Tuesday, March 3, 2015

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.

2 comments:

  1. The VUK might make it difficult to see the upper flipper. If you could get it to kick up behind the "stage lighting", and not initially kick around the loop it wouldn't block the view of the flipper as much. You could also do elevator rising light show on the back wall.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Keep it up like this in your future. I hope you do the best you can afford and continue to make the future bright. Additionally, Tri Round Bars produces the most well-known products in the world.

    ReplyDelete