Opto time. E6814C74-A29E-49AC-96E3-640575200351 (resized).jpeg

Removed guides to drill opto holes. Gave up after 2 holes - must have wrong bit or I’m doing something wrong.. took forever to drill out holes - lots of smoke and things getting hot lol. Decided to cut out sections with grinder rather than drill holes. Final version will have holes.. this is good enough for now to save frustration.

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Optos in on mini loop.
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Fit checking with ramp again.

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Thanks for the laser tip! That’s a great idea. I was using metal bits and lube yeah - but a hand drill which may be part of the issue. I lost the damn chuck to my bench drill

3/23/18

Cable management — the more you get wired the more you realize that there’s no way to make this pretty and correct when you wire in stuff as you design and install mechs. I’m going to follow Fortytwo s wiring scheme and once the design is done- I’m going to transfer all mechs to a new pre routed Playfield and then wire up from scratch with switches and lighting underneath and high voltage runs away from the Playfield.

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Got mini orbit Optos working today - trying to connectorize everything now so it’s less hassle later.. takes a while though.

On to wireforms—
I’m using bronze 1/8 wire, brazed with a torch and copper phosphate rods. Never done this before, so I started with my smallest form which is the ball launch 180 to flipper feed.

First off - need some rings. Bent straight wire wraps around plumbing pipe and cut them all on one side:
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I already had drilled wood blocks so I’ll use those for spacing. Metal is ideal but there’s no way I’m gonna spend all day trying to drill holes.
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First ring:
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Finished form: 96B87F4C-67FC-4422-B216-B44302C6E34F (resized).jpeg

And in the Playfield:
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That’s designed to be a fast feed like the custom Doom pin — the skill shot is selected like ghostbusters and you try to hit the shot from the flipper. Either that or I’ll have a spinner in the shooter lane that rotates the skill shot for each spin.

Anyway, I hand tested the launch and it rockets outta there - gonna have to be quick to get your hand back on the flipper button which should be amusing.

I failed to realize that I had purchased brazing flux and was getting pretty irritated by the end of that little ramp. Luckily someone pointed this out to me and the next one as much more enjoyable to build.

I took a look at some Apollo 13 forms I had for parts - found s good fit in the left side and did some cutting to get the right section.
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Two down, three more to go. Next one is my biggest. The cardboard one on the left.
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In progress and complete:
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Next up - right ramp, diverted left

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Roughed in.. more grinding and bit more brazing to get them secured and seated - will remove excess rings and such to clean them up a bit as well. Seem to work well though.. I suspect slow balls might get hung up however.

R ramp, diverted left still left to do. This one will lock guided meditation balls on far right side on the form with an up post. This will be inside the power animal cave (to be 3d printed one day)

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3/28/18

Unfortune strikes. Got all the wireforms secured to the Playfield and hand testing was good. Fired up mpf to flipper test shoot them and before I got a shot off I dropped the Pinball right past the boards and it shorted my nano controller after contacting fuse holders on the power filter.

Luckily everything else looks ok. Stupid mistake though - I’ve thought so many times I should make a shield to protect the boards. Will do it now... live and learn.

And Aaron at FAST is awesome and has a replacement out to me already - so not too much down time.

3/30/18

Nano arrived this morning - quick swap out.

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Also some more molex connectors. The time it takes to do wiring is underestimated.. esp. with molex connectors everywhere to allow quick component/mech removal.
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This is the best .062 remover I’ve found so far for molex plugs.. also most $$..
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Anyway- back to work.

First off - nano installed and everything is working again, whoooo! But before play testing - the shield I should have installed months ago:
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There we go. Everything is testing good.. fun to hit the ramps. The right flap ramp actually can launch a fast ball up and behind to the thru backboard loop which is kinda awesome and unintended but will likely stay as a feature

Pop bumper switches installed and they are up and running as well.

Finished it off today with 1/2 the final right wireform:
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This will lock balls in the power animal / meditation cave via this up post —ABE8CF0E-8574-4F2A-A45B-F0C94823F65F (resized).jpeg

You have to imagine the 3d printed cave of course.. the wireform once finished will drop the ball out on the right side of the play field.

3/31/18

Black roll over drop targets are in.

Installed them and then had to disassemble left side components to route out a bigger slot as these are way wider at top. Also, they are about 1/4” shorter to the ledge.. gonna take an engineering solution to bump them up but for now they will work.

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Also these guys arrived— 4 reed switches. Wanted to try them for the upper lane changes — would do lower too but these are damn spendy and hard to find (the Pinball specific ones with housing & magnet)
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Part of the weekend spent battling the drop target area after widening the slot. Partial disassembly, moving posts, checking fits over and over and adjusting. Finally got it lined up good, other than the drops needing to be raised 1/4”, and reassembled.

After play testing I may move the captive ball completely to the other side and angle the drops more to make them easier to hit with right flipper... will see

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Haha sweet! I hope it lives up to the one you’re thinking of!

It’s so much fun, highly reccomend it! It’s also a ton of time and a good amount of money though.. less than a nib prem stern, hopefully less than a pro as well all said and done. There’s a lot of costs still outstanding that are big question marks — art print, welding/metal work, 3d printing (will have to buy one)... Its also gonna depend how much you want featurewise and if you want used mechs / parts or buy all new.

