hey all,

Tiny bit of background on me. I'm a concept artist in the video Game industry, and I LOVE pinball, and have been toying with the desire to make my own pinball games in my free time. Not only because I am a huge fan of old school pinball artwork, and want to try my hand at it, but also because I am fascinated with game design in general, and pinball has a lot of interesting challenges to explore.

I'm working on a home made pinball game. Mostly as hobby, but if I get to the point where people want to buy my hobby, that would be cool too. Anyway, I live in a 2 BR apartment so space is at a premium, and I'm using .75" balls instead of full sized pinball's. This keeps the machine smaller, and saves me space and money in general.

The problem is, because I'm working at a smaller scale, it makes buying parts a tricky business.... Most pinball parts like flippers and bumpers are made to accommodate 1.06" balls that weigh more than the ones I'm using. I may move up to the 1" balls eventually, just so that I can open myself up to a whole world of aftermarket parts to purchase, but for right now I've been enjoying designing every part myself and building them from scratch. I'm even looking into wrapping my own solenoids.

Bellow are some shots of my prototype pin at the moment. There are no real game functions in play right now. I don't really intend on this being a finished game ever actually. Its just a testing ground for pretty much everything I want to put into a real game eventually like switches, pop bumpers, LED's, etc... The flippers work as a manual mechanism. And I have 2 magnetically trapped balls to hit for multiball. I want to eventually install some switches in the lanes to score, (or for now, just blink lights) and I'd like to replace the curved lanes with ramps. I have been teaching myself electronics through youtube and websites (which has been daunting) because I really want to get lights and solenoids working on this thing. I included a pic of my first successful soldering job, 2 LED's on the same wire, haha! I felt like a genius.

Anyway, I'll be posting progress on here as I work on it, and will most likely be asking a thousand questions of folks who know a lot more about this stuff that I do. Which brings me to my first round of questions!

Q: I'm wanting to install some electric flippers, but Not full sized ones. My reason for not wanting full sized, is the balls aren't full sized, so they might feel awkwardly large, and I also don't want to use a full 24V (I think that's what real flippers use). I'm trying to keep to lower voltages as I don't know what I'm doing really with electronics, and I'll be a lot more comfortable dealing with a 9V or 12V power source. Plus my play field is only like 20" long, so the ball really doesn't need to get hit that hard. So I am wondering if anyone can suggest a good medium sized flipper from an existing machine I could look into buying in after market? Something bigger than the upper playfield of Shrek. I think those will be too small and weak? (anyone know off hand what the voltage is on those?)

That said, as a follow up question, If I use a lower voltage on a full sized flipper coil will I just get weaker power out of it? Because that might be acceptable...

You can see I'm basically a monkey in the dark with a box of tools. So any guidance is appreciated, and all mocking will be deservedly embraced.

Thanks!

10931030_10152859641629504_5604944173485355011_n.jpg

10930996_10152859641599504_863158257254678046_n.jpg

10885203_10152848278589504_7737764743736515191_n.jpg

clever aren't I?

Swampfire: Video delivered! (short one, just to show how the flippers work) And I was using a drill to line my cuts with holes, then going back with a hand saw to cut the shapes... It was super slow work. But I got a Jigsaw for xmas so I used that for the top orbit piece and the lower cover over the flippers.

Aurich: Thanks! I'll probably be picking those up. I had a chance to see 'Safecracker' at the Arcade Expo in Banning yesterday and it looks to be the right size for what I'm doing. Arcade expo was nuts. Hundreds of machines on freeplay. It was awesome. picked up a bunch of rubber parts too.

Zitt: I have experience in mold making and resin casting but my 3D CAD skills are shotty. Luckly I have a engineer friend who told me she would like to help last weekend so I'm hopping we can design some stuff then have it sent out to be printed!

Here's some more progress over the weekend. Made my first attempt at soldering LEDs for the playfield, and I'll link a video to my flippers in action!

10919051_10152877735334504_933927269751329584_n.jpg
10923540_10152877735379504_6914475247191578193_n.jpg

_{Post edited by scarybeard: spelling}

Cut a wood ramp out. Then soaked in warm water for an hour and trained it into shape. Screwed it into some proxy wood so that only the curve will bend downward. Once you get past the bend it will all be downgrade when it's on the playfield.

10896947_10152893421459504_4485999935034023336_n.jpg

Thx!

So I did a little sketch-over on what I have done right now, to try and get more features that I want to try and build onto my test table. I already laid out my ramp, and started building it, but I would also like to build some pop bumpers, targets, and hopefully drop targets. I'd also like to make a 'kick out' feature, so I threw a little hole in the top of the play field to try and hit. Not sure how many of these features will come together properly, but this is the plan right now.

layout 4.jpg

Over my birthday weekend I got some gift certificates to home depot and decided to try and throw together a flipper-less pinball game. I took two days off work and had a bunch of other stuff going on, but in 4 days or so I had designed, built and play-tested a game! Its pretty fun. I have the point values pretty well balanced so there's room for skill in trying to get combos of 3 specific slots, and a lot of luck in which way the ball decides to go.

I'm working on artwork now, and I'll wire it up with LED's after that.

1526458_10152914348939504_4899151661115101684_n.jpg

10647079_10152914349074504_1456838311675034189_n-87.jpg

10407585_10152916324849504_5979641855653196573_n-316.jpg

zizzlemeplease - Thanks! That's a lot of good info. I was thinking about spinning bumpers too... Might be a good first step at least.

Progress:
I started sketching out play-field artwork. I Was trying to come up with a good theme, and ended up just free sketching and seeing where it went. Still need to figure out what will go on the upper play-field pieces, but I'm pretty happy with it so far.

10850208_10152930665834504_4285411405198588031_n.jpg

Thanks,

Here's some progress on the art I did over the weekend. Sense I only had yellow post rubbers I decided to go pretty wild with the color palette. Still need to do line work and some more work on the hair. But I'm pretty excited with where its going.

all.jpg

Yup used a Gesso on the surface of the wood and now acrylic on top. Ill eventually cover it with a clear coat like 'bar top'. I bought an empty paint pen with a brush tip to do my line work. I want to use a burnt umber brown I think for the like work, or maybe a sienna. so I'll be able to fill the pen with whatever color i want and use it like a paint pen. I've never used one before so I'm excited to try it out.

Thanks guys! Ive been slow on updating because work has been busy and I'm getting some product ready for a convention next month. But I plan on bringing this pin game and a 2nd one to the convention so I should get a bunch more updates in the near future.

Here's the progress so far. I went through 2 different brands of gold paint pen and both of them stopped working about 5 mins into doing line work, so i got frustrated and desided to use a brush and free-hand the letters. Which I regret now, because I dont think they are very clean. all well. live and learn. and this was a learning project. At this point all I have left is to seal the artwork with a protective clear coat, and put the pegs back in.

pin.jpg

pin2.jpg

pin3.jpg