slight design change

I hate being one of those guys.  As an engineer, I hate when product managers and sales guys can't decide what specifications they want to hold a product to.  Well, I figure at this stage (and because I am my own boss on this non-profit journey), might as well make changes before I get too far along.

So what changed my mind?  Seeing some of the cool stuff other pinball manufacturers and hobbyists are doing.  Started off with Heighway pinball showing off a promo video with the LCD in the playfield:

Yes!  that's totally awesome!  Ok, I'm just gonna move the screen to the playfield.  Hell if I want I can play without a backbox if I really wanted to.  Then I thought.. Where the hell am I going to put a screen in my layout?  Lose the lower playfield? (DONT COMPROMISE THE DESIGN).  Maybe just a strip of the LCD, like the lower 1/4 of it.. Ok sure, even if I go with a 15" monitor, I'm going to have to tilt it at a weird angle so I don't sacrifice the rest of the space taken up by the monitor.  Ok kill that idea.

Then I started seeing some of the cool LED flasher animations the hobbyists are starting to put in Stern backboxes:

Crap! that's so awesome.  My favorite backglass of all time is still by far gottlieb's haunted house because of how they animated a still image just with lighting:

Ok, so I'm stuck on glass again.  I'm not sure I really want to have nothing but LCD like a JJP machine.  There's a reason why people complain about it, and it's not just because it looks bland when it's off.  I want that backlit art, maybe even add some strobes that are attached to the same playfield lighting.  Then I had another idea (maybe the first of it's kind).  What if I had a mixture of LCD AND backlit glass? Keep using the lower portion for scoring, but then use the upper portion of the LCD for artwork that pops up (maybe even animate).  I'd have cutouts in the art (like they used to do before DMD days where the scores would be embedded in the backglass), and I can have various sections be blacked out when the machine is off, but when it's on, those empty areas fill with LCD dots.
This isn't necessarily what it's going to look like, but you get the gist of what I mean by this photoshopped rendering:

playfield update

So I finally feel like I've got the space filled a bit better.  I still have targets to put in front of the edges of rails, but that's a small detail.  In order to get up to the balcony, you have to aim for the orbit, which allows you to shoot into the far left with the right flipper.  This path (not shown) will go up a small ramp, and dump into a hand that pulls the ball up to the balcony.  If you drain, the ball travels down the violin neck (decided to get rid of the body as this takes up too much playfield space), which feeds into a subway tunnel and pops out into the right dead area.  I haven't quite figured out what I want to do with this space yet (if I had multiball, this would be an ideal spot for ball locks).  Couple more toys I've added since are a drum set that spins on the left, and a microphone to the right (will make the distortion sound when you knock it over).  I also want to add stage lights in the upper right to make it feel more like a concert.  Haven't decided if I'm going to just mount them stationary, or actually have them rotate during the game.


Also here's the violin neck I got off ebay

Cabinet finished painting

Not going to bother posting a photo of it, you know what a williams cabinet looks like I'm sure.  I've got the new artwork ready.  Decided to photoshop the background out this time, as well as keep the decal away from edges, legs, and rails.  Here's what the new side artwork is going to be, I think it's much cleaner:

Pays to prime

So I never really believed in primer.  I always thought it was a waste of money, if you sand a surface properly you shouldn't need primer.  Turns out, unless you sand perfectly you'll never get a good surface.  So after seeing how great the goonies cabinet looked after priming, I decided to spend the $6 on a pint.  I'll be damned if it doesn't make a difference.  It really helps level out the surface, and you can see how much more the cabinet sheens.  Granted I only have 1 coat on, it's already obvious how much better this cabinet is going to turn out.




















Also got my new aluminum angle and made another bracket, I think it will work quite fine.  I should be able to adjust the mounting screws while the switch is still mounted.

