I am pretty sure Charlie told me their 3d printer can handle ABS and that is what they use. Plus, since everything is 3D printed, no problem 40 years from now getting a new one printed off. Parts will never be unobtanium.

Fair question. I'm not an expert in plastics but do know a good bit about polymers that are added to plastics and about materials in general since I work for a large polymer additives and composite materials company. Since the brackets are not exposed to UV light they won't degrade due to the environment, and the ability of the plastic to withstand fatigue from the coils will depend on its properties. The brackets look pretty beefy and made of good quality material. Metals are also prone to stress fatigue and environmental problems like rust. That's why Boeing and Airbus are converting more of their planes to composites which is a fancy word for reinforced plastics. It would be nice to have metal gears but since they don't have to do much work I doubt it will be a problem and they can probably be replaced for a few bucks.

3D printed parts are: Most of the Hellavator, Spooky Door, Ghost (prototypes had a lot more 3D printed parts)

With a low volume, 3D printing allowed us to make parts without expensive tooling. If something breaks, it can be re-printed. All the parts are available on my website. We feel this flexibility makes up for the reduced longevity of parts.

Ty Ben. I'm glad folks answered because I honestly didn't know the pros/cons of the 3d printed pieces. It's been a long time since strength of materials and statics classes

Thanks guys! Yes, the 3D parts keep the injection molding out of the equation... injection molding would put us out of business before we even started. As Ben stated, our 3D files are basically available forever. No breakage issues what so ever to date.

GI should have been better, no doubts, but I don't think it's horrible. It's not Stern bright, but the AMH we've had on location all of 2014 sits in a dark bar and we've never had a problem seeing the ball. Regardless, we'll get it where it should be and make it better.

The amp... picked by Michael from Flipper Fidelity to go with his speaker system, and out of the box has made a whole lot of people think our game has a shaker motor in it! Want to upgrade? You can always change it out to your preferred model.

I talked Ben out of surface mount LED's so buyers could customize their lighting. The voltage going through the PinHeck (again... this is our first go-round) is a little low for GI (drops a tick from where it enters / exits the board). So, the solution is to grab the GI power straight from the 5v power supply on existing games. Ben's board handles GI differently than any other board has... AND I LOVE IT! 16 controllable GI chains? Crazy, and cool! Lots of options for future use.

I don't pretend we're perfect. Just glad we're here, and we'll always listen and improve what we can.

Ben / Charlie - any chance you'd consider painting 3d plastics to make them look better and add side art? PF and translite look great but the solid brown plastics stand out. So many good custom painters around that could really bring them up to standard. If you planned to sell 250 games, print and paint 500 sets and give each owner a spare set too. Side art is conspicuously missing and would go a long way to providing the best value to your customers.

Lots of us are on the sidelines watching your progress. And while it has not translated into big sales yet, this attention to detail will no doubt impact sales some and should entice pinheads to buy your next themes too.

I just wanna add that I've played on four different AMHs and it would be the game I'd want to play most in most any collection since there are none here in the Bay Area/NorCal. Flows well, funny callouts, and lots of depth. The only issue I had was the thing Ben addressed above about hitting both flippers to cancel out of dialogue, etc. to speed things up but then I'm an impatient player

Which solid brown plastics are you referring to? The sides of the Hellevator? We could absolutely dry brush those for a little more detail. We do "dust" the powdercoated metal ramps, or they just look clean... and wrong. So yeah, I kinda get what you're saying. Wouldn't be a bad idea at all, or something the home owner could easily do to their own taste.

I love the custom & mod stuff... when I see what coasterguy or Ken F. did to their AMH's, it makes me smile a whole bunch.

And I agree on the "speed up" being a good thing. We'll see if Ben has the time to add that in eventually. Right now the dude just needs a break.

Next time I go down to Charlies and have access to production games I'll add in Flipper Skip.

It won't actually cancel out dialog or video, just jump to the part where it gives you the ball back.

Well, at least it has 2 options.

rd.

Just checking in looking for the video, did I miss it? Thanks for taking the time to do it.

Gotta love those felt furniture sliders!

Sure does move around a lot! I have carpet in my games room ... Good luck with that!

rd.

Whoa! Congrats on having a new edition to the Family!!!!

Good code commentary

Lol nice vids
What happened at the end of the top one?

I'm impressed with the death save - you're watching too many PAPA tutorials.

The kick out from the hole looked hard but controllable similar to the mystery hole on Metallica. But it did seem to vary more than you'd expect.

