OPP Van halen pinball inspire JJP?

 So it's been 8 years since Hugh wrapped up building van halen out of a Bally Dolly Parton and generously donated it to me...

And it looks like Jersey Jack is finally going to make a commercial Van Halen game!

KNAPP ARCADE VAN HALEN

Now I do have issues with JJP.  They are ridiculously expensive, heavy as hell (I would know owning a Wonka at one time).  I doubt I'll ever own one (unless a used one comes up for super cheap), but I'm sure it'll show up at Pinball shows or perhaps even at a local arcade.  I'm curious both who the designer is going to be, and what elements of the band they decide to use.

flipper success

3d printed a chunk of the lower third, attached my solenoid (kept tweaking the linkages) and I got pretty good action.  Still not going to be able to make my own shafts but luckily I found a robot shop that sells 1/4" shafts in various lengths with a flat on one side, and just $3 each (those are on the way).  So because I had some success, I'm continuing to creating a basic whitewood.  While I tested the solenoid directly attached to playfield, I'm going to be making brackets so the positions will be repeatable.  I have a stash of siderails (ironically I ordered a bunch of 1/4 x 1/2" ABS strips for another project that are the perfect size).

Pretty sure my ball trough is going to work, I have a concept for the shooter rod (placeholder at the moment).  Pretty sure I know how I'm going to do slings as well.

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Already thinking ahead of other things I need for this to work including an accurate cabinet angle (I think a lot of scale pinballs tend to keep the same angle and the ball travels too fast).  I'd like it to play as close to full scale as possible.  Also because I'd like this to be a legitimate homebrew category that could possibly have tournament play, it needs the ability to nudge.  There's an obvious issue with that as this being half scale even though you could install a tilt bob, I think it's going to be hard to scale your strength nudging the same with a much lighter game.  What I was thinking of doing (especially since this is likely going to a tabletop game without legs like the 30's bar games) is mounting the back on a lazy susan so the whole machine pivots, and then the front can slide side to side but I put stoppers in the bearing so it can't rotate more than like 5 degrees either way (it will likely still need some sort of general nudge detection so you can only do it once every minute)

For my first whitewood I'm likely going to just get a full scale paper printout to mark all my cuts and holes, but I do have a used CNC machine in the garage I need to get setup that would make this far easier.

solenoid didn't work like I planned

https://youtu.be/R2kgjilRSOg

Was going to buy a bigger coil (more stroke, larger 4mm hole) but realized the coil is twice the size (almost as big as a real pinball coil) so I cancelled my order.  I'm going to try to make these smaller coils work so I bought some M2 screws and nuts.  I think I just need to mechanically get it to work (smooth rotation, the right torque arm, etc).

Also the flats I ground on the dowel pins were a bit sloppy.  Started out pretty good, the metal started to warm up and make the 3d printed fixture soft, which made the pin turn.  I think I need to try again, and either pause after grinding a single spot, or keep a spray bottle handy to cool it down.

HSP parts printed

Parts are coming together.  half scale flipper bats (added a groove where I intend to use an o-ring for flipper rubber).  Screw taps into a flat on the shaft.  There's coil arms above that.  The black piece is a fixture to hold the dowel pin while I manually grind a flat with a bench grinder.  If it works out well, I'll probably just farm it out to an online CNC company but I want to test it out before I commit to ordering a higher quantity of shafts to get a decent price break.  The shaft bushings are 3d printed (fit is good).  One blue coil came today (I ordered a pair, but had to order them separate because amazon does that weird thing where if you order at the same time it gets delayed a week).

