Just send John an email, he'll get to it in time.

I think you are going to be on your own on that.

Why in the hell would he use a custom size?

Same way you order any glass? Just tell them the size you want cut.

I argued a long time ago that anyone who pays for a pin before trying it isn't doing it right. This has been true for Stern for a long time. It's even more imperative for these startups who have never made a pin. It drives me crazy to see post "Kiss is going to be the best pin ever!" or "The Hobbit will be excellent!! I'm certain!!!!" But everyone keeps doing it. Oh well... People are free to do what they want but complaining about the game sucking or never getting your pin is a chance that everyone who supports this takes.

Well be glad it appears he's actually doing some "cost-cutting" by using "standard" tempered glass.

I pick up my glass from Pinball Life for $20 or $25 a sheet.

This game is certainly going to have PDI or Invisiglass on it or at least be able to accept it. Going non standard was bad move. But that said he did "get lucky" that the glass didn't hit the shooter rod. Wonder if they cover that in his pinball design school.

You're right - but sometimes a compelling theme or project puts on your optimism blinders. I bought Transformers and X-Men based on theme...look how those turned out. Sold them, moved on....but at least I HAD the shitty games so I could sell them!

Standard? Everything John does is the new standard. Follow. Follow it now!

Being off by inches is baffling. Isn't this in CAD or Solidworks?

Glass is easy to order by the way, and custom orders in quantity deliver in a few weeks.

There is little certain about this project. John is old school as well, so I am not sure that he would use PDI style glass.

And who is working on the software? I see all this hardware speculation on vendors, glass size, custom parts, vacuform ramps, etc. Without code - even the hardware, if any of it exists for the quantity of production games - doesn't mean squat.

When I need glass I make a phone call or send an email, then I drive over to the shop and pick it up later that day. Pretty sure most cities have a glass shop. I could pick from 5 that are all minutes away personally.

Now I'm hearing that one of the MG buyers paid for the aluminum ramp tooling. If John is that broke I'm surprised he can keep the lights on. Probably just making a desperate push to get something shown.

5 if you count the bowling one and 6 if you count the EM. I'm sure there's more.

The glass probably has to be longer because of that funky steep angle of the cabinet. If the cabinet length is the same as standard but the angle of the side's top edge is steeper, that makes for a longer, uh, length. Should have been obvious from the beginning, though. Pretty scary if that was a surprise. Maybe it wasn't.

You must be having better luck than my multiple email refund requests for RAZA. Not a word in months.

Or a check.

not always so easy to do with tempered glass. In my experience with a wide body EM with non-standard glass, was that the custom piece of tempered glass was a lot more expensive then ordering from Terry and as others have mentioned 'no invisiglass for you'.

PDI/Invisglass might be a problem. I don't find buying glass locally to be a problem though for tempered glass. Maybe it's slightly more expensive, but there's no shipping, and you can pick it up same day.

For something that you hopefully buy once and forget about it doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. At least not compared to all the other issues he has. I presume the game is just way steeper at the glass to accommodate the LCD screen in the back?

Joey (and Roman) can cut PDI glass to any size you need. You're SOL on the Invisiglass though.

It took them a few days for me, but that might just be the limitations of the glass place I went to. I agree, not the biggest issue around this.

The need for more depth, should not really change the length of the glass needed. You are just lowering the playfield or as Stern has done, the pivot point. If you lower it a lot, you then might need a different placement of the legs on the cabinet to get the needed height for the playfield slope). Although if that is needed, john would likely design new legs.

I love how in the video where he yaps about how he's got to get custom glass for the cabinets he's known the dimensions of for years ... he's using a mostly blank print-test playfield with a few bits bolted on to it and he STILL tries as hard as he can to not show you anything on it.

Crazy.

John mentioned it's going to take "about two weeks" for his tempered glass order.

It isn't the angle (as mathematically that wouldn't add much at all), but rather the physical opening itself.

My local glass place is "slow" and it takes them about a week for most of the orders I have placed since they apparently don't stock glass but order it when a job is placed.

So YMMV depending on the glass place.

Right, that's what I'm shaking my head over, it's ridiculous. I could make a call now and go pick up my glass today. Done it before, it's easy. Tempered, custom size, no problem.