I’m a mix of parts on hand, New, used.. and I’m using a lot of coils so there’s additional board costs there. I’ve also spent $$ on extra parts to try out as I design and prototype. All said - I do think you could build something pretty basic but fun and go super cheap for maybe 1500 or possibly less - basic fast starter kit is $500 I believe, similar for proc. Alternatively it could be fun to take a populated donor Playfield and do something with that.. save a ton of $$. So far I prob have around:

$1000 boards/power
$200 wire / connectors, etc
$800 mechs / parts, switches, Optos, hardware etc
$50 wood
$300 computer for dev
$150 raw metal parts, blowtorch, brazing materials
$150 empty wpc cab
Prob other stuff I’m not thinking about.. every time I order parts it adds up crazy quick. New mechs are pretty spendy.. but this is for a lower Playfield too - I have all the parts and wire and such all together. Expecting another $500-$1000 for a complete prototype game with art.

Yeah — was thinking about that. Awkward place to do it but maybe possible. Alternatively the ramp will have a ‘ramp entered’ switch and the upper ramp will have a switch around the corner of the backboard so combined you’ve got the shot made. I think it’s unlikely to be looping balls on the far right upper while also launching a ball between ramps but we’ll see I guess.

Thanks for following!!

Yeah - I pulled the trigger on the Optos from action Pinball.. they had 6. Only place I could find. I figure if I end up not using them I can resell no problem. Crazy expensive switch solution of course.. but fun to try. I think you could do what you’re saying with a non Pinball one but it wouldn’t be plug n play.

Sweet - I’m running out of those pins soon.. slowly wiring everything right now while I think about final design changes. Playable again at least.

Cab is the Drac one - yeah. Be a bit before I tackle that though.. gonna start a clean pf with inserts before working on cab.

Thanks - I’m curious your opinion here soon about moving some stuff a bit, but probably best to come shoot it. Thinking about swapping cap ball sides and angling 5 bank targets more..

Been slowly wiring coils and switches this week. Got a vuk working now and managed to blow a transistor on board that I need to fix later

Tedious work though. Taking a little break to start working on mini Playfield.

First off, upgraded my shitty spade crumpet to a ratcheting one. Big upgrade there.
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Then: working out mech placement on mini pf. Against proposed paper design.

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3/6/18

Lower mini mock-up is built and started drawing in placements. Once worked out I will drill and route everything first before attaching anything.
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Yes — lol. I just discovered that about 10 min ago. Whoopsy !! Gonna have to order again from PL ughhhh. I was going to wire them up quickly and test before cutting holes but that will have to wait a bit.

Progress today:

Drew out rough placement:
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Lining up flipper holes:
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Stopping point today— hand shooting it fine. I brought out cardboard guides to where posts and switches will be to check ball fit. Final guides will be brought back a bit to allow for the posts and slim switch placements. Slim Switches will spell “Lou’s “ and 2x 3 banks for “tavern”. Controlled 1x drop up the middle to a hole behind that feeds below back to trough/kickout. Pop goes on upper left side.

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Crap, that pic is all skewed.. try again:

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Good point.. will have to price it out. May make more sense to get full mech... I’m sure I can use this later on future project

Motor driver board arrived from across the ‘pond’ — can start working more on skyscraper up/down. My main concern with it is if a switch malfunctions, don’t want the motor to still run and strip out the gearing. I think it might overcurrent if this starts to happen and will blow a fuse?

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Way cheaper to order the pawl and base..thanks for the tip— should be here next week. Gonna steal my right flipper mech off main of fir now for testing ..

Borrowed my main right flipper mech and wired mini pf flippers into main flipper connectors for quick testing. Nice advantage of using individual molex connectors on mechs.. the mini pf is nice and portable - just threw it up on top of apron and used my main flipper buttons. Had to dial the power back from 23ms to 12ms - everything seems to flow well. Next step is to cut all the holes.

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Ok, time to drill some holes:

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Mechs attached:
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Topside:

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Fitting slim targets:

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2 more slims to fit - then on to rails. Not much room for gi but no matter — it will be lit from above with flickering effect ‘Florescent’ lighting like a dark basement. Will all be boxed in when complete with the camera looking into it.

No idea actually lol. I won’t have a giant transformer block in the cab back though so I’m pretty sure it should fit in somehow. Worst case I’m doing a little custom work to shift things around or lower the whole cab bottom. I’m crossing my fingers that I have clearance though.

Cool idea I like it! Will Have to look into it when I get closer. Hadn’t thought about camera lag at all ugh crap. I wonder what factors drive that.. do I need an expensive camera or is the lag driven more on the hardware processing side or mpf or... getting close to order a camera for testing actually. I was going to get s cheap webcam kind of deal but may have to rethink that..

HighVoltage I’ll have to double check but it’s s limited length rack and pinion gearing. On the shadow there’s an opto on each side to stop movement in that direction. I’ll have similar - but if the opto doesn’t register or it glitches the motor will continue running and potentially strip the plastic/silicone rack gearing. Ideas on fail safe stop for the motor?