I'm 3d printing a chunk of the playfield to test.  I know I could just drill a couple holes in a piece of plywood but I don't have a home depot close by (and I just want to do a quick test).

half-scale homebrew

So I'm sure you've seen people build them on youtube.  it's usually some guy in a european country.  There's one channel where the guy is building a bunch of scaled down remakes (whitewater, world cup soccer 94, medievel madness).  You know what sort of sucks about all those projects?  You'll never get to play them, and you'll probably never get to build one yourself.  Think about it, every time you see someone build one, what's missing from you building one too?  The mechs.  Yea, nobody is making half scale mechs, nobody is even sharing their CAD designs.  I've pondered designing one for years, always thinking "man, it's going to be tough to scale everything down".. Everything from mechs, to even the hardware and and thicknesses in general all scaling in half.  This week I've done some designing and now that I'm confident it will work I've bought some parts (small 12v solenoids, buttons, some UHMW for the side rails, some dowel pins for the flipper bat shafts).  I plan to get flippers working, then I've got a design in mind for the slings.  Eventually I'll get to gobble holes, VUKs, pop bumpers but for now I just want to get a game flipping (make sure the solenoids I picked can launch a ball up a playfield and up a ramp).

If it works well, I'd like to share the designs (since EVERYONE seems to have a 3d printer these days).  I think it would be so neat if I kicked off a whole new homebrew genre where people are bringing mini pinball games to shows, maybe even get kids interested in making their own (I think a half scale pinball is far more manageable than a full scale 220lb pinball machine).

Why do I want to start one now?  Well, it's small and light.. it takes up very little space (something I don't have a lot of at the moment).. I could build it, and it could literally get stored in a closet.  I just finished a side project at work for a trade-show display (not pinball related, but still a lot of work building a box with lights and relays and water pumps).  One of our team members jokes about a pinball machine themed around our business for the booth, to which I informed him just how tied I am into pinball.  He's the sort of person that never really follows through on anything (IE likes to spout off ideas, but never wants to execute them).  So I'm just going to build one and surprise him (and my boss).  Building it half scale makes it VERY shippable.  Like no freight for sure, in fact at half scale I may even get it down to carry-on luggage size and weight.

Right now here's a rough layout.  I'm printing flipper parts as we speak, should get my components from Amazon tomorrow then I'm going to try wiring up the flippers and see how it does.

backup pinball themes

 Had a short tag team with my wife this weekend (we're helping a surgery recovering father get back to being independent which is hampering me getting stuff done).  So last night I decided to just start playing songs from a band I wouldn't mind seeing into a pinball theme someday.  This isn't the first time, last few times I tried to spitball ideas it just sort of fizzled out but this time it just worked.  In fact the more looked at the lyrics and watched the videos more ideas just popped into my head.  What band is it?... Genesis.  Yea, wrap your mind around that one.  Besides being an iconic 80s band, many forget just how much influence Phil Collins had to do with the sound.  If you haven't seen it, watch this Vox video from a few years back:

https://youtu.be/Bxz6jShW-3E

How does that turn into a pinball layout?  Easier than you might think (and re-using several of the targets and bash toy for nearly every song).  Not going to put in any actual work at this point, but going to throw all my notes into a folder for a someday.

unplugging sparked creativity?

 So my father-in-law had a fall 2 months ago, and since then he's had spine surgery, recovered from pneumonia, went into rehab (which did a horrible job, in fact it was a waste of time), and has now been back home for about a week slowly trying to get back to normal (he had a couple episodes where he almost went into a coma because of low blood sugar because he's on like 15 pills and doctors aren't great at tracking that stuff).  My hope is that my tag teaming with my wife being there basically 24/7 to make sure he's stable fades off and I can get back to normal life.  Since I've had no access to my computer, I actually took one of my 3d printers to their house so I can keep doing print jobs for clients.

Since I had free time I decided to use it to sketch ideas on paper old school.  Sometimes I forget how important it is to just freely think out ideas without getting into detail.  Just kept sketching stuff on a new piece of paper (what if I did this?  I bet I could squeeze that feature under there).  I've got 2 upper playfields now, and I'm realizing just how many songs I can re-use on each (with a neat feature I'm surprised nobody has tried before).. AND on top of that, the shapes of the playfields ended up being the first letters of the band so I'm taking a nod from data east guns n roses.  I've never been so motivated to get back into it.. I can't wait to start showing some progress.

