Hello Pinball Enthusiasts,

I thought it was time to start a thread where I can show our progress in the Homepin factory with all things Pinball and Arcade related. In fact this is the first thread I have started on Pinside.

For those who don't know who Homepin is I will explain briefly here (skip the next couple of paragraphs if you are already aware of Homepin).

Homepin was started about six years ago in a small electronic workshop under my house in Kuranda Far North Queensland Australia. Initially we manufactured replacement boards for numerous pinball machines. The idea to start a factory in China grew from my lifelong desire to run an electronics factory manufacturing "something". As I had been involved in the amusement industry from when I was 21yo I figured that pinball or something arcade related would be a good place to start.

For about 15 years I had been trading with China and had started a small office there in Guangzhou mainly sourcing things for various customers and also having items manufactured, checking quality and organising shipping for other customers. I was already in China several times a year often for a few months at a time.

Fast forward a bit and now I have a factory in Shenzhen (just across the border from Hong Kong) with many different machines from plastic injection to folders, lathes CNC milling machines and pretty much what you would expect in a factory including facilities for printed circuit board assembly. Homepin is a 100% Australian owned and run business. We do not have any Chinese partner and there is always an Australian engineer present in the factory supervising operations.

I want to make it totally clear here about what we do and about this thread. Homepin is an amusement company. In fact our registered Chinese business name is "Shenzhen City, Arcade Game Science & Technology Company Limited". We are not exclusively about pinball machines, we make anything relating to arcade machines in general and that happens to include pinball.

For various reasons we have found ourselves manufacturing licenced Video game tables under a very famous Australian brand name, "Hankin". Back in the day, Hankin was a very big player in the amusement industry in Australia and did quite a lot of manufacturing. They made the tables that we now build under licence and also made five models of pinball machines.

A.Hankin & Co are still in the amusement business to this day operating juke boxes and pool tables in hotels mostly around New South Wales. Homepin has a very close working relationship with the Hankin company.

Initially, after establishing the Homepin factory in Shenzhen, I didn't think much about continuing the manufacture of replacement PCBs but when we had some quiet times it occurred to me that it would make sense to make boards to keep the staff busy. To that end, the latest boards we are building are replacements for WMS MPU boards. The pictures below show our work on them and the jig that arrived this morning to enable us to test them before packing and shipping. It will take some time for us to wire the jig so it might be a week or so before we are ready to ship these boards out.

Official Homepin agents for all of our replacement board products are "Johns-Arcade" in Australia and "Pinball Life" in the USA.

A quick word about "other Pinside threads" relating to Homepin and Thunderbirds pinball. It was never my intention to have much of a presence in the USA or Canada initially. I wanted to get the factory running smoothly, have our first machine shipping and then work on further products that would be more suitable for those markets. Most know that things turned sour pretty quickly and "most" of that was connected with a few stirrers on here at that time. It seems the moderators are doing a much better job more recently of curtailing keyboard warriors (just my observation).

I intend to show various things as we are doing them in the factory because I know there are many who are interested. Sometimes these things might be arcade related rather than pinball but that's the business we are in. I welcome CONSTRUCTIVE or POSITIVE feedback. If you want to niggle or be negative please don't bother posting in this thread. Where possible I will endeavour to answer questions when they don't clash with commercially sensitive matters.

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Thanks.

One of our advantages is that we are not ONLY in the pinball business. Our arcade business and replacement pinball board business are big enough to survive on their own merits.

That gives us an advantage as far as "buying time" is concerned to build the pinball business.

We still have lots of parts for these kits but stopped doing them as there are many other options to replace a -35. I wouldn't dismiss doing another run of them sometime in the future if there was demand.

Homepin tries to make the boards that others don't. When we do make one that is also made by others we try to ensure it has some improvement or extra that others don't.

Like the MPU's shown in the first post. They come with a RAMTRON RAM installed and a PLCC removal tool included. Our boards also are designed to be as close in appearance to the originals but with thicker PCB tracks and IC sockets where they need to be such as IC20 on this board.

