Good lord it's June already??

Life's been busy.  Traveled one weekend to Tennessee, spent the next weekend rebuilding the garden, spent the weekend after that at a friend's funeral.  Well, I got exciting news for you.. I cut the plywood for the playfield:

Told you it was exciting (NOT).  I mean, I basically took a 2' x 4' piece and trimmed it down to 45" long x 20-1/4" wide.  My first cut ripped the edge pretty bad (glad I started long at 46"), then remembered back to my wood shop days that adding some masking tape holds it together.  I had to stop mid-way on the long side, which created a slight jagged.  I'm figuring I"m gonna have to sand the edges no matter what.

I left a 1/8" gap on each side which sounds like a lot, but I'm also intending to add side rails into the playfield (photos later).  Basically imagine mirror blades made from 1/16" aluminum permanently mounted to the side of the playfield rather than the cabinet.  If there's one thing I hate in pinball it's how tight playfields are from the cabinet, which inevitably causes scratches to happen.

Once I get the wood sanded down, I'm going to start populating the basic parts.  Probably going to export my solidworks layout to paper 1:1 scale.

An update that isn't really an update

So I've been slowly working on my layout.  I'm adding stuff, then realizing I still have dead space.  After being spoiled by Pat lawlor tables, I feel like mine needs to attempt to live up to that standard, so some things may need to be further tweaked.  I may have to add a 3rd flipper mid playfield, no wonder why Pat always did that (only so many angles you can shoot on a fan layout).
One thing almost for sure that will change is the 2nd floor playfield, I'm going to try to change this to clear (Polycarb) so I can have useable and viewable playfield space below it instead of just a bunch of blind tunnels.  Supposedly a design that Trudeau worked on was going to try this, and after seeing the "clear EM pinball" project on pinside I figure I can at least do that on a small portion.
I don't know if any of you have heard my latest skits on the pinball podcast, but I've been starting to do audio "theater of the mind".  My first one was the big lebowski, and the next episode I'll be attacking spaceballs since a pinside user is actually creating one.  The audio is done, it's just a matter of Don and Jeff editing the show together.  Not only is this fun to record, but I'm realizing this is a really great way to sort of storyboard a theme.  By listening to applicable soundbites over and over, your mind starts imagining how that could tie into something in the playfield.
Out of all the ideas on pinside, there are currently 3 that really excite me:
1. Beastie boys - this band did a LOT of sampling, and those short little soundbites would make for some really fun pinball.  Also because they're famous for record scratching (mixmaster mike), I thought it would be really cool if there was a dual turntable in the middle of the playfield (think whirlwind spinners), but they could rotate back and forth (like scratching) instead of just spinning in one direction.
2. Weird Al - I'm not sure how the theme would really work, he's parodied so many things over the years, from his songs to his UHF movie, but the artwork alone would be incredible (some of his early album covers were pretty colorful).  Al is a stickler for proper grammar, so there would have to be some grammar mistakes on the playfield with a sticky note from Al correcting it.
3. Van halen - This is the epitamy of music themes to me.  If any company decided to tackle this, I would sell whatever I had to in order to buy it.  Seriously, there are very few bands (pink floyd is another) where I can drag any song into a playlist and I'd probably be happy to listen to it.  I already have a few ideas of features (and toys) I'd end up incorporating into this theme.  There's 2-3 really great songs to use for attract mode.

Eliminate bulbs in pinball?

What the HECK are you talking about?  I'm sure you've heard Ben talk about this many times, replace bulbs with some sort of laser projection, and you know what?  I think he's onto something.  This probably sounds crazy, crazy like computers eliminating wires and transmitting data with lasers, or cooling computers with waterlines instead of fans.  But you know, it's really not that far stretched.  Lighting under a playfield is a wiring mess that isn't easily managed.  Also wires are easily cut, sockets are easily shorted.  In fact just the other day I watched a video on Clay Harrell's pinball ninja website where a demolition man wouldn't even boot from a insert light failure.  Turns out, one of the bayonet sockets got turned and grounded to one of the playfield rails.  It wasn't until he unplugged the IDC connectors a few times and saw a spark that he started to figure it out.  Also, after resetting the fuse, he let it boot with the playfield up.  Sure enough as soon as the rail touched the lockdown bar, it shorted out and caused the machine to freak out.

So I just recently got one of those green lasers off ebay for $5.  I had one a while back but it broke, I got another one to use as a pointer during powerpoint presentations at work.  Anyway, it's amazing how much light you can get off a couple AAA batteries.  Now take that focused light and bounce it off a couple mirrors, you can light up a room pretty quick.

