Building an entire pinball machine from a blank piece of paper is an enormous project, you might want to take an existing machine and modify the playfield, I'm assuming that's what you intend to do, buy a 300-400 dollar machine and build your playfield out of a slab of 3/4 inch plywood, drill and mount everything, its actually going to take you hundreds of hours, but I am not going to discourage you from your dream, do it, but please, for gosh sakes, buy two or three pinball machines and dissect them and study them before you undertake this. MPU issues are another can of worms for a custom machine.

Its kind of like saying you want to do some serious bondage and leather games with a chick when you haven't even been to first base.

Now, let me stop saying mean things to the newbie and think about this one, because I have thought about this one myself, actually.
You could use a 199 dollar Ultimate MPU and pick one of the factory settings for the hundred or so machines stored on it that was the closest thing to the playfield of the virtual pin you like, namely the same number of pop bumpers, drop targets and slingshots, then wire the whole thing up.

would still take you hundreds of hours...
but other than a custom MPU, I don't see any way to do it without starting your own custom pinball machine company, which might be kinda cool.

Which brings me to another point.
If you are gonna go to this much trouble, why not design the entire playfield, you can using Visual Pinball, place the slingshots and drops and flippers wherever you want, create a table that plays well in the virtual world that's not too complex, then build the real thing, totally worth doing, because you designed every bit of it. And why not, if you are going to go to the trouble why not make it one hundred percent your design and build.

Welcome, new friend, I want to see you build a machine.

Visual Pinball is the way to go, the physics are good in my eyes, and I am working on my own tables with it as well. It can be frustrating, but really, its all we got. Before I build a real table I will perfect the ones I am working on, thats my plan, but please don't think i was trying to discourage you, the future of pinball depends on people like you -so definitely do it.

"Like I said, my research turns up next to nothing as far as building a machine from scratch. Plenty of repair information which has what I needed deeply hidden. "

Reverse engineering works well with both flying saucers and pinball machines!

Just one more..

takeone.jpg

I really love UV lit ball idea, I would go with the TZ style ceramic ball from Bling Pinballs.
ebay.com link: Twilight Zone ceramic Powerball Pinball Power Ball

I'm quite impressed, very, very cool.

Pat Lawlor said it best:

"The hard part is building it and making it fun. People come up to me all the time at Pinball Expo and tell me they have a great idea for a pinball machine. And they are probably right. It is a good idea. But the hard part is building it. There's a great Larry DeMar quote about this. You are looking at a whitewood with no rules. Larry liked to say, "There's one great game in there, but ninety-nine bad ones."

This is astounding to me.
I'm really blown away and hope you didn't mind any of my earlier comments, I apologize.
Very few are doing what you are doing, and we can only say, wow.
Trailblazer. will be fun to watch this happen.