So I thought I was going to start working on this project again after the holidays.. Then my wife got a terrible earache infection that we're still dealing with (multiple visits to ear nose throat doctor, ear specialist). Then to top it off my dog just got done with another spout of a pulled back muscle, thankfully this time it was just meds. Then my 3d printer crapped out, thankfully my new prusa i3 mk2 came at the same time, and spent an entire weekend with my wife building it. It still prints, but even with my fixes it consistently prints these weird artifacts on the sides that I can only attribute to some issue in the z-axis (or the board is garbling the g-code somehow?). Here's what it looks like:
Speaking of which I must say, the new printer is awesome. I read all the reviews, watched all the videos, they don't lie. This thing prints flawless clean prints every time which is amazing considering how many 3d printed components it has. The secret sauce as they say is in the auto calibration (in every axis). Even when we were doing the initial calibration, it said (XY axis very skewed, but I can still adjust for it). I said no way, let's get this as close to square as possible. Loosened the nuts underneath, and kept bumping the one side until the x-axis bars were parallel with the grid pattern on the printer bed. Re-did the calibration, said it was excellent. Starting doing some generic solid test prints, came out great. Then I went to re-print a job for a customer that had thin walls, super curling warpage on the bottom. I noticed that the bed was jumping to 100C every time, I couldn't understand it. Luckily prusa has a live chat support, and he walked me through some things. Finally on my own I discovered I had a couple wires reversed, and basically the power supply was feeding uncontrolled voltage to the bed. After swapping it out, accurate temperatures every time. I've got my old printer up for sale locally on ebay, so far it's up to $102 with a day left. Honestly if I threw it away I would still come out ahead. It's made me some decent money over the past year.
So onto pinball. In my last post I showed how I was updating my layout, and that I was going to have the shooter lane double as an outlane. How innovative I am right?! Wrong, turns out that SEGA did this on starship troopers. I was listening to some podacst (coinbox?) and they talked about how that did terrible on route because if the auto shooter got weak or something obstructed it, you were basically draining balls. I mean I could still do it and just realize that I need code to ensure that the player MUST score a minimum amount of points before it counts a drained ball.. Maybe I can come up with something even more innovative.
On a side note, I'm helping Hugh with another re-theme. I know he hates that term when there's new programming involved, but mechanically it's the same layout. So he's taking the Dolly Parton that's been sitting around, not changing the wiring, but re-theming it to Van Halen (per my suggestion since I'm so passionate about wanting a Van Halen pinball). So far I've got the backglass nearly done, but still laying out the playfield and plastics art. I'm going to try throwing as much at it as possible, including not only david and hagar, but every van halen reference in pop culture.
Lastly, I've been thinking a lot how I want to approach this next build. Originally I was trying to 3d print the lower half so I could quickly toss them onto a blank piece of wood (which I may still, at least most of it), but I'm thinking I want to somewhat borrow Ben Heck's concept of splitting the playfield. Many Pinside users had talked of such a concept in the "what's the minimum parts to build a whitewood" thread, but he actually did it. I do NOT like foamcore. I realize it's easy to cut, but it costs just as much for a sheet of foam as it does for 1/2" birch. I would far rather have real material I can drill into than trying to work on something so flimsy. Here's his rotisserie setup:
I'm going to try to do something very similar, but replace the foam with another piece of wood.
Speaking of which I must say, the new printer is awesome. I read all the reviews, watched all the videos, they don't lie. This thing prints flawless clean prints every time which is amazing considering how many 3d printed components it has. The secret sauce as they say is in the auto calibration (in every axis). Even when we were doing the initial calibration, it said (XY axis very skewed, but I can still adjust for it). I said no way, let's get this as close to square as possible. Loosened the nuts underneath, and kept bumping the one side until the x-axis bars were parallel with the grid pattern on the printer bed. Re-did the calibration, said it was excellent. Starting doing some generic solid test prints, came out great. Then I went to re-print a job for a customer that had thin walls, super curling warpage on the bottom. I noticed that the bed was jumping to 100C every time, I couldn't understand it. Luckily prusa has a live chat support, and he walked me through some things. Finally on my own I discovered I had a couple wires reversed, and basically the power supply was feeding uncontrolled voltage to the bed. After swapping it out, accurate temperatures every time. I've got my old printer up for sale locally on ebay, so far it's up to $102 with a day left. Honestly if I threw it away I would still come out ahead. It's made me some decent money over the past year.
So onto pinball. In my last post I showed how I was updating my layout, and that I was going to have the shooter lane double as an outlane. How innovative I am right?! Wrong, turns out that SEGA did this on starship troopers. I was listening to some podacst (coinbox?) and they talked about how that did terrible on route because if the auto shooter got weak or something obstructed it, you were basically draining balls. I mean I could still do it and just realize that I need code to ensure that the player MUST score a minimum amount of points before it counts a drained ball.. Maybe I can come up with something even more innovative.
On a side note, I'm helping Hugh with another re-theme. I know he hates that term when there's new programming involved, but mechanically it's the same layout. So he's taking the Dolly Parton that's been sitting around, not changing the wiring, but re-theming it to Van Halen (per my suggestion since I'm so passionate about wanting a Van Halen pinball). So far I've got the backglass nearly done, but still laying out the playfield and plastics art. I'm going to try throwing as much at it as possible, including not only david and hagar, but every van halen reference in pop culture.
Lastly, I've been thinking a lot how I want to approach this next build. Originally I was trying to 3d print the lower half so I could quickly toss them onto a blank piece of wood (which I may still, at least most of it), but I'm thinking I want to somewhat borrow Ben Heck's concept of splitting the playfield. Many Pinside users had talked of such a concept in the "what's the minimum parts to build a whitewood" thread, but he actually did it. I do NOT like foamcore. I realize it's easy to cut, but it costs just as much for a sheet of foam as it does for 1/2" birch. I would far rather have real material I can drill into than trying to work on something so flimsy. Here's his rotisserie setup:
