Hi,

Just joined pinside. I've been on RGP and KLOV for many years now and hoping to find more information and products here.

I just picked up my TP a week ago from Tilt Amusement (Trent) and have been working on the basic mods ever since.

I'll add pics as I go.

Cliff's slot protectors:

slot1.jpg slot2.jpg

Temporary ramp protectors: These were old stock STTNG protectors I had laying around and they work with double sided automotive tape (no drilling or screwing). They'll work til the Cliff's are out.

ramp1.jpg ramp2.jpg

Here are Jeremy (Tilt on RGP) arcade cabinet ver 2.0 and side by side comparison with the old.

cab1.jpg cab2.jpg cab3.jpg

Hallmark light cycle mod, I just got these done last night.

I got the the Hallmark Light Cycles done today. I laid the original die cast cycle next to them for comparison. The hardest part was getting the "momentary lit" switches glued down so the lights stay on permanently (long story, glue gun, melting with a soldering iron, a big mess and a lot of patience). The blue was easy, but the yellow was a challenge.

I would also add - that on the plastic underneath the blue light cycle, that you put a piece of mylar underneath to protect the graphics underneath the plastic. The plastic is used to prevent the ball from launching as the balls go up and through the ramp... the graphic will wear from the ball hitting it.

cycle1.jpg cycle2.jpg

Oh but wait, there's more... these light cycles aren't passive and stay lit the whole time, they are not tied into GI or Insert lights either. (sorry for the shaky video)

Hallmark Ornament mod. Powered by +5vdc from underneath the PF. The flashing action is controlled by a 24vdc relay. The relay is triggered mostly by the flash lamp that's most active when the disc spinner is open. I could have used other flash lamp triggers (but I plan to use those to control the ramp EL wire lighting (when I get to it). The cycles turn OFF, when the flash lamp turns ON.

I also replaced the two black rubber "dots" at the entrance of the disc spinner with blue stern 1" square rubber. (cut in two halves, one each side).

On Deck:

Tron Recognizer Mods - I'll have some light sequencing (sorta similar to the pinaffliction one). Waiting for parts to arrive.

Ramp EL wire Mods - props to coaster (his work led me here to pinside), these will also be sequenced somewhat, I'm waiting for the Orange EL wire to arrive from Hong Kong lol.

The cool bank target sticker is on it's way too.

Eventually I'd like to put a flasher kit in the backbox, but just on the place where the disc rises up, not the elaborate flashy light show.

Still trying to figure what to do with figures and diecast toys and such.

(maybe less is more).

lol - I was complaining on RGP about the T:LE epileptic seizure mode. Wait til I'm done working on the recognizer and EL wired ramps.

If you can't beat em' join em.

I might alter the light cycle trigger later, it just depends how the ramp sequencing is going flow.

gah... another delay (and miscalculation)

I just found out that this old 2.3mm EL wire I had sitting around isn't actually yellow, it's lime green (sleeve looks yellow unlit). So now I have to order yellow. I bought some new (recognizer) orange 2.3mm to match thickness and now that order is going to go to waste.

I wasn't entirely happy with the 2.3 brightness anyways, so I'm going to order 2.6mm super bright in three colors (yellow, blue (or aqua still deciding), and orange).

I'll have to stare at the game a bit, to figure out the blue vs. aqua thing.

I got my wire from ELwirePros last night, as it happens they're just about 20 miles from here, so USPS shipping was fast. I ended up picking Aqua and Yellow for the ramps and Orange for a special light up I'm planning.

I also built the one to four +5 +12 volt splitter harness. (connectors can be bought at greatplainselectronics.com) You'll need one of these if you're going to have a few mods. Those who are adverse to crimping or don't want to spend the 1-2 hours making one can get one from Kimballs Pinballs for $24 bucks plus shipping I think +$8 for each additional split.

I also got the ramps all off and I am preparing to drill holes for attaching the EL wire. Gonna do this in the morning when I'm fresh rather than doing it late and tired risking cracking ramps. (read: I'm nervous to do this).

A few pics of the mess... I think I can get it all wired up in a day or two.

IMG_0675.jpg IMG_0677.jpg IMG_0678.jpg

Coasterguy: Did you end up drilling your ramps? How did you attach your wire?

Markmon: Hallmark cycles are on ebay - do a search on "Hallmark Tron" and you'll see em' - whatever you do don't pay more than 12-14 shipped a piece, they're plentiful.

Yeah, I knew about the +12v noise issues from coasterguy's thread. But I'm rolling the dice a bit knowing that I can go to the wall wart if needed.

Background: I'm using three colors and will be doing some relay switching to do a basic light show. (if you saw my cycle mods with relays, you'll understand where I'm going).

Well here's the story of today's progress. I'm bought the newer 3rd gen 2.6mm super bright wire from elwirepros.com with some older inverters from them I bought about 4 years ago. The wire is still rolled up and placed on the playfield for testing.

I got everything wired and connected (short of attaching to the ramp) and the good news is that there is NO interference, I didn't see the score go bonkers or anything like that when a game was started.

The bad news is:

Color 1: The 2.6 aqua is good, not great.
Color 2: The 2.6 yellow is good, not great and has a slight orange tinge to it, which makes it better (lessened my disappointment) as it matches the yellows and oranges from the movie.
Color 3: The 2.6 orange blows d@$&@^ 3#!!$, and looks like pastel sunkist. (wasted 25 feet purchase @ 1.55 a foot <sigh>

When I say good and not great, I say that because the "super bright" wire wasn't as bright as I thought it'd be. I can't go with the 5mm as it will be too thick for my application.

As for my 3rd color orange. I really needed a "reddish orange", so I may just go with red, however I have some orange coming from China or Hong Kong and will see how that goes before I go with Red.

I managed to fry an inverter by not paying attention to some shorted wires from a test battery.

So Today's progress was mediocre, still gotta wait for my 3rd color, then I gotta drill or tape the wire to the ramps.

<<snip>> So effectively, the el-wire should flash twice as the ball goes over the ramp and indeed whenever the ramp flashers trigger, which will be pretty cool with the end game sequence as thats all yellow and blue! I didnt want the el-wires to be on all the time of allot of the time so I'm hoping this approach will work well...

That's interesting, I had thought about a similar design, where the ramp switches would trigger turning on the EL on the ramps. Even as far as having a momentary-on relay that kept the EL on for 1-2 seconds (that's a long time in this fast moving machine) after being triggered vs just flashing real quick with flasher. However after seeing pictures of the other LE wire jobs (sean, coaster and markmon's) I would rather have them ON, and flash them OFF momentarily instead.

Okay so here's my light getup. It's not elegant and the relay clicks when switching can get a bit noisy. When it's all closed up and glass back on it should be fine.

I'm starting to like the cough cough "yellow" and aqua alot better now, it goes with the backglass.

IMG_0679.jpg IMG_0680.jpg IMG_0681.jpg

_{Post edited by louisurfer : added pic}

The eBay Orange wire from China came in today and that too is a no-go. It was a fluorescent orange (duh just like the description said). At least it came with an extra inverter.

So we have fluorescent orange from eBay China. Strike one...
then pastel Sunkist from ELwirepros.com Strike two...

However I think I found what I needed: Available at http://www.ellumiglow.com - Fiendish Red EL Wire has a great cherry red appearance when not lit, and a reddish-orange glow when lit.

Hopefully this won't be strike three. Free shipping, No sales tax and a 30% cheaper than elwirepros.com

Hopefully this reddish orange that I'm looking for is a good contrast to the yellow and aqua I have...

It'll be about a week before this arrives so I have time to carefully start drilling my ramps...

No more excuses now. All my parts I've been waiting for have arrived today.
LEDs for recognizer mods in from Taiwan
bank sticker from Canada (Thanks Brock!)
my red/orange glow wire Ellumiglow
brackets and LED bulbs from Pinballlife.
Siren, CLU, Castor, light runner toys/figures from ebay.

Installed the playfield brackets, and bank decal.

So my main hangup was the final color on my EL wire. SUCCESS!!! The red/orange from ellumiglow is exactly what I was looking for.

left to right:
1. from China (too neonish)
2. from ellumiglow, it's their "fiendish red"
3. from elwirepros more of an orange yellowish and can be used as a light cycle color vs. recognizer. It's more orange (sunkist soda) than it looks in the picture (must be light balancing from my cam).

I'm going with #2. Time to start drilling... Someone asked me a question on the drill holes spacing. It isn't scientific. I've been approximating zip tie locations based on pictures of the LE and marking the ramp with a sharpie. I got one ramp marked, gotta do the 2nd. Then Drill.

Next post should be everything installed and put back together this weekend.

lebracket1.jpg lebracket2.jpg lesticker1.jpg OrangeWire1.jpg OrangeWire2.jpg

This weekend's progress:

I got one ramp wired and installed(the yellow ramp). I flip-flopped wire usage again. The aqua and yellow wires I initially chose, just ended up looking too thin and hence not bright enough.

I ended up using wires 2 and 3 (middle and bottom) from the picture above for the yellow ramp. Both housings are opaque and 2.6 mm in thickness. Why two wires? One is the yellow for cycle, the red/orange is for the recognizer effect.

*** The thing to be aware of, is that when you choose a wire that has a more "clear" housing to make up the color (aqua and yellow), when illuminated the wire looks thinner. The more opaque ones light up thicker.

The drilling went relatively smoothly, I didn't crack a single ramp (like how I have in the past with drilling plexi (for control panel covers getting spider cracks).

For the "blue" ramp - I found that my old blue wire I had laying around was thinner (2.2mm). I had to order a new "bawdy blue" from ellumiglow.com in 2.6 thickness, it's opaque like the old 2.2 wire. If you're going to do this EL ramp mods, do it right and match all the wire thickness.

