Quoted from robin:Great story, thanks to Pinballnews' Martin for writing it and to DCFan for the heads up.
I love how they use an off the shelf motherboard. IMHO that was the biggest shortcoming of the Pin2k system. I also like how their power driver board plugs straight into the USB port. The speakers look impressive too. I'm a little bit worried about all those fans because in my experience fans, with age, always lead to noise...
All in all the whole factory, assembly line, rotisseries and playfield crates etc. seem very professional. I do believe it is very important how their factory looks because it carries over to the product itself. You can't assemble a high end pinball machine in a leaking old dump, right?
Rewind to 1975, and my my first visit to Chicago. Main purpose was to see the Bally, Williams, Chicago Coin and Gottlieb factories (Rock-Ola and Seeburg would be on my next trip there). Exit the Kennedy Expressway and stop at IHOP. Then proceed to Williams. Actually drove past it as it looked nothing like the massive building with a logo as shown on the part catalog covers. Then went to Bally which was way larger and had many additional buildings on Rockwell & Fletcher streets not to mention the glass silkscreening operation on Oakley almost a mile away. Then to the dump called Chicago Dynamic Industries. Very friendy people working there and let me right on the plant floor and up to the parts department filling up a box with schematics, part catalogs and copies of every flyer they had.
When we headed west to Northlake, my dad said you watch, Gottlieb will make Bally & Williams look like pikers. Boy was he right (as parents usually are) That almost brand new Gottlieb facility was huge and modern.
The point is that all four of these companies, whether in a large, modern plant, diminutive old building or something in between, all turned out beautiful, fun coin operated pinball machines.