Insert lights replaced with... fiber optic?

So one idea I've had is, could you simply have a circuit board with a bunch of bright LED's, and then feed those lights to each insert via a fiber optic?  Well, I decided to buy a short sample of light transmitting fiber optic (do not buy network fiber optic) and see.  Decided to start with 3mm diameter, but it could probably easily be 2mm.  It came with a small 5mm LED that was about the same brightness as the LED flash on my cellphone.  I decided to recut each end, and then flash polish each end so it was nice and clear.  I gotta say it's pretty darn close to a bulb sitting in a socket behind the insert.

So you're probably saying to yourself...

Well.. I've seen underneath a lot of homebrews, and the biggest contributor to a rat's nest is the wiring for the lighting.  Now granted this simply takes 2 wires and replaces it with a single glass cable, but half is good.  So what about cost comparison?

Well assuming you were to JUST buy the same LED bulb, bayonet socket, and simply have a row in a section and then feed the fiber optic over to each insert (you would also probably want to 3d print some sort of holder to keep it offset).  Just comparing fiber optic to a pair of 22AWG wires:

22AWG wire, 1000 feet red, 1000 feet black ($80 each)

$160 / 1000 feet = 16 cents per foot

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2mm fiber optic, 350 meters (or 1080 feet) = $90

8 cents per foot

So just in the wiring alone, you'll end up paying about 1/2 the cost.  Now if you were to also replace the $1.50 PROC RGB bulb PCB with a through-hole RGB soldered to a perf board (say a neo-pixel), you'd be only paying 50 cents each (plus a little bit for the perfboard).

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2659

That's also adafruit prices, you could obviously find them for at least half that cost on aliexpress.

Another benefit: If an LED goes out, they are all in a single section.  Just go to the one not working and replace it.. not brush your way through a nest of wires, unscrew the bayonet socket (and hope you don't drop the screw).

One more benefit: You don't have to worry about crosstalk of 48v coils vs 5v lighting.  You are literally carrying the light through a tube, not power.

3d printed cabinet - part 4 (fixed)

Well that wasn't quite as bad as I thought.  There were slight alignment issues with the leg threads I had to adjust.  I'd say I spent probably 3 hours taking it apart, cutting off 1" from each piece, and re-assembling.

3d printed cabinet - part 3 (well crap)

 So I built my cabinet thinking go ahead and make it standard width (even though my wood is only 1/2" compared to the standard 3/4").  As I start to layout the playfield and glass, I realize if I try to make this work, it will be nothing but a compromise.  Unfortunately the playfield glass sort of drives everything.  I can't go to a widebody glass because it would hang over the cabinet.  With a standard glass, in order for there to be enough support I would need to extend wood on the sides, or have some U-channel (which would still narrow the opening), which would force the playfield width to be standard size (and possibly have the walls next to the playfield instead of on top).  Again, this feels like a compromise.  I've got a pocket of nothing, for no reason.  I even tried arguing that I could have like a built in side panel for art, but not at 1/2" thick.

CURRENT CABINET

Soooo, the only good solution is to take apart the cabinet and make it an inch narrower.  Which doesn't sound terrible until you realize that means cutting the front and back, and then the bottom, and then the backbox panel I had already made.  I guess on the plus side, the cabinet will be 1" narrower without compromising the playfield width.  Since the cabinet is sitting in an area that's a little tight, this will only make things better.  I've already got aluminum angles for the playfield to rest on.  I'm going to do the same for the side rails.  I know I can buy standard side rails for less than $50. but cutting my own reduces that down to $15.  Besides keeping this on a budget, I want anyone in any country with access to basic building materials and a 3d printer to be able to assemble this.

UPDATED CABINET

3d printed pinball cabinet - part 2

 So I was going to use 1/4" plywood for the bottom, but I could see how not stiff it was, so I opted to redo the corner brackets towards the bottom to allow for 1/2" plywood.  This also means you are ONLY buying 1/2" ply to build this cabinet.  I made another change I'll mention later.

So even though the stock metal leg brackets helped a lot to tie things in, I decided to also design and 3d print some extra corner brackets.  I pretty much set the plywood inside the box, laid the bracket in place, marked the holes, and started drilling.  Then go to town with 1/4" screws and nuts.

Apparently I didn't cut the sides quite short enough because there's a bit of a gap toward the front.  Again, this is me just trying this out so gaps aren't bothering me right now.  My next cabinet I'll take my time to make sure things are cut more precise.

At this point, the cabinet felt pretty good, but I knew the center was still not tied very well, so again I designed and 3d printed some more brackets.

So one thing I decided to do is make the hole locations in the front and back different so the entire cabinet leans just a little bit.  This means if I decide to make the playfield parallel with the bottom of the cabinet (which I would prefer to do), by default I will have approximately 4.5 degrees.  If the rear legs are extended an inch it should reach the standard 6.5 degrees.

Now I'm not going to say this is exactly equivalent to a standard cabinet.  It's lighter (which is not a bad thing).  There seems to be a feeling of something slightly not tight (but I can't narrow it down where that's coming from).  However, I'm very confident that this would hold up to nudging.

Now where do we go from here?  Well a few things:

1. I had thought about selling a kit.  I'm not sure that will ever work out because the way the corners are designed the tooling would require slides (which would make it impossible to prototype).  Me 3D printing them would not be cost effective.  Even if I use bigger tips and cut printing time down to 5 hours, I'm still looking at 50 hours (which if I'm charging my standard $5/hour I would have to charge $250) which is starting to creep into real cabinet pricing.  Another thought I had, upload the STL files and ask for donations.  Another thought.. Upload the native solidworks files, make this open source and make the homebrew pinball explode.

2. I still have a few things to add before this is a useable cabinet, but the hard parts are done.  Once I'm able to throw a blank playfield in, I'm likely going to start throwing components in and make a flipping whitewood.  I would like my wife to get involved with the project this time, and I figure if it's sitting there waiting to be played she can throw ideas at it.

Based on what I've learned, I may end up designing cabinet 2.0 and perhaps donating this cabinet to someone local that doesn't care if this cabinet has issues.  I also need to ditch my F14 cabinet.