I love all of the information presented in this thread, and the fact that its over 28 pages speaks strongly about the pinball development community!

For my projects, I usually take multiple steps using cheaper materials in the early design iterations and moving up the chain as those designs become more permanent.

Step 1) Design the playfield using Adobe Illustrator. I use two layers at least. One layer is for the thru-hole route for the mounting holes and inserts. Another layer is for the partial depth cuts for the inserts to sit on.

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Step 2) Print out the playfield design at full scale just to make sure your parts fit, placing common parts on top of the paper to make sure things are to scale. Its amazing how whacky things can get out of alignment.

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Step 3) I also did a few test cuts for the common pinball hardware to make sure it fit into the pinball 2000 cabinet I was using with the standard mounting hardware.

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Step 4) Next, I converted the illustrator file with two layers into a CAD file and separated each tool path and sent it to a CNC shop I found online to get a few playfields run. They come back like the following. Sadly I didn't include the shooter lane notch, but the next revisions will include it. This was good enough for a couple of whitewoods.

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Step 5) At the time, Pinball Life didn't have the inserts I needed (but they do now). I also intended to use RGB strands, so white opaque inserts are cheap to make and get things rolling. This game has a LOT of inserts. All in all, $66 for a set of 2 inserts to get laser cut. The material must be slightly thicker than the depth of the insert lip so they can be sanded flat. Clear inserts must be run in a separate batch.

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Step 6) Test fit the clear/opaque inserts in the whitewood playfield with the rest of the basic hardware.

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Step 7) Start documenting your lamp and switch matrices to figure out how your wire runs are going to work. It is almost a guarantee that you will screw it up the first few tries, but practice will make these things better. If you have the option to route out PCBs instead of wiring up each lamp by hand, then PLEASE do it. It cuts down on wire runs significantly.

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StepAt this point, we've got to think about our hardware control system. We are interfacing with the stock Pinball 2000 driver board, but using a PC solution to run the software side of things. However, the P2K driver boards interfaced with the host computers over a parallel port, which is getting a bit more rare on modern motherboards and the software requirements are greater in terms of having a real time kernel to get the microsecond resolution you need to successfully drive the lamp and switch matrices. Instead, we design a solution that the parallel driver board connects to that controls all of the real time bits. We send it commands over a USB serial line and the firmware on the chip does the rest. The advantage here is that the chip also controls our RGB strands, DC and servo motors. I would rather use a solution like P-ROC which is readily available where the driver boards are locally mounted as well as the switch boards reducing wire runs and easing installation and troubleshooting. However given that the P2K driver boards are included in the build (and any installation scenario), then it just made sense for this build. For WPC games, though, the choice is clear.

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Step 9) Since we have a hardware interface built with the ability to drive DC motors and talk to our software over a USB port, we can also build some custom spinning flashers by using a 3D printer to print our smaller parts!

Step 10) Once we get the hardware talking, we can connect things up to our PC running custom software (Unity3D/.NET so we can render 3D graphics in real time and use more advanced features), we get this:

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Now we're gutting all of the non-RGB lamps and putting in RGB strands now that our hardware controls it, and start wiring up the higher power mechs to the playfield!

Step 11) Next, we start thinking about our art package. There is no reason to apply artwork to whitewoods, so this is a later step. Though vector graphics are ideal as the quality can be maintained at full scale, and every printing shop knows how to work with the format. We fit the vector graphics over our illustrator playfield cutout layers. This is a great advantage in using illustrator for the playfield layout design. It all just works.

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The first problem you'd have is making sure things are level. It would be absolute hell getting those inserts glued and level. I suppose you could clamp something and turn the playfield upside down and insert the inserts from the back with the glue on the sides to try to get them flush with the top of the playfield. The issue there is that gravity (and heat from the lamps) are always working against you, so there is nothing to support the ball rolling over those inserts, and eventually they will sag.

No idea on the 3D translation bits myself, though I'd love to see an attempt at it using color fills!

The vector design route just makes things a bunch simpler for me. It means I can do graphics and CAD-based design within the same document and keep things at the same measurements and scale, and then just cut and paste what I need into individual documents when it comes time to print or have things made. This could also translate very well into virtual applications because the mathematical expressions of every object in the realm is already there!

Good stuff.

Thank you so much It was fun talking shop on the phone with you this evening.

I look forward to documenting the development on my project as things move forward!

Thanks a bunch for the comments guys! I'm always up for finding a way to do things better and easier, so I love the fact that people here are suggesting new methods.

Thank you so much! I really hope your kickstarter and subsequent development goes well!

I do all of my playfields exactly as swinks said. I export a DXF file from Illustrator that most any CAD program can read. The DXF has two layers that I call "partial depth" and "full depth" that has all of the thru hole cuts for inserts and mounting holes for the t-nuts and partial depth has all of the insert lips on it. I occasionally have other partial depth cuts for ramp mounting points/entrances as well as kickback mechanisms which expect to have about 1/8" depth for the mounting plate.

I make note of each layer with the CNC operator. To date, nobody has ever had a problem with it. They may charge a little more for the time to set up the toolpaths compared to me doing all of it myself, but the cost has been negligible if any.

There's nothing like opening a UPS box and seeing fresh cut playfields inside! Its one of those true moments where your drawings become reality. </endrant>

Absolutely. Many people have just used forstner bits and used round inserts for their whitewood as Wolfmarsh stated. Many people never even had inserts on their whitewoods, so the hardest part is drilling out for the trough and switch cutouts. All of that can be done in a decent amount of time with a good hand router.

Oh I'm ordering one!

As long as its not on white, I'll take it I'll add it to the collection of "pindev" shirts.

Hey, you're the nicest evil guy I know!

Interesting! I know tap passing works on a lot of the P-ROC based games. Total Annihilation uses the self-cleaning leaf switches from Stern and you can tap pass like a mother on that thing.

I believe I managed to do the same on Buffy as well at Expo.