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Pinball!

Broke away to the shop in the 5* weather to mill out the lower bezel for the back box monitor. It has two recesses, one for a volume switch, one for the LCD. A cutout for the monitors buttons, and an array of holes for each of the speakers.
bezel.jpg

I'm going to remount the piece to deepen the recess on the LCD, then will trim it to size.
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Today was a bunch of clean up of the cables inside.
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Yeah, that doesn't look very neat, but believe me, its an improvement with the rats nest that was there before. Each cable is now wire-tied to the length needed and I can easily sort through them for the one I need. I still need to mount the controller boards on something and get them organized too.

I replaced the computer with another one that had a little faster processor and was newer. The new cpu was a bit narrower and allowed me to put some 16" drawer glides on the sides for pulling the cpu out for maintenance.
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I got the bottom of the front bezel sized and the LCD pocket a little closer to the front to make it easier to read.
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Lastly I got one of these plugs installed in the back of the cabinet. I simply lobbed off the power strips plug and connected to the back of this one (sorry, no pics).
http://www.amazon.com/URBEST®Inlet-..._p_img_11?ie=UTF8&refRID=0PM3BPG3S9AE5BCFHBQX
 
Got my yellow LCD today. Put some biscuits in the bottoms of my side rails to align them with the sides, cut the mortises for where the hinges on the back box rest on the base cabinet and installed that trim. Still need to cut the rest of the trim for the back box and cut dados for it's glass/acrylic.

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I also got some of these little starburst insert lenses in the mail, I'll be using them to reflect the RGB LEDs in the back of the play field I'll be adding next.
detail.jpg detail.jpg

http://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/03-7642-13
 
Between this great build, your shop made CNC, and your grilling capability, you are making a great argument for a Family Gathering this summer at your place! And a yard big enough for RV's. Ask Angela not to kill me for the suggestion. :rofl:
 
Carol Reed said:
Between this great build, your shop made CNC, and your grilling capability, you are making a great argument for a Family Gathering this summer at your place! And a yard big enough for RV's. Ask Angela not to kill me for the suggestion. :rofl:
Click to expand...

:) Thanks for the compliments. We'll have to see where things are going after the daughter finishes school and if we decide to move or not. We've been having a lot of discussion on whether to add on the the house or just sell it, I'm even leaning towards simplifying and buying or building a new place, though both would be more work for me either way. I'm getting to the point I'm ready to stop doing all the hard work for little pay, just don't enjoy it as much anymore. ;)
 
Got to spend most of my Saturday messing with this again. I finished up the bezel for the back box monitor. I installed the LCD panel for seeing how many credits there are, the button on the left is for volume.
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Got the controller board made and got most of the components mounted to it. I left enough loom that I can remove the two screws holding the board and pull it all up to a more comfortable level to work on it. the main control is on the left, a Teensy 2.0 Arduino controller, the Arduino Mega on the right is for controlling the accent lighting. I connected it to an IDE breakout board to make wiring lights easier. I'll have a relay control board on the far right to run some effect relays. I mounted it about 6 inches from the bottom to make sure I could reset the controllers if need be.
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Trimmed up the lock bar ends.
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Added a draw latch for the back box to secure it.
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My fancy coin box that catches the quarters.
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Still need to do the trim on the back box and cut acrylic for both the play field and back box and run the router over all the trim to add chamfers and round-overs here and there.
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Thanks guys, it's been a fun build, feeling like I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but need a few warm days to get the finishing done.

It hit 50 here today, but unfortunately I spent the day getting trim cut and routed, also got the acrylic cut and fitted, no finish work. I did round overs on the outside edges, chamfers on the inside edges.
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Got some round-overs done on the lock bar, still lots of sanding to get done.
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Also got the trim on the back box, hard to see from the second pic, but did a 1/8" round over on those pieces.
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Thanks!

Wood rails got glued on tonight. Did a mask job using the bull-frog tape to keep the glue from getting all over, used some 7.5* culls on the slope to keep the clamp pressure even.
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Also got a Neopixel LED strip in the mail today to play with. It's an addressable LED strip. So using voltage and a signal wire you can tell the LED strip which light(s) to turn on and what color(s) to make them. Here's a little demo of it going through some different patterns...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j6jn-cc2jU

I'm thinking about drilling some holes in the trim strip by where the plunger shows on the screen for each LED on the strip and having it flash in a forward motion when it's time to shoot.
 
Tonight I got the back box bezel installed with it's acrylic in it. Outside of working on lighting and adding that LED strip I posted about above, I think I'm pretty much done with any construction. Just have to wait for a nice couple of days to strip it all down and do the sanding and finish work. In the mean time I'll be working on getting some decals cut out, buttons labeled, and going through and cleaning up my table list.

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Thinking aloud but something like this Pinball machine done up in say their logo would be a really cool project for donation to Wounded Warriors for a fund raising raffle.

Just thinking of how many celebrities support the organization and how many of them probably spent much of their youth playing pinball and would have a games room they would not mind kitting out with a toy like this. Bet it would raise some serious loot for the organization. So if you ever get bored with it give it a thought.

I mean who would not want to win one of these machines?;)
 
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