Eastern MA is a good place to be for this...lots of designers in the region. We usually have a panel of homebrew designers at Pintastic New England. Maybe some of them will see this thread.
.................David Marston

No matter what boards you choose you'll still need to code it. If you're not a programmer MPF is usually the way to go, but there's also other stuff if you are (or roll your own).

Cobra is still a pretty new thing. Price is great compared to others but I'm not sure how many people have experience with it yet

MPF supports a bunch of hardware platforms. With P/P3-Roc there are also Skeletongame and pyprocgame but those are limited that that specific hardware. Some other platforms such as APC also got simple frameworks. MPF offers premade components for most common tasks (everything can be customized).

Jan

I am using P3 and MPF. Both have been great. You are going to learn a lot homebrewing and it can be frustrating at times but it's also super fun and rewarding. It will certainly give you respect for the guys who do this for a living. If nothing else this will teach you woodworking skills, geometric design, metal working, wiring, soldering, 3D modeling, coding, sound design and animations. Depending on how much of a noob to pinball you are this will be a steep set of hills to climb but none of them are unclimbable! I would suggest designing your game virtually to start it will save you a lot of time and money if you pretty much know what you're going to build and that those things will actually be shootable when physics are applied.

How are going to route the PF? Find a makerspace (or an equivalent) and CNC it?

Curious what total costs typically range.

There are some files for that on pinball makers. The Mad Max Fury Road homebrew thread also mentions independently scanning in some measurements from a system 11, they can probably send you the file

Yeah, the playfield length varies a lot between games, I've found. Anywhere from 40-50" at least. There's a table of measurements on the wiki as well, although they're not always 100% accurate.

Just as important as the positionings of the flippers, slings, etc, is however you're mounting your playfield to the cabinet (both at the lockdown bar and at the back). You need to figure out what cabinet you're using (used or new), what hardware will go in it, and then that will tell you where all the playfield mounting hardware goes as well as the max length you have to work with

I think at the beginning it all went very slow to find the right information. I tried to measure everything i needed of of my Bride of Pinbot. I made my playfield 1140mm x 560mm and 12mm thick. I did cut the playfield by hand as well, because i have no option to use a cnc, but i'm it turned out ok. Then i designed everything in inkscape (free), from there i exported drawings to tinkercad (free) to create my 3d printed guides. My slingshotplastics, posts, inlaneguides are 3d printed as well.
I used a P3Roc and the Driver boards that go with it, and MPF. At first it was a bit of a learning curve, but now i really love MPF, i find the tutorials really great and helpful. When first using the P3Roc i had some issues as well, but Gerry Stellenberg helped me with that.
I have no experience with the otherboards or software, but i wouldn' want to try something different now, i really love P3Roc and MPF right now.

Also it is very important to think ahead how you want the playfield to be tilted up in the cabinet etc, because you will need to fix something when everything is put together.

And can i just say i really love MPF!! Thank you jabdoa! it is a lot of fun to create the code and see the results

I decided to start with a retheme instead of a complete build, and I'm very happy I did. The amount of time needed for the various skillsets required is far more than I anticipated, and I assumed it would be a lot.

You may want to consider adding a proc to an existing machine as a starting point. Altering a design is just as much fun and lessens the load.

Either way, it sounds like you have passion! Good luck, whichever route you choose.

I agree. I'm in eastern Ma, and I use P-Roc as the over-the counter controller. I'm different though, I use pure C/C++/C# for my games and my own personal frameworks.

If you go with the P3-ROC You will need a minimum of a P3-ROC, a SW-16 board and a PD-16 board. This will give you 16 switches and 16 coil outputs which is plenty to get you started. With that you can drive two double wound flipper coils, two slings, a trough eject, shooter lane eject, and either eight more mechanisms (pop bumper etc.) or eight flasher lamps. I also recommend the power entry board. It makes your wiring easier and you’ll be less likely to blow some thing because of grounding problems. While it seems like a more expensive board, it saves time and replacement costs in the long run.