Homebrew is getting so good.. that makes it hard

 After seeing all the games at Chicago Pinball Expo this year it made me realize two things:

1. If you want your game to get noticed, if the theme isn't killer (big trouble in little china) you better have an interesting mech.

2. If you can't come up with a killer mech, your game should stand out as being very different from the standard pinball cabinet (2x scale, head-to-head).

I'm also realizing I may want to put my new theme on hold for a very good reason and go back to blue.  I think in most cases, your first homebrew isn't that great (there are some exceptions) and I want the other theme to really be executed well after getting a finished game under my belt.  I don't know that I'll have a cool mech, but I have been pondering the idea of an interesting cabinet.. one that will make homebrew tours to multiple shows way more feasible.  As an engineer, I always try to do small experiments to see if something is going to work out.. if I have some success, I scale it up.  I just made a prototype of something and I was sort of blown away by how well it worked (did the math of scaling up and the results were even better than expected).  After going through the cost of a cabinet (mostly hardware) for sure I want to design my own cabinet, and as long as I'm doing that I'm going to cost reduce it, simplify it, lighten it.

Secondarily, I need to just START.. Like I need to build a simple rotisserie, cut a piece of wood and start mocking up my playfield up again.  If you never start, you'll never finish.

Why I will never buy another multimorphic pinball

So I just sold a Weird AL.  I was on the fence buying one when it was announced based on playing it at shows.  But I thought "Oh but look at that theme, they've finally picked a good theme!".. I figured worse case scenario it should hold its value because they're only making so many.  I placed my pre-order probably a few months  before I moved across the country, then it was ready about a year later.  I paid $10,200 for the game, plus $700 tax, plus $700 for shipping (and that's with picking it up from a fedex freight center).  So I'm in at $11,600.  I play it maybe 50 times over the past 3-ish years, realize I don't play it anymore, and also realize the resale value is crap (I lost almost $5k, that's about a thousand shy of a brand new stern).  Keep in mind this is a HUO game, it was never routed and barely played.

Here's a bunch of reasons you won't have people knocking down your door to buy one too.  It's heavy, REALLY heavy... it might be the heaviest pinball ever made (and I've owned a jersey jack game).  it SUCKS to move it.  Oh also, because it's a taller cabinet (it's 28" in the back, not the standard 24"), with the backbox folded down it is NOT going to fit in any SUV (you must own or rent a truck to pick it up).  The playfield layout is always a compromise, if you'd like to argue with me I can prove it.  Sure, compare it to like a batman66 I'll lose that argument, but compare it to a Stern King kong or foo fighters, you could never have that layout on a multimorphic playfield.

If Gerry doesn't think the poor resale value is going to affect future sales, he's wrong.  People that have been buying JJP games for $12k (plus tax and shipping) and realize they're only worth $7-8k are getting hesitant about buying NIB.  The modules themselves aren't holding value either.  I saw an ad of someone selling a multimorphic machine with like 4 modules (including weird al, heist) for $10k?  I really imagined I would just be buying modules and updating my game.  I really loved the concept of swapping out playfields, but in practice I just don't want to deal with swapping games, cabinet art, and storing those playfields somewhere.  I think there's been maybe 600-800 cabinets, and I think that's about the saturation point.  you're going to stop having new buyers, and if you're just selling modules is that still a viable business?

DR pinball

That's what I'm codenaming it.. DR pinball, take that for what it is.

Now that ideas are spitballed, I'm also spitballing a layout in solidworks.  What a difference 10+ years makes from my last attempt.  I was just barely getting into 3d printing at home then.  Now I have no doubts I can 3d print a lot of stuff I need.  There are so many more resources now for grabbing either free or very cheap 3d models to speed up the process.  AI is going to play a big part (no not blurry images like JJP harry potter).  Chatgpt is able to produce images that would take many hours can be done in a matter of minutes.  AI can now generate pretty dam good 3d models from just a single photo.  There's so many projects out there with circuits that can do all sorts of cool things.  One thing I'm doing for sure is a talking head (similar to rudy from funhouse, only better).