These seems to be a lot of interest in the Hankin pinballs (which is very good IMO). Here are a couple of pics from Pinfest 2015 with David Hankin signing an owners Shark at the show and another with David, his wife and myself at Pinfest.

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A batch of 300 flipper plungers being machined - we send them outside for plating. These will be black nickel plated.

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We have to plate them with something and black nickel (in China) is one of the few finishes we can use that complies with RoHS.

It is actually a very nice finish and feels, to the touch, very slippery, almost like the part has been oiled??

This picture doesn't really do the finish justice - it looks a lot better in person.

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The Homepin logo stamped in a metal part.

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Finishing another batch of replacement motor driver boards.

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The problem we would have making these is that we have no way of testing them. If that changes in the future we would certainly look at it.

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Sid having a great old time wiring the test jig for these boards.

Actually I won't write his comments over the past few days about this job here

...and the boards keep stacking up waiting for Sid to have the jig ready!!!

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Yes, it will be our own Homepin embedded controller system. This was all but finished when our Chinese programmer passed away in his dormitory and basically (without repeating all the drama and details again) we started again from scratch!

We are getting close again and it will be better than ever this time around!

These test sheets are 18mm eucalyptus, 13 ply, AA grade and A0 (to meet RoHS requirements).

It does splinter a little but a light hand sand brings the parts up a treat.

We will also be experimenting with poplar but it hasn't been delivered yet (in A0 rating).

So far we are happy with the results using the eucalyptus.

Yes, it's very interesting because Eucalyptus is grown here in China and you can also see it all over the place growing in the wild. The other "farm grown" product here is poplar.

Intensive training this past couple of days for some of the Homepin staff. Sid has been teaching them the finer points of pinball cabinet assembly and stressing the importance of attaining the highest possible quality every step of the way.

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We are using our own colour LED panel that is the same size (very close anyway) to a "standard DMD".

I dislike LCD in a pinball application.

That cabinet in the picture is not our final design - it's just one we use to play around with things so don't take it as the final design.

Posts #42 & #46 in this thread show pictures and a video of the test jig that we have built for these boards BUT it basically connects to our Getaway.

You cannot bring second hand ANYTHING into China - it is against the law. The Getaway is built into our own cabinet with parts brought in one by one.

It really is a welcome relief to FINALLY see some of the finished parts coming into the Homepin storeroom after YEARS of drawing,
having moulds and dies made, testing, modifying moulds and AT LAST - finished parts, ready to assemble into machines!!!

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We visited a local speaker factory today and brought back some samples for testing. I'm confident they will be fine and we will be able to place an order for our first run with this factory shortly.

Several things impressed me not only about the quality but also the high end brands that they OEM manufacture for. I wasn't allowed to take pictures in the showroom but I snuck one when the boss wasn't looking.

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The latest version power rectifier board was just delivered. I need to get it
assembled and tested but I think we have it all sorted out now and will be
ready for production after this final test.

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Nah - they are pretty easy to grab and pull off due their chunky size. I like the 20A rating.

Also note the provided (separate) power for "user mods".

What isn't obvious is the PCB is also 2oz copper not 1oz as standard.

Looks like all the parts fit which is always a good start!

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There is no software relating to this power tap. It is simply a power take off point provided for user mods. How that is interfaced to the game is up to the end user.

Sorry, now I'm with you LOL. Yes, all under control.

I never thought of them being called "bootlaces" but it kind of makes sense although a better (and more appropriate) name would be "Aglet" LOL

I'm just about to head into the electronic markets, down the highway and my secretary sent me this picture - thanks a lot!!!

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Yes. It's just an additional 12V 3A supply rail that is switched on and off with the machines supply.

Here you go Doug - a closeup of your "bootlaces" especially for you LOL

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Hi Kirk,

Thanks for the encouraging comments, I have passed them on to the crew and they are pleased.

You are 100% correct about the "goings on" here in China - in fact I might just start commenting on some of them as well so people can see it's not all beer and skittles here! It might enlighten some as to just what problems I have to contend with here on an almost daily basis.