Got a new donor cabinet

So rather than trying to make my current cabinet work (which has no slant because it was built just after the EM era without ramps or 2nd levels), I managed to get a donor F-14 cabinet.  Granted it was free (and I'm grateful to my friend that gave it to me), it's so stripped it only has the side rails.  I'm gonna have to source a coin door (one on ebay for $5 right now), $16 on leg threads.  I may try to re-use the stern lockbar and lockdown mech since a new williams set is going to set me back a good $140.  I mean it's not ideal, but's not like I'm restoring a williams game, I'm building a custom game.  Standard width is standard width, so really any lockdown bar will do.

Spose it's better this way, all stripped so I can do this cabinet the right way this time.  I'm currently gluing the loose wood in the front with clamps squeezing them together.  Once that's dry, I'm going to attempt to use some bondo I bought a little bit ago.  Wood filler works ok, but it tends to be crumbly and doesn't always sand so well.  After I thoroughly sand it inside and out, I'm going to go through the trouble of priming first, more sanding, then final black coats.

Sort of sucks I'm having to not only redo the cabinet, especially the $60 in decals are going to waste on the cabinet.  I mean I'm not too bummed about that last part because honestly the bottom cabinet artwork isn't adhering so well.  This time when I do it, I'm not going to have any decals behind metal.  Heck, I'm not even going all the way to the edges, I'm literally doing a big sticker with gaps between any mating parts.  I'm also going to glue it down well so it stays stuck.

Anyway, here's the donor cabinet:

I'm realizing this cabinet is a good 4 inches longer, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but I have to adjust my playfield

I've also decided to JUST order a violin neck instead of an entire violin.  I figure it will be much more flexible if I simply make the violin body out of some layers of plywood and attach the neck.  I won't be restricted by size, and I'm not ruining a perfectly good $35 violin.  I'll still have to order some tuning pegs, but that can come later

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1pc-hand-carved-Student-Maple-White-Violin-Neck-4-4-size-Violin-Parts-/271539302949?pt=String_Instrument_Parts_Accessories&hash=item3f3900f225

Switch + bracket = some progress

So made my first prototype switch assembly.  Not happy with the stock material I had on had (too small and radius' are getting in the way), so I have some slightly bigger 1/8" aluminum channel on it's way (without radius').  Here's a quick video:

Leaf switch no more

So one thing I wanted to eliminate was leaf switches, and for good reason:
1. They are expensive.  $5 at a minimum, and they are essentially copper strips with carbon pads.
2. They wear out.  Those tiny pads with sparks wearing them with every hit means you'll be replacing them
3. They can get damaged.  How many old pinballs have you seen where the strip looks more warped than a noodle?
4. The contacts are exposed, so they also get dirty.

I thought about creating a mechanism to use a common cherry switch you see in joystick buttons, but then I found this:
http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/sms-196/spdt-snap-action-switch-w/lever/1.html

In small bulk (I need at least 7 for my layout), they are only about $2 a piece.  They come with nice long arms that extend almost a full 2 inches beyond the body, they handle up to 15 amps, and they are fully enclosed so they are far less likely to fail.  I plan on buying some of these, then model them up so I can create a bracket to mount it.  The bracket will have slots so that I can also adjust the position to tweak how much force it takes to set it off.  Often you have slings where the leaf switches aren't straight, and the sling solenoid doesn't always fire.


One other problem I thought of today, the cabinet I have is late 70's, which means it's very boxy (doesn't have the angled cabinet).  Because of this, and the fact that the back of my playfield has objects that are 4 inches higher than the apron, it's going to make the flippers 6" away from the glass.  This also means I have to make custom lockdown hangers to drop the front of the playfield down into the cabinet.  This isn't really the issue though, my issue is that this is if I make the playfield parallel with the cabinet, this means no playfield angle :-0

I believe I have a solution, pretty sure Sega/Stern legs have the same bolt pitch, so I can put Sega legs in the back, keep bally/williams in front (3" height difference).  The other 3" can be made up with the leg levelers (down in front, extended in the rear).  I can also buy longer levelers from Mcmaster if I need more height.