Beavercreek, OH
Fun to watch this develop, keep it up!
(Topic ID: 135580)
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Quoted from zr11990:Why do this with particle board?
Lol, we are building a pinball and all you have to say is this?
You use the wrong wood 
If you would have read the entire topic,you see 5 posts like yours...
Thanks for your concerns about the wood we use and your postive input.
Who made you an expert 
Nowra
Quoted from pinballrockstar:» YouTube video
I now appreciate a second... and 3 is amazing.
Nice job! Love the progress. I always appreciate the efforts put in by those who are working on their own games and such, as its no easy task.
I believe the particle board question was a bit more constructive feedback. Using MDF is great for prototyping but is much heavier and is very brittle near any edges, and will swell significantly when exposed to moisture. The grain in wood and 1/2 inch birch veneer will offer a much better strength to weight ratio in future builds 
Again, I also prototype my playfields on MDF because its cheap and easy to cut, so I completely see why you did it!
Regarding the lamp boards, the lamp matrix basically makes all of those lamps possible with only 16 wires, so depending on what rows and columns those lamps are on, thats why you only need a few wires going into the board for that many lamps. Kudos to "upcycling" the old hardware!
The source of my expertise? Lots of failed pinball projects and a few manufactured amusement games during my career.
Keep up the awesome work! I've really enjoyed watching your youtube updates thus far!
Quoted from pinballrockstar:Lol, we are building a pinball and all you have to say is this?
You use the wrong wood
If you would have read the entire topic,you see 5 posts like yours...
Thanks for your concerns about the wood we use and your postive input.
Who made you an expert
LOL. Sorry if that sounded condescending. It wasn't meant to be. What you are doing is clearly far beyond my abilities. Doing a PF swap is about as far as I would dare to venture out and I usually have things that don't work correctly when I do that. I ask that question because you are putting in a LOT of work and creating an awesome pin that only you will have. There aren't to many people that can/will do that. That is why I don't get why you are using particle board that swells and comes apart if you come near it with a glass of water and that you can almost pull a screw out if it with your fingers. I don't think I would use it even for a prototype PF. You know what you are doing however and you must have a reason for doing it that way. So, my question is not meant to be condescending. It is just a curious, why. That being said, your work so far looks amazing. I look forward to seeing the finished product.
Quoted from zr11990:LOL. Sorry if that sounded condescending. It wasn't meant to be. What you are doing is clearly far beyond my abilities. Doing a PF swap is about as far as I would dare to venture out and I usually have things that don't work correctly when I do that. I ask that question because you are putting in a LOT of work and creating an awesome pin that only you will have. There aren't to many people that can/will do that. That is why I don't get why you are using particle board that swells and comes apart if you come near it with a glass of water and that you can almost pull a screw out if it with your fingers. I don't think I would use it even for a prototype PF. You know what you are doing however and you must have a reason for doing it that way. So, my question is not meant to be condescending. It is just a curious, why. That being said, your work so far looks amazing. I look forward to seeing the finished product.
Yeah, we actually know it is bad stuff,but for example;for making the round holes for the inserts we use these big round drills..i did one in the plywood backboard for the backboard shot,it was a real task.
So particle board is good stuff cause it is easy to work with.
Did you know that the Spinball factory from Spain used particle wood on machines like "jolly Park".
Real factory machines with particle playfields.
I know this for a fact,i own one.
The factory went out of business in a year ofcourse but hopefully that was not the particle board that caused it,lol
Look at the picture..underside jolly park playfield
Quoted from Compy:Using MDF is great for prototyping but is much heavier and is very brittle near any edges, and will swell significantly when exposed to moisture.
As I posted earlier, the thing I did not like, when I did my first whitewood/prototype in MDF, was that when you need to move stuff around on the bottom side (as a result of mounting mechs before doing inserts and then finding they are competing for the same space), is that when you unscrew (or even screw in), it creates little mounds that then keep the mechs of sitting flat, unless you sand them down, etc. It also will not hold the mechs as well so, so them coming loose, etc. becomes an issue. So, while I think it is fine for the first messing around and figuring things out, especially when you are sort of designing on the go, I found that moving to a piece of plywood on the second iteration made sense (I did only minimal inserts on the first version). When you figure out how much everything else costs, the plywood is not that bad. Other thin is that MDF dust is annoying.
Game is coming along nicely been fun to watch your progress and the flow of ideas and how you implement them. I know with my games I spent a lot of time just staring out the playfield thinking about what to do, design changes, etc. and then just trying stuff.