Pricing - - - I don't want to give too much away at this stage but let's say that the Homepin pricing plan has only been adjusted slightly from our original targets. It seems that some others have different pricing ideas but ours remain solid with only a moderate price rise. If you look at our original "introductory" price of AU5432.10 in Australia (plus GST [tax] and delivery) we are not a very long way from this currently.

That was always a special introductory price for those who took a chance on Homepin and paid up front. The normal retail price is estimated to be ABOUT (and please don't take this as gospel at this stage) AU$6999.

This equates to ABOUT US$5250 in todays money. This will be for a machine that will have many more "bells & whistles" than some others on the market and will be built with Homepins already well regarded high quality.

Things are a long way from finalised yet however so please don't quote that price anywhere else without the clarifying statements.

First small batch of pinball cabinets being assembled fresh from the CNC machine.

So far all of our diligent preparation is paying off as all the parts fit together perfectly.

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My secretary thought it looked "funny" me working with 2 x PC's and 4 x screens while listening to my bluetooth headset....

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Thanks for your positive comments. It is impossible to buy a sheet of 18mm ply of such high quality in Australia for under AU$200 (about US$140) - the same goes for every other part. I won't say what It is costing me here but I can assure you it is substantially less than that!

Skip to "HERE:" if you don't want the boring details...........

There is no infrastructure in Australia for any metalwork, dies, moulds, plastic injection, metal stamping or anything else really.

To do what I am doing would be impossible in Australia. It just wouldn't happen.

It isn't the "cheap labour" - that is a furphy. Labour & conditions here in Shenzhen are very high and the rental I pay is MORE than I would pay in Australia for a comparable building. Also the working conditions are mandated by law here AND strongly policed, they are unbelievably in favour of the worker, despite what many ridiculous, so called, news reports would have you believe. They are crap, don't believe them.

As one example, I currently have one staff member away on maternity leave. Initially this was four months at full pay (inclusive of the average of overtime and weekend work for the previous 6 months). While she was away on this leave they changed the law and made it six months - retrospectively!!! No Government assistance for this, I pay the lot. I am paying her about US$1200 a month for six months. That wage is equivalent to around AU$5000 in Australia when you look at all the factors such as cost of living, price of food etc.

Regulations here, in some ways are FAR more stringent than Australia. We are constantly audited and inspected for fire regulations to ensure we are complying with fire extinguishers, fire resistant cabinets for flammable liquids and other regulations, using ONLY water based paints and other liquids. Labour audits to ensure there are no under age staff, inspections of their living quarters to make sure they are clean and everything works (water, power, gas etc) also electronic audits of the work hour and pay records via the fingerprint reader to ensure staff are not working excessive hours and to make sure they are paid for all overtime worked.

Compliance checks to ensure that all the factory insurance policies are up to date that cover staff for injury, hospital, time off work and many other things. We have to attend at least two meetings per month on fire safety, environmental issues workplace safety and these meetings are followed up to make sure that we have implemented the recommendations suggested at these meetings.

I personally spend a minimum of three days a month dealing with this official bullshit, driving to various Government departments to lodge various paperwork and all sorts of other crap. Mostly a waste of my time that could be used to actually do work!

HERE:

It is the availability of all the services and parts needed at exceptionally good prices and of every quality from "world best" (that we insist on) right down to "complete crap" that the chain stores usually specify to maximise their profits. This is the ONLY reason I am here doing it. Believe me I would much rather be doing it in Australia but it simply would never have happened.

Back to that sheet of ply - the machine to cut it (CNC) would cost around AU$25K in Australia and I paid about AU$5K for it here. The same for practically all the machinery we use.

Hope that covers things a little.

We are still considering several options - even at this late stage. It will come down to two things:

(1) What is RELIABLY available in the quantities we need & at the price we want to pay.
(2) Which option will best interface with our system.

We have different options working at the moment but have not settled on any single one just yet.

pinsanity makes some correct observations with one major "misunderstanding" that many have in the west.

I am constantly barraged by people saying things like "made in China is shit" and they are usually very adamant about it.

