color me jealous

No no no, you buy a big chunk of aluminum and CNC a permanent mold silly

Pfft, a playfield sitting on a rotisserie? Clearly you know nothing about building a professional pinball. It needs to sit in a custom cabinet, with painted vents, and spiky leg bolts

Oh and don't forget to put lots of certification stickers on the cabinet before it's actually been tested, VERY IMPORTANT!

The pleasure is all on this side, trust me
office_space_pleasure.jpg

That layout is SICK!

Gary has said on many occasions (even with 5-6 other pinball companies competing in the last 3-4 years that didn't exist before), that they are STIL the only "real" pinball company. I really think with this whole "keep upping the MSRP price", and "let's take a major chunk out of the pro version for 'reliability' is eventually going to bite them in the A$$, but where that line is drawn I don't know. Seems like nothing affects buyers, the new price and the new cost cutting becomes the new norm.

I have a silly question, where's the space to mount front bezel speakers? Or are you only doing lower cabinet speakers? Love that you're bringing it to expo.

Looking forward to it!

I got to play it too. Great flow (other than the left orbit needs to be tweaked so it doesn't drain from the shooter lane, but he knows it). Really dug the ramps, the ball lock, and the 3-bank drop targets (very AMH-ish, with the added magnet to pull it into the hole. Can't wait to see how this progresses with rules and artwork.

I shot a short video

I commented that it got played so much there was already ball trails on the commonly shot playfield and paper ramps. Granted there is no clearcoat and the glass is off, it's still amazing to see dirt get embedded so quickly. Goes to show you how much people love it.

Are you 3d printing them, or going right to vacuum forming?

Nice! it's so cool to play the virtual version after playing it at expo. The only thing not quite right is the left ramp, it's really difficult to hit in the virtual version, but I was able to get it up the ramp at least once on the real version.

If there was any doubt that color and a little taller vertical resolution makes all the difference in the world..

Pinsiders: "But color means more work"

Nope!

If there is any dimpling, you probably wouldn't be able to tell very well because there's nothing to reflect (since it's bare wood). But yea, I get what you're saying, even with no protective clearcoat that wood is holding up well (Stern's shooter lanes are even dimpling to the point where it looks like someone took a hammer to them). I've actually found that even a $15 sheet of 2'x4' ply from Lowe's is pretty darn good quality on my homebrew project. In fact I bought a nice piece of wood online for like $50, and Lowe's still beats it in quality.

Keep in mind (before this fiasco) that typically in the playfield industry, it is typically a very high grade wood that you can't get anywhere. It's seriously specially formulated and made specifically for Churchill for playfields.

I would say get a ScanJet 4670 off ebay, but looks like they are getting pretty pricey (I do have one, but you'd have to ship).

Honestly, since you don't have artwork started (that you have to worry about lining up to the playfield cutouts), a good straight on photograph would probably be fine (may have to skew and adjust in photoshop, and resize which I can also help with). Obviously once you have a good image, it's pretty easy to trace in a CAD program like draftsight (inserts need to be accurate, but both 2d and 3d models of standard inserts are on pinballmakers.com).

Here's a stretched non-skewed version of the photo you posted. I adjusted width to 20.25", no idea what the height is:

christmas_playfield_flattened (resized).jpg

The plastic bottoms would be easy since they'd be flat. The metal sides could get tricky but theoretically possible. You'd almost have to create a 3d model of the shape and bend, then flatten it out (so you can cut your shape), and then manually form around each wall. You'd then either need to add a small L-bracket, or include tabs on the bottom edge of the metal walls that you can bend over.

If you look at the heighway pinball tour, they show an early prototype where all the ramps are flat plastic bottoms, and layered flat plastics sides built up with spacers. I think this is what you're talking about:

As an example, here's a simple ramp, broken down to 3 pieces, then flattened out

1 (resized).png
2 (resized).png
3 (resized).png
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haven't kept up with this thread in about 8 months, great to see all the progress.