New homebrew theme

 So as life evolves, so do projects.  I know I promised my wife a blue october pinball (and maybe that will still happen someday), but I came up with a new theme I'm pretty passionate about (and my wife and one of her best friends shares the same interest and excitement).  It's a pretty lofty goal, but its a theme I feel has been needed for a long time.  I'm not going to share what it is yet (I have a ton of prep work), but I've got a long google doc going with brainstorm ideas and I really think it's going to integrate well into pinball.

Northwest pinball show - van halen returns

So I went to the show this year (it's been tough settling in from such a far move).  Thanks to the coordination of Iomoto (marco specialties) they were able to setup a shipment directly to the show.  When I moved the movers kept jumping the price (low balled a $5k moving fee over the phone, which became a $12k price for maybe 1/4 more stuff, to $22k once the movers had everything on 2 trucks.  We really had no choice but to start leaving things behind.  Ed Owens was kind enough to babysit Van halen and take it to shows in Chicago the past couple years.  He also managed to fix a bad boot image (it stopped booting correctly last I left it), as well as replace the model A raspberry pi with a pi zero.

The speakers Ed included were computer speakers which should have been loud enough, but with all the show noise you just couldn't hear anything (which is sort of the point of a music pin).  also because you can't hear the instructions at the beginning, I'm sure people didn't understand that you have to hit both flippers to choose a side.  While I was moving it out of the exhibition hall out to my vehicle, some random person actually said how much they enjoyed it.  I told him you missed half the fun because the sound wasn't loud enough.  Still, it felt great to hear a compliment from someone.

One of my first goals is to embed some good speakers towards the front of the machine (possibly also include a headphone jack in the front).  I also really want to simplify the connectors (perhaps two that make all the connections to the playfield).  Setting it up at a show with 10 random old bally connectors isn't ideal.  I'd also like to redo the backglass lighting, I think moving the led strips to the back of the box (like Stern does) will help a lot so the lights aren't oversaturating..

Sidenote: I'm also doing some part-time contract work for Fast Pinball.  I did a talk about a pogo pin fixture I designed at the show:

https://youtu.be/7OsVcr8222w

it's been a while...

So just a little over 2 years ago I moved across the country.  It's been me and my wife's dream for well over a decade to move out west.  Our original goal was to move to Portland, oregon but we could see it go downhill, and after covid hit and they decriminalized hard drugs it got REALLY bad.. So we ended up in Washington State.

I know you're probably thinking "Whaaat?! you moved away from the pinball capital of the world!".  Yea, I spent my first 48 years there and I was done and ready for something new.  I couldn't take another chilling winter in the midwest, nor could I retire there with the high property taxes.  Washington (specifically Seattle) has a TON of pinball.  Not that I venture into the city much, but even in the burbs there's lots of pinball (25 minutes away are 2 arcades within walking distance, and another two within a 10 minute drive).

So what games did I keep you might be wondering.  The plan was to keep CSI, rick and morty, and apollo13 (because they are all low volume games that would be hard to replace.  Ending up selling apollo last minute because the movers screwed us.  I had weird al on pre-order so that arrived about a year ago and I'm regretting it.  Not as fun as I thought it would be (I should know better about multimorphic games), and if I do sell I know I'll probably end up losing $3k if I'm lucky.  Then a few months ago I see someone within an hour away put up a space shuttle and space station up for sale so I snagged those.  The space station is pretty immaculate, and the space shuttle had a CPR playfield already installed (so even more immaculate).  It's a running joke with my friends because I owned a space shuttle for a decade, bought the CPR playfield and never got it installed (then bought the outside edge overlay and never got that installed either).  Now I have the space shuttle I always dreamed of thanks to the last owner.