So I thought, well what if you did somehow shine lasers up into the inserts?  Would you need a bunch of individual lasers?  That still wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, $5 for each laser vs $1-$2 per bayonet socket plus another dollar for the LED bulb.  But then you'd still have the problem of "which laser isn't firing? Or is there a short in the wire? Or is it the lamp driverboard?" when you start having insert light issues.  So then I thought "well, maybe you have some sort of spinning mirror and you PWM the laser so it only fires at certain rotations, thereby sharing that single lasers among 12 outputs (sort of like the DLP televisions of yesteryear).  That's not a bad design if it were reliable, I think there's a reason why DLP went away (and it's not just because LCD got really cheap).  I believe the alignment of laser vs spinning motor was not very reliable and you ended up with blurred images.

So then I thought well... They do have reasonably inexpensive RGB laser projectors.  You know, those boxes that project very bright lines at clubs:


Or the vector animations, like this inexpensive $170 one from spencer's gifts:

The projector from Spencers is not only cheap, it allows you to create your own animations to put on an SD card (there's software that will convert bitmap to vectors).  This certainly simplifies it further.  If you mapped the entire underside of your playfield (so you pick a spot where each insert is), and then simply create single images for every possible scenario, you could simply load that image for whatever mode you have.  The only thing I would question is whether or not you could fill an entire playfield from only a couple feet away, even with perhaps 2 projectors to share the work?

Well let's take this a step further, perhaps we don't need lasers, maybe all we really need is a really bright display, I don't know like a video projector?  You're in a relatively dark enclosed cabinet, and projectors are REALLY cheap.  Like I'm talking about if you don't mind cheap chinese import crap, a relatively decent mini projector can be had for $60:
http://www.dx.com/p/ruiq-uc-30-24w-portable-mini-lcd-projector-w-sd-av-vga-hdmi-black-us-plug-100-240v-233749#.U0yi5qIVDD0

Even though you don't give a crap about resolution (you're only trying to get colors), it actually has a resolution of 1920 x 1080.  The specs also say 1 meter - 3.8 meter throw.  I don't know what size you'd end up with at only a couple feet, but again maybe you simply divide and conquer by having 2 displays at a short throw inside.

Another idea for video projection, animating 3d objects on the playfield.  Maybe Gerry Stellenberg has it all wrong with his flat LCD panel on the playfield?  I'm sure you've seen music videos by now where they've got a miniature foam mockup sitting on a table, and a projector starts adding animations to it, giving it an eerie 3d effect:


Mapping is really just setting up a projector, live tracing whatever object you intend on projecting onto, tracing it in some paint program, then creating animations in those spaces:

Sure seems like even in a fairly brightly lit room, the projection still shows up well (just like in a conference room where most of the lights are still on).

midwest gaming classic - I need to step it up

After seeing what Charlie from spooky pinball has come up with for his pinball zombies, I realize I need to really make sure I have a good layout.  Perhaps I should be sketching more instead of going right to 3d models, but I find it hard to think in layers in 2D.  I've done a bunch of re-configuring today, particularly with the upper playfield, but I don't want to post any photos until I've progressed far enough (I hate being the guy that bombards the audience with little tidbits).

Lower playfield - new idea

The bottom playfield was just looking bland, like I ate gottlieb's black hole and spit it back out.  Since the song is "into the ocean", I've decided to step it up a notch and make the playfield a boat that rocks on a mechanism.  Other than a local pinball guy that made a williams flash pinball rock with an ice cream mechanism, I've never seen a playfield rock (mine won't rock on axis, it'll actually roll back and forth).

plywood came - less than pleased

Well I'll say this, on the surface it was at least packaged well (double walled cardboard taped on both sides):

Then I started checking out the plywood.. Crack on this corner:

 Cracked on another side:

 And call me crazy, but this is not what I would consider 7-ply.  7-ply is usually same thicknesses, this is clearly 3-ply with 4 layers of veneer in between:

 I will say this, the board sure is straight for something that is 24" wide x 48" long:

Honestly, because I have excess wood, the dents aren't as big of a deal as they appear.  I mean I have at least an inch I can trim off each edge.

not really an update - but I'm still here

Well after being super busy at work and fixing issues with my current pins, I'm ready to get back in the saddle.  Sold a bunch of stuff on ebay so I have some free money to play with, so I pulled the trigger on what looks like good quality 7-ply maple from that ebay seller from St Louis.  Hopefully it's as good as described, anything has to be better than the warped plywood at box stores.  Once the sheet comes in, I'm going to go ahead and cut it to size, and at the very least drill my initial holes for the flippers, slingshot posts, and lane guides.  I figure once I get that much done, I can at least stick it on some sort of rotisserie and wire up the flippers.  There's something exciting about having a completely clean slate whitewood where I can start plopping down prototype parts to see how it plays.