If you need to move a wall, just pull the tape off.
3. Cardboard works ok for ramps, but the kinks really slow the ball down.  It shows on my waterslide ramp (barely makes the journey), and it shows on my loop-da-loop ramp (mostly because it's no longer stiff after moving it dozens of times).  I need to attempt to make these out of thin aluminum.  If I need side walls, this can still be cardboard, but the ball surfaces really need to be smooth.

layout video

Quick video showing the layout, and a quick play.  Excuse the horrible ball getting stuck on the layers of tape (hey at least the upper playfield shoots good and the waterfall ramp works).  This is why we build whitewoods, to make sure the shots work.

3.31.15 - soon

Video update tomorrow morning, I hope.  Threw my back out Sunday afternoon, so I haven't been motivated this week, but I did finish wiring up the 4th flipper and VUK.  Upper lower playfield shots aren't going quite as well as planned so there will be some tweaking, but at least I can talk through the layout in general.  Here's a sneak peak.

getting there, reveal this weekend?

Well the new upper playfield is cut.  It's grown by about an inch, the angle is steeper, the left side entrance to the waterfall ramp is embedded.  I also tightened up the exit of the loop.  Not only does this give me a little more room for targets, it seems to help slow the ball down a little bit so it's not spitting out so fast.

I've also been doing some work on the waterfall ramp, mostly tweaking the undercuts, adding walls.  I'm pretty confident to cut a hole for the VUK and the 4th flipper at this point.  The layout is really starting to feel full and flowing nicely.  Won't be long before I can test flipping with the glass on so I can verify there's no dead shots.

Got a waterfall ramp

I'm still a little leary about cutting a hole for the 3rd flipper and VUK until I get my new upper playfield cut, especially as crowded as things are starting to get.  I did however accomplish getting my left ramp built out of cardboard (and it works beautifully).  Had to tweak something things, including adjusting the height of the humps so that the ball could still pass underneath at critical areas.  I also had to pull the bottom loop closer to the inlane.  Also when you bend fluted cardboard into curves, it tends to do so not smoothly (it kinks) so I had to add some thinner cardboard on top to smooth it out.  Once I got all that done, I let a ball roll down 10 times and it worked every time.  Of course when it's made from smooth plastic or metal, it'll only be faster.

I'm going to try to get the upper playfield cut today so I can continue completing a fully shooting playfield minus a few features.

Update March 20th - Spring ahead

Alright so I decided to go ahead and print a 1:1 of my layout.  Although I do have a large format printer at work, I hate using that sort of work paper for my own stuff, so what I usually do is print sections on 11x17, then tape them together.  I cut sections to get my wall locations onto the wood, major objects like the record player, flipper location.  Just holding a flipper bat and spinning it with my fingers to see how well the middle flipper could hit shots, it seems ok.  I'm definitely going to have to move the organ captive ball ramp over, it's obstructed by the flipper mech (another reason to model everything, even the mechs).  The vuk is slightly offset because I know the upper playfield is going to grow out a little bit, but I'll cut that new playfield first before I cut my VUK hole in the main playfield.

Here's my progress so far.  I've added a wall for the right outlane, a wall for the shooter lane / record player (ball will head to the upper left where it needs to be on a hard plunge), and I added a small wall around the left flipper switch in case I'm testing with the apron off.  I'm just afraid of the ball shorting out that switch.  You'll also notice that I have plastics with artwork on the slings.  My technique worked pretty well, they look almost professional.  Read more about it on the pinballmaker wiki:
http://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php/Construction#Plastics

3d model -> real part, easy with cardboard

Ok so the looping ramp worked out pretty well, so I decided to go ahead and make the piano captive ball ramp.  Honestly this took me like 30 minutes to make from cardboard and some small square balsa.  Balsa isn't completely necessary, but it's cheap (less than a dollar for 3 feet of 1/4"), and it helps stiffen it up by giving it structure.  Haven't yet seen how the ball is going to travel, but I imagine it will easily get up the ramp and pop over it (which means it will hit the standup target no problem).