Yeah, it's total bullshit. He's obviously never actually had anything done, and is scrambling now, maybe to try and show an investor since he's clearly flat broke too.

He's talking about how lucky he is to not be hitting the shooter rod with the glass! That's not supposed to be luck, that's called basic design. And why is the shooter rod so high anyway? Doesn't it look like it's going to just fly over the ball? So weird.

Heh. I noticed that too. Not only high, but at an angle that won't hit the ball with full force.

Either there is a mech above the PF there (the PF doesn't have a shooter lane routed into it), or it's just a quick thrown together bit purely for the sake of the video (most likely).

I guess he will find out whenever the day comes that a pinball finally touches that playfield. Maybe in two weeks after he gets the custom glass in.

This thread is like a train wreck. I was not on the train and I do feel bad for all those involved, but I just cant help coming back to have a look at the chaos.

Me too. And I'm a locomotive engineer..!

Won't be very fun with the top half of the PF not fully populated.

No glass shop "stocks" tempered glass.

You can't cut glass that is already tempered. If you try to cut it, it explodes into little cubes.

So the glass shop has to order the glass from a local distributor who has a kiln.

The distributor takes the order, cuts normal untempered glass to the required size, puts the glass in a giant kiln, and slowly heats it up to 1200*F over a 6 hour period.

Then they force cool it, making the outsides of the glass cool faster than the center.

Now the sheet of glass has been "tempered", and can no longer be cut.

It then gets shipped out to the glass shop you ordered it from.

Most likely shooting through a launching ramp like Zaccaria used on their 2nd Gen machines.

The shooter rod is mounted at least 1" too high. (which is also why it almost hits the glass) No launch ramp, the ball is meant to rest on the PF because you can see the switch slot for it.

Be sure to sign up for Pinball School! These techniques and more can be yours for only $1895*

*bank transfer, personal check or Western Union only.

I wonder what, if anything, of what he's doing now to hustle these games out couldn't have been done a year or more ago?

Stern just moved to a bigger facility... I don't think they're cutting corners so they can turn a profit, they're cutting them to make a bigger profit.

Why would JJP carry an odd size inviglass for 30 games?

Step 1. Have a game delivered
Step 2. break the glass
Step 3. Step 2 can't happen if Step 1 is never completed.

When I got a cabinet form VirtuaPin for one of my custom games, Paul did not want to drill the opening for the shooter rod, since he was concerned about getting it in the right place. You don't have to be off by much for it to not work right.

Don't forget... all students will be required to sign an NDA.

In my case, it's a week for standard window glass.

My point being that not all glass shops are going to be a call ahead, walk in, walk out with glass same day.

the cost reduction is due to Terry ordering from the glass company in bulk.

i wonder how the glare from overhead lighting will be with the more angled glass.

In my opinion invisiglass is overrated, but that could be that, for me, with kids greasy hand prints it's not worth having something i need to really care about how i clean it.

-c

That video is hilarious, in a very bad way.

Does he even realize how this comes across? He's "lucky" that the glass doesn't hit the shooter rod? Are you serious? Luck shouldn't have anything to do with it. How is this not all done in the computer design? Luck??

And it also comes across as though he was surprised to learn that he will need a custom size glass for the pin. WTH? And as Taylor mentioned, having an odd sized pf glass is bad news, since it means you can't put PDI/Invisiglass on your $17k pin.

And here I thought the one thing that JPop *could* do was design a pinball machine. Apparently I even gave him too much credit for that!

Jpop's games don't use glass! He has a patent on a new invisible force field!

It prevents the glass from breaking and causing great harm to you or your family!*

*home use only

Where can this video be found? Thanks!

pinball inventor facebook page

Or here (for the non facebook peeps):

https://magicgirldev.wordpress.com/

From the MG blog

Last thing we are doing for the cabinet. Had to hold this important part to the last and i got lucky in many ways, we were not sure on the fit and new angle missing the ball shooter. Thank God it works.

I hear ya.

Your larger Ace or Tru Value stores can usually cut plain glass in just a few minutes.

But remember, you can't put normal glass in a Door or a Bathroom window.

The inspector wants to see that little "Tempered" bug in the corner should you ever sell the house.

Which is why there's coin slots in the front. With a $16K machine, you do have to charge your friends & family to play it.

Sounds like he's making progress, he's going out west soon!