Thanks for taking the time to make the videos. Seems like a fast, tough game but fair.

Does the stock ghost toy glow in the dark? I'm on the waiting list for AMH and I have a few spools of glow in the dark ABS, I was thinking about printing a ghost that glows for mine, if it doesn't already, and a UV LED.

Edit: Misread previous post.

It does not glow in the dark because of extra filament costs and the fact the effect would never be noticed in-game.

But yes, feel free to download the files and print parts using whatever filament you desire!

http://www.benheck.com/amh/

As for UV charging the filament, the existing RGB ghost lighting would probably do that to some extent.

Awesome. Thanks Ben!

I'll make a thread on this when we start making these kits, but it is all done and lit up. Since the GI actually runs on 5volt and not 6 volt the larger 5050 SMD bulbs didn't look good and were very dim. This is a light strips and spotlight kit add-on, similar to how our Wizard of Oz kit worked.

amh-before_after.jpg

Oooooo

The second one would definitely be better for locations.

That absolutely looks incredible.

Fantastic work!

Having played this at a friend's, I agree with most of the review but I have to say the voice acting really was amateur and annoying. I know this is a hell of a great game over all, but they should have found some folks with at least semi-professional voice talent. Voicing lines and sounding like a real character in a game is much harder than it seems. Williams nailed it best in their mid 1990's games like MM. But that issue could always be upgraded in software update. Otherwise one of the fastest games with best flow I've played in a long time.

As a long term owner, the dialog has actually gotten more endearing. I would have thought it would have gotten old fast, but quite the opposite.

Pinbulbs that looks great. Nice work.

Ben H. I agree with OP kick out is very inconsistent on this game. Need some type of fix for this in the long run.

Very fun and good humor. Overall 8++

I think the pinballbulbs kit looks awesome. Nice job.

The callouts have grown on me too
Plus I still hear new ones which is sweet

Though I can't wait for the double flipper animation skip

nice light kit!

The callouts are so great in this game. Some of the funniest quotes I've ever heard. Nordman does a great job. It sounds cheesy at first but you will quickly get over that.

Too bad there are so many bugs in the software. Examples:

1) I ended multiball with a ball locked in the ghost behind the gate. No ball search ran and instead the ball was considered drained. The game went into thinking I have missing one ball for the rest of the ball. When I finally bashed the gate down on next ball, ball is released and when one of the two drains the ball ended again. After this, its back to normal.

2) I got an extra ball on ball 3 for beating 2nd ghost. Ball drains and game ends extra ball not actually awarded.

I'd love to work on fixing these. But it looks like my game won't arrive until April or something so until then..

Sooooooo many bugs or 2?

Unfortunately there are other things also.

Congrats to Charlie and Ben and the spooky crew for doing it right. This game just seems like so much fun. Lighting fixes are easy. Personally I think pinball needs a lot more humor and lol titles. Campiness and the right kind of cheese for sure. This is how you build a boutique company. Well done.

I'm sure an update will fix all. Bens got this.

Please contact Ben and give all bugs to him to add to his punch list.

Did you add another color changing strip to the back? That was something I was toying with. I may just wait for your kit instead of messing with it myself.

It's good to be buying a game knowing that the designer is actively soliciting feedback on bugs and improvement ideas and is fixing them regularly - vs. crossing your fingers and hoping for a Christmas present.

curious, if GI is 5v, why not drop in a buck converter to bump it up to 6.3 or 6.5v? LED's arent going to pull down a bunch of current, so it'd probably help.

LED's are like low-fat cookies - use enough of them and it still adds up.

We tracked down the GI issue to a not-big-enough 5 volt trace going across the board to the GI ports. This is likely a by-product of the GI being one of the last things added to that design.

We have to use up the existing supply of boards before we can fix the Gerber files. In the meantime, Chuck is running an additional 5 volt line from the PSU to the GI, with an extra in-line fuse. This achieves the same result.

Markmon, the issues you describe were fixed in the Expo Update (#15) but I'll keep an eye out for them regardless.

Chris Kraft (who wrote our DMD software) is working on a simple PC app that will automatically update your game. You plug in the USB, run the app, it updates your game over the web. You can also manually select a file to use.

This app will be updated down the road so it can also be used for testing, switch diagnostics, all that kind of stuff. This can be done from the coin door menu of course, but more options = better.

I love the support you guys are giving this! Great job.