I'm also starting to fabricate real clear plastics without laser, and even getting art on them.  I wrote up a quick write-up on the pinball makers blog:
http://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php/Construction#Plastics

A better layout

So I've really been looking at other tables to see what makes them good.  One thing I noticed on Josh's Kugler family table is that the upper right flipper has lots of things to shoot at (4-5).  It almost justifies needing that extra flipper.  So that's what I started doing, justifying all my flippers with shots.  I also realize there needs to be multiple ways to get to sections of the playfield.  Anyway, here's the layout:

Lower left flipper:
1. This can feed it into the upper right playfield
2. I moved the record down so the left flipper has something to shoot for

Lower right flipper:
1. This will feed a far left lane (ala metallica)
2. This will feed the back orbit shot
3. This can feed the VUK to the upper playfield

Middle right flipper:
1. This shoots the loop-da-loop ramp, which hopefully feeds into the VUK.  Notice that the Loop ramp looks like an "S" which spells "SWAY" with the playfield art
2. This feeds a ramp captive ball (which is the keyboard)
3. This feeds a lane that goes under the captive ball, and depending on how you hit it, you can hit 3 targets along the right wall
4. I'm hoping I'll be able to backhand a shot into the drums

Upper playfield flipper
1. Loop shot
2. target wall
3. waterslide ramp exit

I'm still hoping to fill the slightly dead area underneath part of the upper playfield.  I don't know if I should just stick pop bumpers under there and call it a day or what.

loop-da-loop ramp

Well I made some quick sling covers out of cardboard (I'll eventually get some acrylic laser cut).  I also decided to mess around with a loop ramp.  No, it's not staying in the center, it's just there because that's where the flippers are right now.  And in case you're wondering, no I didn't steal this idea from RAZA.  I've seen it (and played) on a gottlieb gold wings long ago:
http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1043

I gotta say I dig it, and I already know how to tie it into the theme (lots of loop references in the song "heaven").  Here's a quick video:

VUK U - measure twice, cut twice (once on a scrap prototype, once on the real playfield)

So rather than going ahead and cutting a hole in my playfield that I've already put some work into (yea yea I'm not that far along, but still), I decided to mount my VUK to a scrap piece of wood (I'm also redoing my upper playfield, not as much work vested into that).  I want to make sure my hole size is optimal, I want to see how much space the switch needs, I want to see how high this coil will actually pop a ball.  I don't want to mount a VUK in front of the upper playfield if it's not even going to make it up there.  Anyway, so the used SEGA VUK I got from hillbilly pinball parts for $20 came out of a baywatch.  I actually have no idea it works, just assuming it does.  Heck, the bracket and rod+coil is worth the $20 by itself.  I can always buy a new coil or switch.  So it's mounted, I've hot glued some cardboard walls to channel the ball towards the hole.  At least the hard part is out of the way, here's a video:

*Oh, btw I swapped out my resistors for a smaller ohm (and a bigger cap) and my coils are much snappier now without the power supply failing*

Here's some pictures of the VUK assembly:

Parts coming...

Ok, so flippers are a little better, but still NOT GOOD ENOUGH, muhawhaw!  So there's 2 possible things holding me back:
1. Bigger cap, smaller ohm resistors.  Parts are on order, they'll be here this thursday.
2. The coils I chose for flippers are middle strength (typical red standard coils you might see in an early 80's pin before steep ramps became popular).  There's 2 more levels of strength, as marco specialties says:
http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/FL-11630

• FL-11630 Red - The standard, most commonly used coil
• FL-15411 Orange - Used for long playfield shots
• FL-11629 Blue - Used for long shots and high ramps 

So since I'm looking for long playfield shots, possibly high ramps I'm going to buy another flipper assembly (I need my 4th flipper eventually).  I'm going to order it with a blue coil, swap out my right bottom flipper only so I can compare left to right side.

2nd part, I ordered a VUK.  I tried to build one from parts that pinball life has (I like to shop local and support Terry), but he's got scattered parts on his website that don't look like they'd easily go together if at all.  I didn't want to spend $60 on a SEGA VUK from Marco, but then I searched the part number and I found a website I had heard of a while back called "hillbilly pinball".  I have no clue where they're getting used parts.  Maybe they part out heavily damaged machines, maybe they're used parts that people sell after replacing with new?  Maybe it's old stock?  I don't really know, but they had the same part for $20+shipping.  Currently the website is down (I got my order in just in time last night).  The person running it said they are taking down the website until they can find a new webmaster, apparently the person that's supposed to be doing updates to the parts list hasn't responded in 3 months.  All I know is my order already shipped today with tracking, and it will also arrive here on Thursday.