What needs to be understood is that "China" usually doesn't make anything that is not ordered by western buyers. These western buyers generally want the lowest price and they forsake most things in order to achieve that - including finish and quality.

It is (in many, many, instances) not any fault of China or the Chinese suppliers if the product you buy is indeed "shit" - you need to refocus your anger at the buyers and ultimately the companies that asked the Chinese factories to produce the goods for them at the quality and price point the buyers demanded.

The larger chains are the most responsible for this. I have been involved many times over the years liaising between buyers and factories and it quickly became obvious to me that practically every western buyer wanted to buy a "widget" for $1 and sell it for $20 and I am NOT exaggerating here.

Look at the large number of very high quality goods produced in China - laptops, mobile phones and a very large proportion of all appliances and electronics used all over the word. These are goods that certainly could not be classed as anything other than world best and sold at "reasonable" prices.

Those that blanket call all goods Made in China "shit" need to have a logical look at why they think that and place the blame for SOME made in China goods being poor quality fairly on the shoulders of the buyers in your own countries being greedy a lot of the time.

Actually I was quite skeptical when he was actually in the factory but when Andrew sent me the video (before publication for approval) I was actually pleasantly surprised. It's short and to the point but does show a little bit of the factory for people to see, most especially like the toilet - LOL

Mainly because Andrew is a video gamer and they generally call them "tables" when they are in electronic form. I agree with you however. It really irks me as well.

We are building enough parts and making an initial run of 100 machines. This should flush out any minor issues, adjustments and niggles that we will undoubtedly have - after that we will be making much larger runs of parts and then be in a position to sell them separately.

At the moment however, we are only building enough bits for in-house use.

Thanks for the kind words. There is someone working on a fully revamped website at the moment. I just have to find the time to actually sift through thousands of pictures and send them.......

I am holding a very small number of preorders. Some paid in full but most are $1000 deposits only. The enticement for preordering was a Thunderbirds animated topper will be included with every preordered machine and this topper will not be available for separate purchase.

I won't go into detail about the exact number of preorders other than to say it is extremely small and one of the main reasons for this is that at the exact time I announced preorders the WOZ debacle was in full meltdown in Australia and I have many calls and messages stating that basically they wanted a machine but were too gun shy.

In hindsight I'm happy that I don't hold large preorders and we can get things done at a pace that will set us up for the long term.

Yes, it has cost a HUGE amount of money, time and a lot of anguish and yes, I have had to overcome some unbelievable personal and business hurdles but I hope this will all be rewarded very shortly when we start shipping.

That's true - a second bonus I guess....

Thanks, we have gone to great extremes to get this quality as it also must comply with "CARB" (for the USA) and "A0" (for Europe). I'm very pleased with just how nice it is actually but, like I say, it took a very long time and a lot of hunting to track it down.

Our cabinets are also made 100% with this ply - no chipboard, MDF or Masonite anywhere to be seen!

Thanks for your understanding. I can't recount the number of "small things" that continuously go wrong and need correcting in some way or another. It's an ongoing thing really. I like to point out some of them, even if they seem trivial or ridiculous as every single hick-up causes delays and extra costs (usually).

I guess most would never even realise the finer points of making a part that, on first glance, seems insignificant.

All I will say is that (at this stage) an audio output SOCKET will not be required

I usually park my truck (a Nissan dual cab UTE as we would call it in Australia) in a parking lot at the front of my apartment. One morning I found that, overnight, some arsehole had crashed into the rear door and made a mess of it (picture below).

Naturally I couldn't find a note left by the arsehole as hard as I looked (severe sarcasm intended!)

Checking around I discovered that there was a security camera focused directly on the area where I was parked so I made enquiries and eventually found the camera was owned by the local police as they had previously had a few "issues" in the area recently and decided to install a camera. (I was later told they were trying to stamp out a growing problem with prostitutes in the area). Investigations revealed that yes, a policeman said he had reviewed the footage and yes, he knew the licence plate of the car that had caused the damage.

