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

coronavirus - killing shows

So not only am I not going to TPF, but also not MGC (which means I'm not bringing van halen out anytime soon).  I'm still planning on bringing it to Chicago Expo but that's still 7 months away.

Because I have so much time I'm not going to waste it.  I'm going to try to finish all the basic things I was going to do (IEC connection, try to move more of the boards into the lower cabinet for each hookup, move the audio amp near the coin door for easy volume control), but I have a couple stretch goals in mind:

1. While the speakers are decent, they are by no means optimized.  I literally shoved a couple speakers inside a poorly crafted wooden box and drill some holes on the front.  I would like to get a pair of the 3d printed ported speakers made up to put behind the 80s boombox fascade.

2. I love building LCD mods, and I think adding one that plays music videos would be a nice attraction.  Since there is effectively zero space between the top of the playfield and glass, I would probably have to make some sort of topper.

You see... IEC

One thing that really bothers me about early solid state, the crappy way they did the plug.  It comes up from the cabinet, goes up through the hole, then you have to get it in that channel just right so the backbox doesn't pinch it.  Or you FORGET to do that, bolt down the backbox, and go "CRAP! I forgot the linecord!"  Well screw that.. I'm installing an IEC connector on the back, because I can.  Got out my multimeter and set it to continuity to check which pins are which.  Looks like the back of the IEC connector directly correlates to a standard plug.  Got the port installed by drilling some holes and opening it up with a jigsaw, now I just have to solder the old linecord to the IEC connector and I'm all set.

Van Halen is coming to MGC

So I've committed to Ed Owens that I'm bringing this game to the show.  The homebrew section at both Midwest Gaming Classic and Chicago Expo are fantastic and I want to be a part of that.  Big thanks to Hugh Spahr for rebuilding the SD card from scratch since the original got corrupted (and neither of us made a backup).  He got it to work with a pi zero which makes it look even more impressive in the backbox.

So beyond cleaning it up (polishing the playfield, trying my best to get rid of corrosion on metal), I also wanted to make some improvements.  This isn't a knock on Hugh, I know he worked really hard to get this done for Pintastic and it's amazing he was able to do all this himself.

I decaled the spinner and shooter plate:



I also wanted the backglass to have more light, so I created a new wood panel that just clears the LCD and dropped more strips along the sides.  I also didn't like the screw to hold down the light panel so I put the screw in backwards and tightened it down with a wingnut.  There are some hotspots and I tried defusing them using a ceiling tile panel, but it ended up texturing the light in a weird way.. Plus ceiling tiles are made from acrylic and they crack very easily.