I've really been fighting against just pulling parts off the shelf and build a pinball like every other pinball manufacturer, but I really don't want something like a mech moving a ball from the main playfield to the upper one hold me back, and quite frankly now that I have a working upper playfield I really want to be able to get the ball up there without me having to manually toss it up there.  Since the upper playfield is a balcony, it really makes more sense to have an elevator.  No I don't want to make a complicated mech like a ben heck hellevator.  It's nice and all, but I like simple.  There will eventually be a delay programmed before the coil kicks, but first music plays "ever carried the weight of another" while yellow LED windows scroll up like an elevator is moving up (illusion of motion) then the ball kicks up the tube (I can easily fabricate out of cardboard and eventually build it out of steel), and the ball will fly right over the upper flipper into the loop, giving the player a chance to time the ball coming around and time the flip.

Since the layout has changed a bit (the ball flipping from the middle flipper is still going to the outside loop), but now the ball is going to make a jog and dump into the elevator just in front of the upper playfield.  I need to adjust the position of the spinning drumkit and record player.  Perhaps I can fit a few more things since I've opened this space a little bit (update to come later).  Since I'm confident this is the direction I'm going though, I don't see why I can't go ahead and mount the middle flipper where I think it needs to be (I can always adjust the opening to that lane), and I can fabricate that entire wall out of cardboard strip.

3rd flipper hooked up

Another quick video.  Even though I have no ramp to get up to the upper playfield, still wanted to see how the shot would flow, and it's working just like I envisioned it.  The goal is to keep the ball looping around, but there's a chance you can miss-flip and send it down the left waterfall ramp (coming soon).  I couldn't seem to drain it, but perhaps it's because I could easily anticipate when the ball was coming around.  I think once I get a wall put up, it'll be harder to react.  It's amazing that a piece of cardboard hot glued to a playfield can not only hold up, but actually flow fairly well.  When it gets switched to metal, it may end up being too fast (I may have to dial the flipper back).

Flipping again

After shorting out the first board, and making a small modification to prevent the large coils from pulling too much amps, I've got everything but the upper right flipper hooked up.  A quick video showing everything working

Mechs

No not that kind.  Mechanisms son!
So I know once ALL my solenoids are firing again, one crucial missing part besides the left return ramp coming off the upper playfield is the route by which the ball gets up there in the first place.  I've really been struggling with this part.  One design I had a guy carrying the ball up the wall, another design I simply had a hidden magnet dragging the ball along the back wall.  At one point I said eff it and just install a VUK.  VUK's are for pussies that like to play it safe.  Plus that doesn't really fit the theme, and certainly not the song that will be playing.  So it's an 18th floor balcony, how do you get up to the 18th floor?  An elevator of course, so why don't I just install an elevator?  Now before you say "Oh nice, stealing Ben Heck's hellevator idea", I did think about an elevator early on but had no idea how to accomplish such a thing.  Also unlike Ben who decided to basically use a rack and pinion system made out of acrylic, I planned on having the elevator supported by a couple screws through a slot in the back wall, and driven up by a threaded rod underneath (driven by a low RPM motor with the matching thread).  Similiar concept, but design-wise plenty different.  Also (and I'm not sure how AMH is designed from what I could see while playing it at pinball show), I plan on making the elevator hidden, and playable over on the back orbit shot.  When you make enough orbit shots in a row, the elevator starts climbing, and the ball should clunk against it until it rises up enough to enter inside, and bring it up.  I have an idea to tilt the bottom platform away from the entrance (so the ball stays inside), and then a way to actuate it to tilt back towards the playfield to release.  Once it hits the top, it'll hit a switch, deactivate the motor.  I may need a solenoid afterall to engage/disengage the motor so that it can fall by gravity alone.

I'm probably going to build a separate mech offline so that in case it doesn't work out, I'm not killing all the work I already did.  It's extra work, but in the end it'll save time.