GREAT - I thought. Problem was the next step was for me to personally present at the police station and wait my turn to check the video - present all paperwork to prove it was my car and my drivers licence along with a letter from my landlord saying I was entitled to park where my car was when it was damaged.

Long story short, it just wasn't worth me wasting a day of my time along with that of one of my staff so I just had my regular mechanical workshop (who also do panel work) repair the door.

Total including paint was 520rmb (about AU$100). I estimate the same repair in Australia would cost about AU$500~800

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I will cutNpaste here from AA regarding my answer to this question over there about silicon:

Q: "Have you considered silicon rings instead of rubber?"

A: Yes and we have played with silicon. If you nick silicon, even the slightest of nicks, the ring will split in seconds - it isn't long enough lasting for a "manufacturer" to use I'm afraid.

For after market use - no problem because it won't reflect on the manufacturer of the machine if/when they split.

Not worth the risk for us with so many other "unknown factors" already to contend with - at this early stage we sure don't need any more than we already have believe me!!!

White rubber samples turned up yesterday.

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We do want to experiment with colours but it won't be until our initial production is underway. There are just too many other things to deal with and get right first.

At this stage, as I said earlier, rings will be white, flipper rubbers, posts and shooter tips black.

Please note that I am showing very early pictures of our progress in this thread. Parts shown ARE NOT finished and WILL vary in shape, size, dimensions, colour and probably every other aspect imaginable.

We are using these cute little flange bearings in our launch mechanism. The brass block will be plated when we finish making them - still tweaking a few dimensions.

It is a HUGE job preparing all of the drawings not only for our own in-house use but the service manual as well. This drawing is preliminary as there are several changes to the mechanism and then the drawing - seems to be like a dog chasing its tail sometimes!

Launch mechanism being tested in one of our VERY ratty test playfields - this piece of board has so many chunks chopped from it I think it's time to retire it!!!

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It would be including GST (tax) as retailers in Australia are not permitted to advertise goods for sale (to the public) that is not the FULL and TOTAL "pay & walk out" price.

They are made "in-house" in our own vertical injection machine. I am not a mechanical engineer and don't profess to know the minute details that you have asked for.

The parts are made from a quality plastic and they pass the break test which is what interests me the most.

We just finished a new test jig for another addition to the Homepin replacement board range the A-16807. It makes it a breeze to test these boards with the right test jig.

(sorry about the crappy video - I made it while I was on my own in the factory on Sunday - as all you bosses out there will know, it's usually only the boss who gets to work seven days!!!)

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Assembling and packing flipper mechs into L & R pairs.

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Finishing the first batch of Drop Target coils - cleaning the enamel from the wires ready for terminating.

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Continuing on with the assembly of thousands of clear flipper buttons.

First all parts must be checked for any swarf and then for fit as a finished assembly.

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Forgot to put this picture up yesterday of the boxes of assembled flipper mechs.

Our new waterfall painting room was delivered this morning - we need to add air filtering on the extraction side, build a 1.2M extension in front and add air in filtering as well as suitable air outlet ducting. We will also build a lightweight gantry system so that cabinets can easily be slid into and out of the painting room by one person.

Having this part built for us saves a lot of time and effort as the hard parts are mainly done.

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Nickle plated plunger knobs freshly back from the platers.

....and, testing our new rubbers to make sure they perform as we expect.

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It's amazing how much dust gets on things when they sit on a shelf even for a couple of weeks. We want to make sure everything is perfect when we start assembling machines very soon.

I visited the small family business that does most of our metal stamping yesterday to see how things are coming along.

They are currently making a set of metal stamping dies for a playfield micro switch bracket and also a very complex set of dies for making the lockdown bar receiver mechanisms.

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I visited the factory that assembles our surface mount parts on circuit boards yesterday. This is quite a specialised job and I don't want to gear up for it.

They were making COB's while I was there (Chip On Board). This process involves gluing the I.C. chip to the printed circuit board and then welding very fine gold wires to the PCB and the chip.

The chips are so tiny it is amazing. The videos show the wire welding machine in action and a guy testing the finished boards before the chips and wires are covered with a "glob" of black epoxy.