You will need a five volt supply, a 12 V supply and a 600 W 48 V switching power supply for your coils. Meanwell 48v is the most common PSU brand used. For the lower voltages, you can use a old computer ATX supply which will give you plenty of 12 and 5 V current. Lastly you need a computer to run your framework (MPF or skeleton game). Hardware requirements can be minimal on this. Just some thing that will run either Linux , windows or OSX. If you haven’t figured it out already, the framework sends the rule instructions to the p3-ROC (when switch A hit activate coil 1 for 20 ms, etc). The host computer also handles sound, lights and a display.

To hook up all your wiring, you will need to look carefully at the Multimorphic docs which includes a spreadsheet on the different size header plugs and crimp pins needed. 18 G wire For coils, I use 22 gauge for switches but 20-24 is OK. I go through a good bit of wiring detail in my build, Greek Gods https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/greek-gods-homebrew

I skipped the 3D modeling part and I wish I hadn’t. It made getting this up and running faster but now there is going to be a larger hurdle to get to the second white wood. And for me at least the second white wood will be where I am really able to start coding. There is no wrong way but I wish I had built a CAD model before the physical.

I'm in the same situation. If you have any way to get white woods cut via CNC, go for it, imo. Maybe just try out some shot geometries or something on hand cut one, but the further you get the more pain it's gonna be

I guess we're assuming you want to do cad at some point. Cutting the playfield cleanly without any mistakes by hand is hard, especially if you're doing all the inserts. I just did 30 inserts in mine by hand with a router and guide and still messed up a few even after a lot of practice.

Yeah, doing it perfectly by hand is nearly impossible.

I also wished I did cad first. I had to remove everything topside and then spend hours measuring holes and recording.. I have many hours ahead to get that to cad. I hand routed about 100 inserts I believe .. it was a pain in the ass. Circles are fine with a forstner bit.. Anything else is impossible to get perfect. Then all the rest of the holes as well...part of the problem is you don’t really want to strip your first whitewood completely , at least I’d prefer to transfer it over to a new one so it’s clear where stuff goes.

You can definitely do it without CAD, but it won’t be perfect. I’ve seen a homebrew guy get one modeled and cut in a few months, who had zero modeling experience and hated fusion the whole way. He’s very happy to have that playfield now though.

One other thing - boards might be $500-$1000 depending on how complex you go.. but parts and tools and wire and .. on the list goes and it keeps adding up. Better not to count costs. I am thousands and thousands in, and more to spend. If you can go simpler, I highly recommend that for a first. Costs will be much more under control, less time, less frustration.. I think anyone trying to homebrew a modern stern or jjp type game will find they probably spend as much or more than a new stern pro

It’s an awesome project though - wish you luck!! Please start a thread so we can follow

Nah... This was all done by hand. It just takes a few days of slow slooooooow work
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I startet out with pen and paper to get an idea of the ramps and loops etc.
you definitly could go without drawing, but i think it helps with the planning and design.
A vector drawing in inkscape worked for me, you don't have to know cad for that and it really helped me.
Then i printed everything and glued it on the wood, and cut my playfield by hand, it took some days, and some extra time with a chisel to get the inserts in.

If I had a cnc I would have made it in CAD eventually. I did mine originally in VPX which not only allowed me to play it and test layouts that way, I also exported the blueprint from VPX and had it printed full scale allowing me to place it on the plywood to mark all my holes, etc.

You can import models of all the messages into VPX as well to get fit. Very little changed after playing the whitewood location wise, vpx isn't perfect as far as play goes, but can be close enough. You don't have to code it all in VPX, just get flippers working to test play.

What is the best (easiest to figure out) CAD program to create a file for CNC cutting?

I made a series of (OLD) videos showcasing how I hand-cut custom classic style playfields. This is after I did make a solidworks CAD model of the game. The first cut was was made from the visual pinball schematic.