So where does that leave homebrew?  I literally have a Den packed with 5 games now, so I need to get rid of Weird Al just to open up a slot.  Over the past few years there's been so many ideas popping in my head so I'm really itching to get back into it.  After seeing nearly 40 homebrew games at Expo (not physically but youtube walkthroughs) it's an exciting time for sure.

Pinball Expo 2021

 I try to blog about my experience at expo every year, and since there wasn't an in-person one last year it was quite overwhelming playing so much this year.

Led-zeppelin - met my expectations, which is to say it still felt like a very empty layout with very little to shoot at.  I almost can't believe they signed off on this game.  Not saying the rising spinner with a magnet isn't a cool toy, the engineer that made that happen clearly worked hard on it.  But the rest of it felt so phoned in.

Avengers - Played great, so many great ramps and loops shots, very tempted to buy one of these someday.

Godzilla - not crazy about the theme, but holy crap just when I thought Keith can't outdo himself on avengers, his next game is even better.  The loops shots, the magnet post, so many lanes that flow perfectly really reminded me of Bally skateball.

TMNT - Played decently, felt like it gave out multiball too easily.  Wasn't huge into TMNT as a kid, and as an adult it feels a little childish.

Stranger things - Didn't get to play this.  I'm surprised Stern didn't at least bring one of these considering it was released right before the pandemic hit (not hitting enough locations, and certainly not pinball shows) before most people got to play it.  Could I drive my lazy butt 50 miles to chicago to play one?  Sure, but I assumed I would get to play it eventually at expo.

Hot wheels - Played good, felt a little more street level (even though it had ramps).  Theme doesn't do much for me (even though I like cars, and played with them as a kid).

Homebrew

Ghost in the shell - Ed did some code cleanup, most notably updated graphics thanks to Jack Danger.  I'm a mild anime enthusiast (I had friends in high school that were huge into it), but I do really like Ed's layout.

Boys night out - This was an oddity.  Layout felt a little borrowed firepower II, but the thing to note the most was that as you played, you were literally editing a movie (clips of a boys night out).  This almost felt like a "choose your own adventure" mixed with laserdisc, but in pinball form.  I watched a little clip from twitch interviewing the designer, and he said his background is video producer so making a pinball is completely new to him

Sonic the hedgehog - This has been a long time coming.  I have watched so many of McSquid's streams wanting to play his game, and after finally flipping it I can say it met my expectation.  Flowed great, hearing all those sound effects hit all my nostalgic buttons.  The ramps felt so good, the 360 loop shooting the ball back around the orbit was neat to see.

So that leads back to where the hell is my project at?  Well life has gotten in the way this past year.  I've been very busy building mods which has turned into a great side business.  My wife's grandmother passed away early this year, my wife's parents made the decision then to sell their main house in illinois (they have a home down in florida), which meant every weekend driving down to help them pack, and now after a short break we're starting to spend money to fix our house up, and also pack things up so we can sell our house next spring.  We plan to move to the upper northwest which has been our dream for probably the past decade.  The timing just hasn't worked out, but now everything seems to be aligning and couldn't be a better time to do it.  None-the-less, I am selling off most of my pinball collection and only keeping 4 games (including van halen donated by Hugh).  I've even donated my 3d printed cabinet to someone local because it just makes more sense to rebuild it after the move rather than paying to move an empty cabinet.  Once I get settled (which may include some home improvements depending on where we end up), I will certainly be jumping back into my homebrew project.  Every time I play other homebrew games it always inspires me to want to jump back in.

 

stop... collaborate and listen

I'm typically meticulous with things I design, and I would like to put more detail into my assembly.  There's this new homebrewer I started watching.  He has no theme that I can tell yet, but what's interesting is he works for a game company.  He had no experience 3d modeling a few years ago, but now he's modeling in fusion360 like an expert.  He's also acquired a 3d printer, a CNC, he's spinning his own control boards.  But what really intrigues me is how detailed and organized he is with his model library.. which is pretty much all he's done on his first two streams, JUST reverse engineer the mechs he's using:

