Regarding pinballmakers being off line, remember there is always the wayback machine.

I really like the Trident Pinball Homebrew Discord. I would like to see it take over the slack channels and be a hardware neutral space.

Glue: a small amount of clear expox in the insert hole right before you rubber mallet it into place. Some people advocate roughing up the sides of the insert with sandpaper so the glue grips better. I don’t know if I would bother with a whitewood, but that will give you both belt and suspenders.

Trident: Pm me with your email and I will send an invite

That looks great!

There is no one right way to make the first layer adhesion work. It depends on many factors, the type of filament used, the surface material of the build plate, the Z height, the temperature of the build plate, and the temperature of the extruder. I found this to be an excellent resource. Also, if you poke around their website, there are some articles worth reading. https://www.simplify3d.com/resources/print-quality-troubleshooting/
In my workshop, I use CNC router, CNC laser, a variety of woodworking tools, etc. My 3-D printers are undoubtedly the most complex tools, but also the most rewarding. Stick with it, it pays off.

The enchanted cable forrest.

Unless you have more switches and switch inputs, I highly suggest you not use a matrix. The wiring is more difficult and the debugging much more difficult.

I would triple check the part about the ground. The 48 V ground on Pinball machines is unstable because of the current surges when coils fire. Add a minimum this creates the potential for interference on the switch and at worst can damage the micro controller. Also, tying all your switches from a header to the ground on the same header plug makes debugging easier. When you disengage the header, you disconnect all of the switches and their ground that segment of your machine. It sounds unnecessarily complicated but if you miss wire something, being able to isolate various parts of the machine, makes it much easier to find your mistake.

Pain points on both the Fast and Multimorphic board sets are the controllers themselves. Neuron controller is $219 and P3 ROC $190. The node boards are much more affordable and the cost scales appropriately with the complexity of the system. My intuition is that that communications protocol between the controller and the node boards is straight forward. I keep hoping that somebody will analyze one or the other's protocol and write firmware for a $4 Raspberry Pi Pico to act as a controller to sit between MPF and the node boards.

Rasperri pi pico is microcontroller, dirt cheap and with about as much computer power as an original Apple II. While it can't run MPF, if could work as a pinball machine controller. It's probably what cobra pin would use if cobra pin were designed from scratch in the 2020's. Many (maybe now most) makers have gotten away from arduino microcontrollers because of the higher cost and the vastly improved capabilities of the RPI-pico.

Love that podcast. So much yet to cover.

Is there a slack or discord channel people are using for cobra pin?

That really is the beauty of MPF. You can cook book your way into a game. Along the way, as you figure out the nuances, enough understanding of what's under the hood will come to allow you to make something complex and interesting.

It's like picking a lock one tumbler at a time.

That looks beautiful. How long are you waiting between coats?

Did you clearcoat using only polyurethane?

cwg29 Thank you. Yes, that question was for you. I was wondering if polyurethane alone was holding up fine on top of that beautiful fathom job. I haven't tried just polyurethane on Pinball. On furniture it has done well for me. If I could skip the hassle of 2K, I certainly would like to.

Does anybody know what kind of surface prep is required (if any) for a newly cut playfield to get vehicle wrap vinyl to stick properly?

Since I won't need a super hard finish, I don't want to spray 2K underneath vinyl. Does anybody have recommendations on a clear product with which I can prep my wood before applying the vinyl?

What is the current draw on those LEDs? If it is 20 mA or more per channel, I think you'll find them plenty bright enough.

Trident Pinball homebrew discord server is specifically non-denominational. Some of us are on cobra, some on fast, some on Multimorphic and even a few on grow-your-own microcontroller. The thing that really binds us together is homebrew design and MPF.

As a homebrew person, I first made my plastics on my 3-D printer. It wasn't attractive but it was 100% functional for prototyping. Later, I make good use of a CNC machine. I don't have an infrared laser so I cut my polycarbonate slingshot covers with the CNC. Then, I smoothed the edges carefully with a blow torch. Art was hand drawn on tracing paper and stuck to the underside with spray glue. All of this was very inexpensive.