I'm not sure how much closer I can move the trough right towards that cutout, ill have to take a picture to show you but the trough is really close to the auto kicker as it is. It looks like my trough cut out is just longer than the one you have by about an inch, I'm using the profile cut from Pinball Life's page for the ball profile of the cut. ball trough dimensions (resized).png

I remember the bottom of the trough cut looking longer than it needed to be so maybe there is space to be saved there. Ill have to check when I get home.

Meant to post this yesterday but this is what I meant by the trough being very close. I dont think there's anymore room to move it closer 20210921_200703 (resized).jpg

okay so I see how they got the trough so close to the lane with the Rick and Morty one, they only have an auto shooter that goes off with a button. no plunger or shooter. For now we are sticking with the shooter/ auto shooter combination. but I did take about 1/2 off the bottom trough cutout in the model and I think it looks better.

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No more bounce back into the apron or shootout, just by hand though. The ball also reliably rolls down the apron to drain on both sides. Probably one of the few times I'm happy to see the ball draining haha. MAYBE I can squeeze that mini 3/8 rubber spike under the apron near the bottom of the shootout or I can bend up a sheet metal kind of like some William's machines have just to be insurance that it will never get stuck in there. I guess I wont know until we have a real playfield with a shooter groove and a powered ball trough20210921_210321 (resized).jpg

I've also marked where the half inch I changed in the model would be just to make sure there'd be no issue with balls falling in, just looking at it, I don't think there would be any issues. 20210921_210313 (resized).jpg

This is the current design with the pockets for the tee nuts, and small holes to locate the screw holes for most of the mechs, minus the flippers since they can be moved and we haven't decided where we are putting playfield inserts for lights just yet. (I know I already posted a photo of the top side but this is just a higher quality photo
playfield top (resized).pngplayfield bottom (resized).png and just in case someone wants to see the bare boardbare playfield (resized).png

I'm not going to lie, I have not been doing a lot of playfield planning lately like cool concepts or anything like that. All of my effort has been towards getting the lower 1/3 playfield designed up. The way I see it is no matter what we do in the upper 2/3s of this playfield we need to get the bottom mechanical stuff working first.

Got another package today, only 1 pop bumper and 2 sets of shells for it and 4 skirts.

Dont know how many we will have but we know we want at least 1, if we need more ill get them then but for now its fun just to play with the color combos.20210922_190730 (resized).jpg

I found a makerspace near me with a big enough router so hopefully this weekend I will be attending their orientation and then finding out when their classes are so that they're cool with me using their router.

Got my display panel today, and bolted some stuff up to see if its all fitting together. And it looks like I got it pretty much nailed. (At first inspection)

Huge props out to send cut send, I will use them again in the future if I need to 10/10

Now im just working on getting it into the backbox with the lock bar.

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Well its in the machine, its all just a little too tight though so I might put some shims on the locking bar to spread the middle of the back box just ever so slightly to loosten it all up. Don't like that its scraping the right side when it closes20210923_152047 (resized).jpg

Haha thanks, I've been pretty active with it lately but im pretty certain we are about to slow down. It looks like classes to use the maker spaces router are pretty spaced out, so ill be at the mercy of their time line for a mibute here.

Little brother here, My time to shine.
This is the test bed I have planned.
I dont know the requirements for the full machine so I just bought what I considered to be the minimum amount in order to get up and running.
As a temporary measure I bought MEAN WELL power supplies:
RD-85A for 5v 8a and 12v 4a
LPP-150-48 48v 3.2a
This in conjunction with the P3-ROC system with mission pinball running on ubuntu on an odroid H2+ (originally bought for GameCube emulation).20210924_152340 (resized).jpg
I will be going to micro center this weekend to see if I can get some stand offs and other things I need.

-its the older brother again.
Yeah man, thats interesting. I wonder if the new stern have a different apron other than the ones that we can get from marcos or pinball life? Cause those dimples are for the apron retention brackets.

Oooh whoops my b misunderstood.

Older Brother here:
Orientation went well at the maker space, now just have to get their classes knocked out 20210925_155705 (resized).jpg

I'm going to be going gone for a business trip for most of October, so most of the work next month will be my little brother doing the wiring and powering the mechs.

Not Pinball related but topic related
I used to hang out and help out at my local comic book shop and in doing so got to meet a bunch of cool people and also find cool collectibles. One of them is an animation cel from Scooby Doo Zombie Island, this one has and will continue to stay in my collection. 20210927_173330 (resized).jpg

For those of you who might not know animation used to be done by hand painting characters on a clear cellophane plastic sheet, they would put the "cel" down over a background, take a photo, then replace the cel with the next one in the animation cycle (and move the background if needed). At some point they changed the type of plastic the characters were painted on but the name "cel" stuck and up till like the mid to late 90s this was the normal way to animate something.