https://www.twitch.tv/surreal_7

This brings me to my point, libraries.  There obviously exists more 3d parts and assemblies than exists on pinballmakers.com.  Not everyone does the favor of uploading their files there, and I think it has to do with the tediousness of uploading to a wiki.  I don't place any blame on Jeremy Wilson, the fact that he EVEN put that website up (and kicks off spammers) is amazing.  Before then, it was all a bunch of homebrewers all modeling their stuff from scratch, maybe some stuff got shared on forums or slack groups if you asked.  I'd say the better thing to do is simply have an FTP site with folders (like you might have a library of parts for things you design), but then how easily do you give access to others that want to upload files?  How do you even police an FTP site?  What if someone overwrites a file? What if someone uploads a virus?  How do you verify the models that people are uploading are even accurate?  I don't have the answers, but I would think it could be something that could be worked out so the homebrew community could collaborate more (and not redo the same work).  I mean people upload sample YMML files so you don't have to code from scratch, why can't there be a say a standard williams cabinet with a blank starting playfield that has the standard ball trough, standard italian bottom, sling assemblies, flipper assemblies, and you can start modeling from there?  The other problem is which format do you use?  If you upload a solidworks file, great for solidworks users like me.. But fusion360 is free, and although solidworks 2020 seems to import ok, apparently 2021 does not.  So now do you make everyone that uploads solidworks files also save out Step files?  The other game changer recently announced at solidworks world this week is they plan to release a "maker license" mid-year for $99/year or $10/month.  If you haven't shopped around for software that might sound terrible (especially if you're use to using fusion for free), but when you realize that even the most basic solidworks license is $4,000  with a mandatory $1200 service plan (plus tax), PLUS if you want to stay current with the latest release you have to pay another $1000 every year, $99 suddenly looks REALLY appealing.  If you don't have a business, it really seems silly to pay for a professional license, but until this your only 2 options were:

1. Taking a class at a local college to get access to a student email address so you could get the $60/year license

2. Get an experimental aircraft membership for $45/year and get a free seat of solidworks (which isn't advertised, I only discovered it after someone posted in a 3d printing facebook page)

Now that fusion is deleting features (but allowing you to pay a small fee to keep them), solidworks finally looks appealing with this new tiered pricing.  I might be biased, but if you go to any website that has 3d models (Mcmaster Carr being the biggest one), you really only have 2 choices.. Download a dummy STEP/IGES file you can't do any editing on, or download a native solidworks file.  I have seen some websites RARELY support pro-engineer, but that seems to be dying.  The only reason a website would obviously support that is because the engineers designing whatever product they're selling is still using that program.

back to basics - simple flippers

So not only has Scott Danesi posted about using system 11 flipper mechs with EOS switches for doing your layout:

https://www.scottdanesi.com/?p=4173

But also this guy's page:

https://howtobuildapinballmachine.wordpress.com/tag/flippers

Now granted, this does not give you any control over flipper power, you can't have delayed gobble holes, but if you're JUST trying to get your playfield laid out I agree this is really the best way.  You don't have to deal with a computer booting, loading code, it's just direct power from switch to flipper.  I figure this will also eliminate any excuses.  There's no reason I can't wire up 3 flippers to my power supply

So even though I have flipper mechs (which I can use on my next project), I went ahead and bought three of these flipper assemblies, plus an auto plunger mech from pinball life (picking it up this friday).  The auto plunger exists on pinballmakers.com, however I noticed nobody has really modeled up a flipper mech so I'm probably going to do that and upload it.

Progress

 

So I've pixelated out my upper playfield because I'm not ready to reveal it, but I'm pretty happy and excited about it (I'll be even happier when I can flip it).  I had an idea that really ties in with this theme, but at the same time it's a very cool tight double orbit shot (this is going to double as the upper balcony).  I modeled it in visual pinball and it shoots just like I imagined it would.  Also because I have so much more vertical space my upper playfield can be much higher allowing for more to be seen underneath (I may even have a 2nd upper playfield if I come up with an idea).  Now THAT would be absolutely crazy.. Main playfield, 2 upper playfields and a lower playfield.  Hasn't been that many layers since Pinball Circus.