Not sure how you are drilling your holes for the inserts, I found with forstner bits that after I did the first hole (for the ledge), that I could use the 'dimple' it left to center the smaller bit for the hole that goes through and that let me maximize the size of that hole, and the amount of light that could get through, and still have the needed ledge.
Quoted from rosh:As I posted earlier, the thing I did not like, when I did my first whitewood/prototype in MDF, was that when you need to move stuff around on the bottom side (as a result of mounting mechs before doing inserts and then finding they are competing for the same space), is that when you unscrew (or even screw in), it creates little mounds that then keep the mechs of sitting flat, unless you sand them down, etc. It also will not hold the mechs as well so, so them coming loose, etc. becomes an issue. So, while I think it is fine for the first messing around and figuring things out, especially when you are sort of designing on the go, I found that moving to a piece of plywood on the second iteration made sense (I did only minimal inserts on the first version). When you figure out how much everything else costs, the plywood is not that bad. Other thin is that MDF dust is annoying.
Game is coming along nicely been fun to watch your progress and the flow of ideas and how you implement them. I know with my games I spent a lot of time just staring out the playfield thinking about what to do, design changes, etc. and then just trying stuff.
Not sure how you are drilling your holes for the inserts, I found with forstner bits that after I did the first hole (for the ledge), that I could use the 'dimple' it left to center the smaller bit for the hole that goes through and that let me maximize the size of that hole, and the amount of light that could get through, and still have the needed ledge.
But Stern's "The Pin" uses MDF for the playfield! Anything else just WOULDN'T be pinball! #moreComplexThanAFordTaurus
Quoted from rosh:Not sure how you are drilling your holes for the inserts, I found with forstner bits that after I did the first hole (for the ledge), that I could use the 'dimple' it left to center the smaller bit for the hole that goes through and that let me maximize the size of that hole, and the amount of light that could get through, and still have the needed ledge.
Yup, forstner bits here too, they are awesome, i bought them on the fly, figured they would be handy someday...turns out they are perfect size insert drills, you can lean somewhat to a side if you see you are a bit off .
Good stuff
looks great guys, nice work
was playing the apple tv minions game with the kids yesterday, is the pinball going to have a collect bananas feature like Congo collecting diamonds?
Is the right orbit at all possible to shoot? It looks like the hole kicker is in the way. Didn't notice before, but this looks quite important.
Quoted from FreeBee:Is the right orbit at all possible to shoot? It looks like the hole kicker is in the way. Didn't notice before, but this looks quite important.
Yep shoots real good,we are tying it together visually, we know it is tight, but nothing is final , just prototyping and having fun
Quoted from swinks:looks great guys, nice work
was playing the apple tv minions game with the kids yesterday, is the pinball going to have a collect bananas feature like Congo collecting diamonds?
Great idea!! Making sidenotes!!! 
Great job guys,
A little tip, (not sure if I see it correct but) it looks like the diodes on lampboard AND lampsocket are used in the lampmatrix. Although this will work perfect, it can be confusing when lamps dont't work. This way you have to measure/follow all traces on the lampboard to find out what the columns and rows are.
If you had a special meaning to do it this way, I've said nothing
Quoted from sven:They're there so you can use 64 lamps in an 8 by 8 lamp-matrix. Whithout the diodes you wouldn't be able to light that many lamps individually.
Great job on your playfield!
Aaah,so that's the thought behing the diodes,it was so hard to understand, we simply soldered the lamp sockets to the main lamp matrix board...the easy way that is proven to work.
If we make a mistake , the machine will be damaged.
So always have to be 100% sure of things.
We need to write code for the attraction light show, but that will be superfun to do..a lot of work, but it is a thing we understand and know how to do.
First thing next week we will add maximum matrix lights, so the final attraction light show will be radical.
Quoted from pinballrockstar:First thing next week we will add maximum matrix lights, so the final attraction light show will be radical.
Great !, looking forward to see that lightshow
Quoted from pinballrockstar:If we make a mistake , the machine will be damaged.
Nah, some things get damaged when making a mistake, but a lot of things aren't that bad. Just make sure you're fusing things (like coils, flashers, the power for the lamp-matrix) and don't accidentally short High Voltage to the switch matrix or other part of the PCBs that's not meant for HV.
Quoted from Richthofen:At first, I was thinking, oh no, don't ruin a WCS! but the more I've seen, the more excited I am. Keep up the excellent work!
It is easy for us, we don't like wcs at all...
Plus we don't like football
real happy with the basic code we wrote for the inserts, we can make them do whatever we want,but for now we can check if they all work correct.
It is time consuming work to organise them,every lane of 3 lights has their own yaml file.
That drop locaton reminds me of Shadow and WOZ.
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