These boards are for electric toothbrushes.

In one room, at the end of the PCB assembly process a worker was using an automated testing machine that checked the boards for accuracy of placed parts and for any other things wrong.

The last video shows the assembly of some novelty clock radios.

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Thanks for your comments. Note that Thunderbirds is Homepins FIRST pinball machine NOT the only one we will be making. Thunderbirds is targeted at countries OTHER than the USA although I can say I have had serious interest from the US about it.

Perhaps one of our machines that we produce in the future will be more to your liking?

Once we have made all of the parts and got everything up and running we will be able to work on different future machines.

The final parts to arrive before we close for Chinese New Year on Monday.

Most places we deal with are already closed so there won't be any updating of this thread for a couple of weeks.

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Despite my comments in the last post we did actually manage to get a few more things done before officially closing for the New Year break. The factory is now closed for two weeks with almost all staff going back to their home towns.

We fitted the bearings to the auto plunger pivot blocks (using some bearing lock), finished off some more plunger shafts, folded some more brackets (various) and assembled additional flipper plunger assemblies.

The last staff here put up the traditional Chinese "good luck" signs around our doors. I'm told it says something like "Best wishes for a very prosperous businesses year" - but it could say anything and I wouldn't know LOL

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The Homepin factory is officially back to work today. Many others around us are back as well but certainly not all. A few of our key suppliers that we called today didn't answer so it looks like they won't be back until next week. This is a difficult time of year because it writes off a couple of months with the lead up to and then the tailing away of Chinese New Year.

Homepin still has three staff away and they are not due back until next week.

At least we were able to set off some fireworks (fireworks are banned in Australia - they can only be set off by licenced people under strictly controlled conditions).

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It's a pinball rubbery kind of day here as the rubber factory just dropped off thousands of our fresh rubbers.

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Yes, we have been super busy this past couple of weeks. The things I post here and on Facebook are only a very small percentage of what we are doing on a daily basis.

Below is a short video showing a simple machine we cobbled together to colour mark white wire as you cannot buy 'wire with a trace colour' in China so we have to make our own. Yes, I know there are other ways and yes, I know it's slow, but we just put a roll of white wire on and leave the machine to choof away at its own pace.

We are also doing the assembly of all the parts that make up our plunger assemblies. The knobs came back from the platers finally (after Chinese New Year).

A new batch of replacement pinball boards are being tested ready for packing.

A heap of wiring harness assemblies being made for our Hankin tables (another container shipped out on Tuesday for Melbourne).

I hope you can make sense of which picture is which below.

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No offence taken - plastic pallets cost 80RMB each (about $12 USD) x 20 = an extra $240 - my customers won't pay for that.

I'm happy to include them when the customer wants to pay for it.

heat treated wooden ones are not acceptable for Australia, you need chemically treated pallets WITH a certificate of compliance and a stamp on each pallet. This costs far more than 80RMB.

Yes, I had a container held by AQIS once many years ago and had to pay for extra trucking and fumigation (as well as an extra 4 days on the wharf) - all up it cost me nearly an extra $3000. You can be certain I learned a valuable lesson from that.

Our pinball packing boxes have a mini pallet built in and are made from 100% cardboard.

I know it seems pretty stupid to be making what many will consider an 'off the shelf' item but here in China you simply cannot buy the exact screws that I want to see holding all the parts to the underside of our playfields. We have been using standard philips head screws for all of our testing but today the custom made "Homepin" screws were delivered from the screw factory.

There are two lengths of hex/philips screws and one smaller philips only type.

The video shows the small factory that is very close to us making numerous screws and, on the day I visited last, they were actually making our smaller ones.

They start with a piece of wire that the head shape is stamped into then the blanks go into another machine that stamps the thread. After the screw shape is made they are sent off to the foundry for hardening and then the platers for gold plating.

The pictures show various stages of manufacture then the finished products being delivered to us today.

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I ordered two new springs today from the spring factory.

They have just taken delivery of a couple of brand new CNC controlled machines and were putting them through their paces.

I never tire watching these amazing machines.