Now back onto pinball, my little brother has bought all of the wiring stuff he needs so that should be here by the end of this week. He's currently laying out a wiring diagram he can follow and refer too if he needs.

And I was able to secure a CNC class with the makerspace before my business trip, so there's a big possibility I may be able to get a white wood CNCd before I leave too. Here's hoping.

So good news and then not so good news.

Took the class and im now able to use the makerspace cnc machines. I have a test file that I would like to use to make sure that my playfield inserts and pop bumpers are within the correct tolerances.

Not so great news is the machines are booked up and the makerspace does not supply router bits. You have to buy your own, which I completely understand. But I won't be able to get the bits or book a machine before I leave. So no test pieces until November by the soonest.

On another positive note my brother got the power supply boards up and working and has been working on getting the proc system plumbed up. He bought a bunch of cables, connectors and crimping tools to make our own runs of cable. So we are still well under way.

Hey yall, still on my business trip but since its the weekend and im "close enough" (6 hour drive) drove to Vegas to check out the pinball hall of fame. Sign made it pretty easy to find the place 20211023_164842 (resized).jpg

Mainly I wanted to see and play the rare "the pinball circus" machine.
20211023_165540 (resized).jpg20211023_165609 (resized).jpg it was busy but for whatever reason this machine didn't have too many people on it, so I played the hell outta it, up to the point an LED fell out.... im so sorry everyone 20211023_174650 (resized).jpg I promise I wasn't being rough with the machine.

Honestly i didn't want to like the game because I figured people were gushing over it since its pretty much "unobtanium" but no, its actually a fun game. Glad I had the chance to play it.

But thats not all I played there. Plenty of other great games and just cool coin op things in there. Honestly there's too many to list but I spent so much time and quarters in here.

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Oh yeah, a couple times. Theres a bar that the ball rolls on after the elevator ride up to the top and you need to hit the flipper button, which pushes that bar out so that the ball drops into the playfield. Knocking the clowns teeth down and then shooting down his throat is how you get your jackpot. The ball goes back down into the spiral wire form so you can start again. Honestly getting the ball to the elevator to the clown was probably the most tricky part of the whole game. Its got some quirks to it to, like you can't use the right flipper to shoot up to the first raised playfield. Just never works even if you nail the shot. Because the flippers are like symmetrical you gotta let it roll off the right side to the left flipper and the left flipper can make the shot every time.

All in all a real neat game and its a shame there wasn't more made

Haha something like that. Went for fun more than anything else. But there was so many great machines it was hard not to be inspired

I'm back from my trip and after a couple days of just relaxing im back into the project. so first and foremost while I was out there pinball life had a sale on their site, which we were waiting for to buy a couple things. I can't really say the savings were worth waiting for on the stuff we got but we got what we wanted none the less. 20211107_142606 (resized).jpg so first thing, the speaker.... we already had one (smaller one on the right) that we were planning on using but then we saw the kit for sale with speakers for the stern spike 2 system. Which is what I kinda copied in order to make our own display panel. And the speaker was bigger than ours, and CLEARLY bigger means better haha. 20211107_142647 (resized).jpg I then routed out the base of the machine for the larger speaker and wow. Im excited to start trying to get the display and speaker working together, going to play whats new scooby doo as loud as possible haha 20211107_142713 (resized).jpg

Next are the pop bumpers, we now have 3 total and a alternating color scheme of green orange and purple not much to talk about but the color combos Feels right.

Lastly I got some drop targets. I really enjoyed the ball lock that Deadpool has, knocking three targets down and then shooting a ball into the chamber. But I didnt want to just copy another machine so instead I 3D printed a little trap door as a concept so that when you shoot the ball into the space behind the drop targets the trap door opens like a trap door from the show and put the ball into a subway. Or maybe that could be another game feature? Haven't decided yet. Our playfield design is still pretty much all over the place.

So now onto some not so great news. The back box. Its just ever so slightly too thin and not perfectly square. So when you try to close the display panel it scrapes real bad on the right side.20211107_142727 (resized).jpg but like 1/8th inch of space on the left 20211107_142731 (resized).jpgI tried using some washers like spacers, prying the wood out just a little bit more and its not really working out.20211107_142748 (resized).jpg Since the backbox graphics didn't come out 100% like I wanted and the fact that the back box is just a little thinner than it needs to be i think im going to remake the backbox. I already designed and ordered the larger lock bar for the new box, now I just need to make the wood part again. Don't worry about the flash rust on the display panel. It's not hurting anything, I just need to weld the bolts to the panel and then grind down the face to make it all flat up front. Then off to the powdercoaters. Doing purple again on the panel itself but then orange for the speaker plates in the back. Fitting the theme of the machine. After all this, man it feels good to be back and working on this again

Hey Y'all, hope everyone has been good and having a great holiday season

So the machine has been on a small hiatus. Unfortunately life had gotten in the way and our holiday season got very busy very fast.
Anyways I am going to be getting back into the swing of things very soon, and Little brother should soon be finishing up classes so he will be back onto programming the lower playfield.