Hopefully it will give you an idea of time and materials needed for this type of thing.

http://www.linscustompins.com/?page_id=28

It’s the inserts that sent me into CAD. I was able to make very serviceable jigs for a trim router using my 3-D printer. These worked great for pop bumpers, slingshots, scoops, all of the standard mechs. Round inserts were also easy to do with a drill. IMO where cad really becomes a requirement if if you are doing interesting things with 3-D using upper and lower playfields or very complicated ramps. And for non-circular inserts. For my first white wood, I worked out and shot geometries using adobe illustrator and it worked fine. After I was flipping I ended up moving a couple of mechs, patching the holes with bondo and cutting new holes. When I went from my Whitewood to my final board, I stripped off the parts and scanned the playfield to line up everything in fusion360 so I could CNC cut inserts and prepare a matching art layer.

How did you scan it?

HP used to make a flatbed scanner that lays on the object to be scanned. I ended up with 16 images that Photoshop stitched together to one giant image. This guy set as a background image in fusion 360. I’ve been drafted my holes over the existing holes, moving some of them around a bit. I laid the insert holes into place as well. I exported this as a DXF file for CNC and back to illustrator for art.

Grab one of the old school HP scanners on eBay for about $100 with the transparent viewing windows. Only issue is stiching the images.. it won’t be 10% accurate so you still have to make adjustments in fusion

Edit — too late by 20 seconds lol

Yeah, Photoshop made a mistake on my stitching. I should’ve taken a sharpie marker and drawn out a grid on the playfield. I could’ve picked up the mistake sooner that way.

Boslaw — see if you can grab a homebrew box of ramp sections from ramp o matic.. great deal for $30 or so including shipping. If you like a more physical style of initial design where you place mechs and Ramps and do foam core— picking up used parts to play with is helpful. I’ve bought 3 loads of mechs and parts from @arakissun. It helps a lot to be able to lay stuff out and see what it’s going to look like

I've got one and tried to do just this, but the stitching isn't going well. I thought I had it right, but nothing lined up correctly when I printed it back out....

I've been trying to figure out a way to somehow take a blank sheet of paper and sketch the holes onto it, so I could bring it to a print shop and get it scanned in, but havne't gotten a good solution yet

With stitching the more overlap the better, and the closer to parallel the better. I use a straight board I clamp to the playfield then move the scanner along that to keep each column of scan in line. I have marked the board with marks to put the scanner edge at to get the same overlap on all, not necessary but takes some guesswork out. I scan in columns so I only have to move the board twice (3 columns, 5 rows for the classic gottliebs I've done).

Sometimes it works better to do sections at a time, like all the scans in each row stitched, then stitch all the rows together. Oh, and I've had good luck using Microsoft ICE (image composite editor) to stitch as well as photoshop.

3D CAD is great for figuring out if everything will fit where you want it. But it has a somewhat steep learning curve. I was only able to figure it out because I had 4 months where I was out of work.

There's another option, 2D CAD. Essentially it's a vector file that you use to generate your CAM programming for the CNC machine. Basically "cut on this side of the line with this bit."

Even if you are doing it by hand you may want to create this template. VPX may even export something you can use.

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1. If you want to play with a CNC router and don't have a maker space nearby: https://www.v1engineering.com/specifications/
2. I don't like a lot of switching power supplies, so I have been working on using Stern transformers with a generic style power supply. If you are buying new, just go with the recommandations from P3.
3. For a new design, I would use P3-ROC. If you have parts of the setup(like a power system or are using a modified wiring harness, for example), P-ROC may be a better choice. If you are a hard core DIY'er who wants to really get into the guts, OPP, Cobrapin or APC would also work.
4. Start small. Leave off audio/video until you have it flipping. If you are new to the whole scene, I would even recommend building some test systems with a cheap microcontroller. Once you understand how the simple code works there, you will have a better grasp of what the "real" systems are doing for you in the background. Plus, it feels good to get a flipper and pop bumper working on a piece of MDF. A little confidence boost before jumping into the ocean.
5. Line up an artist early if you are going to use someone for art resources.
6. If you can't find a decent cabinet locally, use a flat pack from these guys: https://virtuapin.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=78
7. Have fun!

Vpx uses it's own units and exports accordingly.. It is proportionally correct, you just need to scale it to whatever size you want for your use.