Van halen pinball - Micheal Anthony owns a SEGA twister

This was just posted on a facebook group I'm on called pin spotting.  You have to wonder what the story is behind it.  Did he buy it new in box?  Did he get a discount?  Did he buy it used recently?

https://youtu.be/GdZqtKrfOk4

Custom cabinet preview

So again, I don't want to be that guy that reinvents the wheel.. but I also don't like the options for cabinets.  These are basically your choices:

* Find an old cabinet (because someone parted one out)

* Buy a virtual cabinet (which is pretty much only williams), and by the time you start adding all the hardware it gets very expensive

* Buy a stock cabinet from an existing pinball manufacturer like spooky

* Build one yourself (and pull your hair out because cabinet making is tricky)

I'm experimenting with a design where I 3D print a corner sleeve that the side slides into.  Since my 3d printer limit is between 8-12 inches it would be made in separate chunks.  I would print the hole section for the bottom, then fill the rest with whatever length (minus holes) for the rest of the gap.  The stock leg brackets would be what really ties the corners together.  I have some other corner brackets I found on amazon as backup if that isn't enough.

Here's what it will end up looking like (artwork would simply be offset from the corners by about an inch, but you only really see art for about 3 inches above the leg anyway.

another random thoughts

So I finally got my servos.  They showed up like a month later.  The seller ended up refunding me, and I tried to refund the refund but ebay doesn't make it easy so I gave up (it was also only a partial refund).  Anyway at some point I'd like to get those servo mechs going.

Work has kept me REALLY busy.  Been typically working 43 hours a week, and because of schedules I really can't take days off.  Its gotten to a point where I had so much sick time built up that I stopped accruing more time so I had to take a day off so I wasn't losing money.

Playfield ideas - Probably about once a week an idea pops into my head so I sketch it out to see if it's viable, then I take a photo of it and shove it in a folder.  Some ideas are so-so, some are pretty specific to my theme, others are like "Wow, if I saw a pinball with that sort of mech I would be blown away, why hasn't anyone tried that?"

Two things I really want to do on my next build:
1. Custom cabinet - I'm working on a cabinet that not only reduces weight and cost, but space (don't want to go into detail until I get something built)
2. For playfield art, I really don't want to print direct to wood.  I want to do an inside window sticker attached to a thin piece of 1/16" PETG (very similar to what outside edge sells).  So to ensure this is do-able I went ahead and ordered a 12x18 sample from bannerbuzz.com for $9 just so I can see how it ends up looking.  Most plywood you buy from a store isn't really 1/2", it's .468" (so with a 1/16" sheet of plastic I'm at .528")

Lastly, I was listening to the latest Coast2Coast pinball podcast (part 3 interview with Roger Sharpe).  The thing that stuck out the most was the 2 biggest things preventing more people from buying a pinball machine for home is cost and space.  He obviously talked about zizzle (cheap and small). How Williams experimented with safe cracker being a 4/5th size pinball while still feeling professional and not a toy.  How Stern is trying to reduce cost for their home model (but it doesn't tackle the space issue).  He also talks about how pool tables can be incredibly cheap (and still feel professional) for between $400-$800, so that's the price-point you're competing with.

cheap drop target

I had a concept earlier: http://homebrewpinball.blogspot.com/2018/10/homebrew-isnt-cheap.html

I decided to revisit this but model it from scratch.  I have a micro servo on order from ebay canada ($2.50), and fortunately it's such a popular servo that someone has created a 3d model of it.  This design essentially has a custom target (extruded slot shape with holes on top and a slot feature on the side), there's a cap (this acts as a hard stop so I'm not relying on the accuracy of the servo) which means it will always be flush, and the servo arm rides on this slot on the side to lower and raise.  THe target also slides inside a sleeve.

I went ahead and 3d printed a sample, and it feels good.  Not too tight, not too loose.  Because I have a sleeve, it has really good support.  I knocked into the target a few times, feels VERY solid.  As for a switch, I can either mount one beneath the playfield just in front of the target, or I can do optos from the side.

Few nice things about servos vs coils:

1. They are CHEAP now

2. They are quiet

3. They are reliable (no sleeves and carbon dust)

4. They don't have to be just up or down, they can be anywhere in-between.  What if there was a mode where they rise and fall in a waveform, and you have to time the ball just right to get through the first target