 

wireform ramp fixture concept

So I thought about this a lot. Wireforms can appear daunting.  Wires moving in various directions in space, but if you think about them 2-dimensionally (one plane at at time), it's not so bad.  Now that's not to say wireform ramps can't move in 2 axis at the same time, but for the sake of simplicity (especially fabbing your own), it's easiest if we stick to this method.  So I started breaking this down in the same way I would model up the wireform in solidworks.  You draw a path on a plane, you create the shape that you're going to extrude along that path, then when you change direction, you typically change the plane you're drawing the path onto.

There's no reason that a "plane" can't be represented by a piece of plywood.  So at first I thought "Sure, 2 pieces of wood, 2 planes.  I can join these two together and simply route out my path.  Then I thought about the actual routing, not so much fun.  Routers are big and heavy, and not easy to keep straight.  If you have a dremel with a router-like attachment, maybe not so bad, but still wavy cuts.  So then I thought why not split up the separation, and the actual groove into separate pieces?  yes, that's it!  Get 1/2" plywood, then I can cut out the path thicknesses out of 1/4" plywood, glue them to the base piece (print out the path on paper as a template), and you've got a nearly perfect fixture to bend your wireforms against.  It would look something like this:

 

This also eliminates the need to own a router.  A $20 harbor freight jigsaw can easily create this fixture, keeping the cost of tools down to a minimum.

FETS happen

So I was all wired up this past friday night, and because of my goof I shorted 5 of the 8 FETS (I think), so I've ordered up some replacements.  I moved the board down to the back of the playfield, thinking that typically the playfield is going to be tilted up (which means the back will be the lowest point).  Even with 6 of 8 solenoids wired up, you can see that now that I've got some wire management, it's still very clean underneath (it will fill up later once switches and lighting is installed).


I've written on the playfield which connection is which with abbreviations.  I should probably label each faston as well so I'm not guessing what goes where if I need to unplug the board.

While the extra channels were working, I got to see how one of the slings and the ball trough worked.  The sling is certainly overpowering (it launched the ball nearly all the way up the playfield), and the ball trough solenoid kicked the ball so hard it almost bounced back into the trough.  The slings can be turned down later with code, and the ball trough can be softened by adding a gate to slow the ball down a bit.

Butane solder, first attempt

Ok, so I got the butane torch out, brushed on some flux (which held the support rod nicely in place with the stickiness).  I used a 1/2" piece of wood to space them out, taped it down so it wouldn't move, and went ahead and joined two bars.  I'll admit it held pretty nice, until I tried bending one side into place, then one side snapped.  Now I'm not completely surprised for multiple reasons.  1. I only had 2 bars fairly far apart, not exactly distributing force, 2. I'm not sure I cleaned the surface good before I started.  3. I didn't create any sort of recess where the support bar could really get good surface contact.  I might also experiment with doing a zig-zag pattern and solder in multiple locations, sort of like what you see on wire rack shelving.

I think if I took my time and did it properly, brass could potentially work.  Just as a backup I looked at what it would cost me to do in metal.  Not only are the rods the same price (and would be far harder to form), but I'd end up spending at minimum $100 for an arc welder, and that's not including all the safety gear that goes along with it.

Went ahead and did a rough 3d model of the updated wireform ramp, looks a lot cleaner.  I need to verify what my actual height of my upper playfield is (ball gets pretty close to the flipper coil), as well as position (how far back) so I can accurately create a 2d view of the side and top.  I figure I can form that turn in one axis (fixture), then make the dip bends in another fixture.  I'm thinking if I use some leftover 1/2" plywood and cut the shape (maybe cut a groove in the edge to keep it centered) then I can hammer the rod into shape, and each side should come out roughly the same shape.

wireform brass ramp

Nothing terribly exciting.  I formed a couple pieces of rod for the left waterfall ramp by hand.  3 feet is definitely not long enough once you start bending it.  I was going to order 6 foot, but shipping almost doubled.  Anyway, it was a good test to see how well the ball rolls down from a 3 inch height.

wireform ramps

So after seeing Stern's latest release (WWE wrestling), and seeing their minimalist wireform ramps (not 4 wire cages):

I've decided I'm not even going to bother with plastic ramps.  If Stern can build a commercial pinball with minimal ball support, I don't see why my homebrew project can't.  I was trying to find the best solution, I know Ben heck used brass rod.  I looked at copper coated low carbon steel, I even looked into solid copper, but copper is very soft.  The zinc in brass hardens it up, but keeps it soft enough to form easily.  I was going to order a brass wire spool, but realized it would be a nightmare to straighten out, so I opted to order 5 pieces of 3foot length brass from mcmaster.  It ends up being about $1.05/foot.  Brass is quite solderable because of it's high copper content.  So long as I can clamps pieces together, all it takes is a small butane torch, some flux, and solder, and you can build very strong wireform structures.