So our maker space is not an option right now (apparently it gets extremely booked up around Christmas time since everyone wants to make gifts for others and I wasn't lucky enough to get on the waiting list soon enough) so I haven't had a chance to CNC out a whitewood. I will be looking into just getting a local CNC shop to cut one out instead if they're available to do so. probably will be more for sure but ill consider it paying for the convenience.

Next I need to redo the backbox, its just a quarter inch too thin. which is making it so our display board is scraping the sides. I have the new internal bar from SendCutSend so I just need to cut a new back box out. just need to actually do it now lol. I also want to redo the graphics on it too so its the perfect time. Black Knight was a little too dark, and mummies head is discolored (looks worse in person I promise)

For the display board I got some basic steel bolts that i can weld them to it, they should be coming in the mail right today or tomorrow. Once that's all welded and cleaned up, the display board and the back box lock bar are both going to get powder coated. same color scheme. purple and orange.

Little brother has been looking into the power and all the controller boards, but for right now id prefer if he focuses and finishes on his classes lol. Pinball needs his full attention but he still has all the parts sitting on his project desk all spaced out ready to go when he is.

We Hope everyone has a great Christmas and or Happy Holidays.

so no new updates that's worth really posting about. Little brother started getting the computer parts together and I need to weld up the front facia plate, then remake the backbox (still) honestly most of the wait has been talking about what we want and it hasn't been a real big priority in our lives at the moment.

he's still finishing up his classes and I've been working on the basement space where I've been using as a workshop so we have a place to home our current machines, which will also free up some space for some more... maybe haha. I also have a project car ive been working on so... too many projects.

although we made a little mock up system to start programming a flipper to get it working, plugged it all in, and hit the button to get the flipper to go off. whole thing turned off. lol. woops. so I guess we are shorting it out... which is less than ideal. but eventually we will get it sorted out.

Just sent out the Display panel out to get powder-coated. The panel itself is going to be textured Sinbad purple, and the speaker mount panels and lock bar will be Juju gloss orange. lead time about 2 weeks.

I'm also not going to be going to the maker space for now to get the playfield made up, Its in the city and I'm personally just not a fan of going to the area so for now I found a place that will CNC it for me as a service. I figure while I'm doing that kill 2 birds with one stone and CNC out a backbox since the one on there now is just a smidge too small (hence the panel not closing and scratching the paint even with the shims). I found a 1/2" 9 ply maple plywood that is mostly void free which is the best I can find for now to give this place. I don't know if there's a better option for playfield wood. For this white wood, this will be fine. I just want the lower third playfield to be SOLID before I start building more on that for actual shots. Lead time for that is about a month

I reworked the graphics so that now black knight is just a shade lighter, and now the discoloration on mummies head is now gone. Since I have to redo the back box, it just makes sense to me to fix the artwork since hopefully this is the final backbox (fingers crossed) lead time for that is about 2 weeks.

little brother hasn't done anything with programming and since his classes are pretty much over I'm going to get back on his case to start doing it again. lead time on him.... unknown.

anyways I'm going to start trying to get the ball rolling on this project again, pun intended.

Happy late Memorial day everyone! we now have flippers flipping on scrap piece of wood so we know its sort of working now. little brother did a great job figuring it out but we still a lot of hurdles to overcome.

waiting on the parts to be powder-coated and come back, waiting on the reprinted graphics, lastly waiting on the CNC board and backbox. a lot of waiting.

In the mean time little brother is chugging away at getting the code written up.
For now when we turn the power on, the computer doesn't turn on. We have to turn that on separately, wait for it to load up, then open the file and run it.
We would like to streamline the process exponentially, so that when you flip on the power switch the PC turns on to and is ready to play just like real machines, but that's for much further down the road. for now I just want to focus on getting the lower third playfield mechs working. ball trough, kicker, flippers, slingshots etc etc

Not really an update, im currently relearning how to use a CNC machine, but I had an idea i wanted to share. I thought it would be cool to make the "Shoot Again" light insert to be the wheel of the mystery machine on the front. found an image on google, edited out the background and then slapped it into the design just to see. Scooby doo pinball machine concept (resized).png I really like how that looks so... even though im WORLDS away from artwork, I think ill keep that.