At this point, my EL wire job isn't going to look like coasters. As others have mentioned, the EL wire is "colored" and definitely shows under the ramps when not lit. It won't look as good ad the LE machine. My recommendation is to probably go with the 5mm wire that coaster went with and keep everything static.

However, my relay wiring is pretty much completed. When I'm done you'll see how I'm switching blue, yellow and Red between the ramps. I'm just stuck until my new blue wire gets here hopefully this week.

I did not get interference at all. and I've been flinging balls around with about 1/2 the wire turned on.

What size wire are you using?

My inverters were from elwirepros.com (from about 4 or 5 years ago). I am hooked up directly to the +12, +5 volt right above the service plug.

-L

yeah, mine are 12v inverters.

I think that EL wire runs off of high frequency AC so these are 12vdc to 12vac inverters.

Been away a few days to unplug from my day job, but got back in last night and got to spend an hour or two today on the ramps.

Anyways, debating on whether or not I need to go back to square one <sigh>. I'm not completely happy with the way the wire is looking doubled up. If you notice, I've doubled up Yellow and Red on one ramp, and then the Blue and Red on the other1. The wires look a bit busy underneath the ramps, however I think it's because of the play field GI LED's are too bright and the Red shows more plainly. I need to order some frosted white GI lighting to soften up the play field lighting a bit and I think that will solve the contrasting I'm seeing from the unlit red.

Here are pics of when the yellow(orangish) and blue are lit, then when the Red switches in when the spinning disc opens up. I haven't fully figured out why the +12 on the motor doesn't trigger my Red lighting consistently... (oh dammit, I just figured out my own problem... the relays are +24 trigger which would explain why the +12 motor line isn't triggering it consistently!!). I'll spend some more time on that tonight.

Anyways, here's a quick youtube sample of what the switching looks like. It'll be more active since I just figured out the 12/24 vdc trigger problem. More to come, I have some other relay effects on the yellow and blue ramps shortly too. Just need... more... time....

NOTE: the wiring ISN'T completely wired up and tied down yet, so you're not seeing all of the blue...

lewire1.jpg lewire2.jpg

I got all the wire and ramps put back together tonight. The aqua (I *finally* decided to use the aqua instead of blue) and yellow ramps light up nicely pretty much like pinball_customs (and my picture above).

I finally found the cause of my intermittent Red wire trigger issue. It looks like the the disc motor spins BOTH ways by way of +24vdc and then reversing the current (read -24vdc) to spin the other direction. The relay doesn't trigger with the reverse current so the red isn't lighting up as often as needed. I think I have a way to fix this, but it's late.

I had a slight setback in that my soldering between the inverter and the EL wire shorted on one of the ramps and killed a couple of inverters on me. Having wires hanging all over the place and lifting the pf over and over again caused this (if you've ever had to solder the tiny filament wires on the EL wire, you know how delicate this can be). Anyways, I debugged that issue, and zip-tied everything away neatly. Fortunately I had a few spare inverters on hand.

With the couple of hours I had to spare last night, I think I solved my +24 / -24 trigger problem. There's an under pf relay that controls the motor direction (coil diagnostic test #4), so I think I can tap into the +24 just before the (+24/-24) relay to trigger my red wire consistently - regardless of disc spin direction. Now I just have to find which lead is which...

The relays I'm using is an old System11 SPDT relay board from Whirlwind part number 5768-12221-00. I'm using 5 of them. You can use any relay I suppose, it just depends on what and how you want your lights to trigger. Here's my plan for the 5.

1) control blue/yellow to red EL wire switching (triggered by spinning disc motor)
2) control red EL wire flashing (triggered by flasher when disc opto target is hit)
3) control blue EL wire flashing (quorra spinner)
4) control yellow EL wire flashing (castor spinner)
5) control light cycles (still deciding, but it's currently triggered by disc opto target).

All mine are triggered by +24, you can get +12 (maybe even +5) trigger relays, but there aren't many actions in tron that use +12. (Flashers are 20volt, motors are 24 (or 12 stepped down from 24). The +5 rapid blinking on the GI is kinda repetitive.

I was also able to spend some time on my recognizer. I'll be doing mine similar to the pinaffliction on youtube. I had to cut a small breadboard to mount the LEDs, should take me another hour or two to finish and wire up.

1) 2 shoulder orange LEDs triggered by Recognizer insert
2) 1 middle orange LED on top always on with GI
3) 1 down white or blue light, will turn on when the drop target bank raises or lowers.

Lastly regarding ramp drilling, there was no magic to this, I just used a regular drill bit, with my cordless Makita. The bit was a small one the width of my zip ties (zipties are 1/10" wide x 4"). I had no problems with cracking or spider cracks, it went really smoothly. I tried to follow the pattern of the LE ramp, but because I'm using two wires that are flimsier than the fiber optics, I had to drill more holes (to the tune of 1 hole every 5 or so inches).