I may toss in a VUK or two, which will need to be cages for sure, and I'll need a way to fabricate those as well.

Power supply came in, I'm flipping

Flippers are really strong, I'm actually quite curious how far up a ramp it would go now.  One thing I'm curious about is when I'm holding the flippers up, there's a slight whining noise.  I don't know if that's normal for PWM'ing a coil (I used a meter to verify 12 volts), or if maybe a 3-lug coil is not meant to PWM and I need to find a 2 lug coil?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b0VD4zP-nE&feature=youtu.be

Anyway, pretty exciting.  Now that I have flippers, I intend on getting the ball trough wired up, the upper 3rd flipper, a 4th flipper in the upper right, and get the slings wired up.  I also definately need to do some wire management.  My wire tabs came in today, but the re-usable tie wraps are a day behind.

Here's the power supply.  It has a nice shielded case, terminal block (3 for the input cord, 3 each for ground, 3 each for positive 48v output).  It's got an LED for power to let you know it's working, and even has an adjustable pot.  I was able to crank it up to about 68V, but then brought it back down to 52V (doesn't seem like it goes lower than that).  The fan never turned on (yet) which is good.  That means it's not getting hot.

playfield overlay thoughts

So the question was brought up, what's the best way to do the playfield art.  While I haven't actually yet installed my high speed vinyl overlay, I figured it anything I did was better than the condition it's in now.  However, there is the nightmare of getting the cutouts of the inserts lined up.  I've printed small sections of space shuttle to touch up my existing playfield with 8x10 stickers, and even that's a nightmare to deal with.  Also after reading a recent thread on pinside about planetary pinball selling overlays (and people talking about how CNC cutouts varied during production), it makes me second guess myself.

Now when I worked at a company that built OEM chargers for other companies, we did decals for multiple customers all the time using the same plastic housing.  One thing I learned to avoid manufacturing error was to have about 1mm overlap of LED windows.  Let's say in the plastic case you had a 6 x 10mm viewing window where the LED shined through, that would mean the clear window was 4 x 8mm.  That way, even if the window was slightly off, you would never see the edge of the hole in the case.

Now inserts actually sort of suck on their own (exposed).  They swell, they raise out of their holes, they cup, they crack.  They also make printing rather hard to line-up.  Mylar has been brought up, it's even been used.  Mylar however is still very thin, usually .010" (compared to say .004" for paper or vinyl).  I'm starting to toy with the idea of printing a semi-transparent inside window decal.  Think car window sticker, think the decals that are on the bottom of pinball plastic ramps like earthshaker or elvira.  Now imagine instead of a decal being applied to the playfield, you simply apply it to a sheet of thin acrylic plexiglass (1/16") with a sticker pre-applied underneath.  This gives you several advantages:
1. You have complete freedom to get it aligned.  Because it's so thick, you can literally line it up with a couple screws, then hold it down with playfield posts alone.
2. You will never wear down to the artwork, ever.  Plexiglass is super tough, and if it does get worn or fogged up, it can be flame polished.
3. There's no need to separately print waterslide decals (that don't stay on very well) onto each insert, it can be pre-printed on the decal already.
4. Since most store wood is just under 1/2" (and playfield wood is normally 17/32"), this extra thickness will help make up the difference.

So basically you get a clear PET vinyl decal, like this (but reverse the image since it will be backwards):

From a place like bannerbuzz for $29:
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/clear-window-decals.html

Order a sheet of acrylic for $18:
http://www.estreetplastics.com/Acrylic_plexiglass_sheet_s/182.htm

Use soapy water to apply the decal to ensure there are no bubbles (like installing window tint), then install it on your blank playfield.

Also the thicker acrylic sheet is more likely to keep the inserts flush vs mylar (I have a whirlwind that's holding up, but you can feel a slight hump on a couple of them).  This will ensure smooth play for many years.