Although plastic ramps are easier to model / fabricate, I've modeled in a wireform ramp.  My copper rods arrive tomorrow, and I really want to see if I can come up with a fixture to form them (even if I have to 3d print a buck).

The reference flipper shot lines are already a huge help in figuring out where I can stick stuff.  I have a list of potential mechs I want to build (some old, some new), but now that I know where they can fit I think laying this out will go much easier now.

back to basics - fan layout

 So rather than just randomly sticking things on a playfield like my first attempt (which only got me painted into a corner), I figured I would do what I believe most pinball designers do which is draw lines from the tips of the flippers to shots where the ball would end up.  In order to optimize space not only have I eliminated the shooter lane, but I'm drawing a fan of what I believe is reasonable shots that shouldn't be overly tight.. and I can work backwards from there.  If I know a ball is projected to go in this direction, I can create whatever I want that shot to be whether it's a ramp, a target, a mech, etc.  I'm likely going to tweak this a bit because I know I'll also want some shots that can only be made by bouncing off something else but this at least gives me a good start.  With this sketch I have an orbit on each side, 6 shots in the middle (most of them likely ramps), and 4 close target shots.

 I'm very likely to have an upper right flipper just like my first layout, which will have it's own fan layout.

Can you make wireforms with a soldering iron? Yes!

 So many years ago (when my project was more active), I attempted to solder wireform ramps I was not very successful.  Between not having a very good jig, and I likely bought brass (which isn't as solderable), and probably didn't sand my surfaces, and probably didn't have a hot enough soldering station.. etc etc.

So on a whim since I have the day off, I grabbed some 12AWG solid copper wire (.080") from my basement that my dad gave me when he retired.  stripped off a couple feet, straightened it out the best I could, and made some smaller chunks to act as braces.

I did not use flux, I did not use a torch (though both of these would likely create a stronger joint).  However, it was way stronger than I would have guessed.  Also although copper is pretty flexible on it's own, as soon as you add those braces it becomes very rigid.  That's not to say I can't purposely push on it and kill the straightness but for prototyping it's just fine.  So of course I started my search for cheap copper rods (so I at least start with a nice straight piece).  Looked at Mcmaster, looked at welding rods (which would either be brass, or if it was copper it was only coated, or if it was solid copper it would have a flat stamp mark on it).  Finally remembered what my backup metal supplier was, surely they would have some and turns out they DO!

https://www.onlinemetals.com/en/buy/copper/0-125-dia-copper-round-bar-110-h04/pid/1606

$2.18 for 1/8" diameter x 36" long (and you can get up to 12 foot lengths).  I threw 12 of those pieces in my cart, $14 shipping (little high, but the pieces are CHEAP).. looked around for a coupon, find a 15% off coupon (which now drops my total another $4).  So $36 for 12 pieces shipped to my door.  Even if you walked into a store that even carries it, I doubt you could find them that cheap.

So one thing I've always struggled with is the transition from playfield to the wireform.  I'm starting to play with 3d printed mounts where all you do is drill 4 holes, cut the tangent to each hold, and drop in a piece that fits like an insert.  I also want to build up a wall underneath the wireform to ensure a ball will never get trapped behind the wireform.

Old cabinet gone

Well it took 2 weeks, but someone finally contacted me to take my old cabinet.  Guy from Milwaukee picked it up.  He plans on making a simple early solid state game (no graphics, just scoring).  His ideal theme is Kraken (assuming that's pirates?).  He's got PROC hardware already and is going to use mission pinball framework.  He's good mechanically, but sucks at programming (like me) but apparently has a friend that's going to take care of that part for him.  He even stipulated "If this cabinet doesn't work out, you ok with me passing it on?" and I'm like "Oh yea of course, I get it.  I'm on my 3rd cabinet now.. I get how projects can change.  I hope you do pass it on so someone else can start a project".