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For labeling all of my buttons I had planned to just do stickers, but came across a youtube on how to add the legend (label) inserts to the buttons I have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W921yvVD2Mc

I used my wife's Silhouette Cameo craft cutter. In the software I just setup a 8.5" x 11" piece of paper and added registration marks. From there I drew a circle to the size I needed, then copied it to make as many as I'd need. Last I typed in my label names and sent it to the printer.
Button Legends.jpg

You mount the paper on the sticky cutting mat and load it in the machine, then it reads the registration marks to know exactly where it needs to cut. Here is is in action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cthk8ZpYwNE

Here are the legends. The whole process took about 10 minutes from start to finish, less than a minute to cut them out. I may change some of these out for graphics though and do them again before inserting them in the buttons.
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Had a full long day in the shop with 60* weather, so stripped down the cabinet, did a little sanding, and got a few coats of lacquer sprayed.
2016-01-30 17.19.45.jpg 2016-01-30 17.19.22.jpg

After 3 coats and 5 hours later, I went ahead and did some reassembly.
2016-01-30 20.38.18.jpg 2016-01-30 20.38.03.jpg 2016-01-30 20.37.46.jpg

Inserted the legends in all of the buttons
2016-01-30 20.37.05.jpg 2016-01-30 20.37.02.jpg 2016-01-30 20.36.56.jpg

Milled out pockets for the rear flashers, drilled holes for LEDs, but haven't wired those yet.
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Man i am drooling over these posts like a Great Dane would be over a moose thigh bone. Oh boy...thats looking so so sweet.

Now what are the decals going to be? any idea for a theme yet? Almost seems a tragedy to put "stickers" lol on the cabinet..... Stickers always had a negative connotation when i was a youngster. Decals makes it sound sophisticated. :rofl:
 
Darren, this is very impressive. Its been fun watching this thing progress. You have taken it to a much higher level than I thought was possible for a "homemade" machine. Fantastic!
 
Hey Thanks guys, really happy with the way it's turned out.

I'm kinda going for an art deco theme, very simple decals, not full body wraps. This is the one I'm playing with for the name plate on the front. The black lines are all that will be shown, not the white background. However, I don't think they are wide enough and will be lost in the cherry's grain, so going to work on the design a little more.
2016-01-31 12.48.42.jpg

I had a little better lighting today to show the contrast of the cherry and maple with the finish on.
2016-01-31 12.50.52.jpg 2016-01-31 13.21.56.jpg

A couple of better shots of the side panels, I'm thinking of an art deco corner decal on the top edge, but not much else.
2016-01-31 12.51.02.jpg 2016-01-31 12.51.06.jpg

BTW, this is the trimmed leg protector (the black part), I cut about 3.5" off of them, re-rounded the bottom corners on the sander.
2016-01-31 12.50.36.jpg
 
So to keep things updated on this thread, I had machined out my name plate from aluminum tonight. Details on that here: http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?36720-Pinball-Name-Plate

The rendering...


The machining and results...


A test fit on the cabinet...


Still need to clean it up and flood the etching with paint.

I'm also considering some decorative brackets on the top sides of the backbox. I'm kinda liking this one...
corner1.jpg
 
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I've still be working on the plunger, but mostly programming some addressable LED's this week. I'll have a separate arduino to display these as I'm running out of pins on the one used for controls. I'm really liking these addressable ones as there is only 3 wires running to the string making them easier to work with. Here is a demo of what will be the play field dome flashers on the back of the table.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNR7I2IXcCo

I'll also have the pinball shoot LED's (http://familywoodworking.org/forums/showthread.php?36506-Pinball!&p=446619#post446619), as well as some under cabinet lighting that are RGB LED Strips.
 
Ted Calver said:
Are these the same kind of LED's that make up those fantastic Christmas light displays?
Click to expand...

Yeah, they are individually addressable, The chips on these are the WS2811 chip (http://www.amazon.com/Diffused-Digital-Pixels-Lights-Addressable/dp/B00B4UKG2W), which only require 5v, ground, and a data signal wire. They work a bit like an old token ring network in that each LED listens for it's address, but ignores data for other addresses. If you google "NeoPixel", there's a ton of info available. The Arduino library is here: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_NeoPixel

If running more than a few LEDs, you'd need an external power supply. Each LED draws about 60 milliamps when all 3 colors are lit up (white), so about 3 amps total for the 50 LED string above.

Here's a good example of someone that has chained them together with two controllers to create an LED Panel using the Glediator software (http://www.solderlab.de/index.php/software/glediator) for control of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQv3cHG1-XQ
 
One of my long time desires since coming to North America, has been to do something different at Xmas with the Xmas lighting. I dont mean the usual sound light show light up the neighborhood stunt , just something more local like say a digital sign in the front yard wishing folks a merry xmas and changing to say a santa sleigh outline of something else graphical thats related.

This could be a great method to do that. My thoughts were always to take a sheet of plywood , draw out something like a Santa sleigh with reindeer on it and then light it up so it has motion by doing what they do in a animation to provide sense of motion. Figure this could be a good tool to use for that.

Can see how one would quickly want a matrix in order to change the image say to turkey for Thanksgiving.

Wondering aloud how long it would last in the cold and with the town sign authorities. LOL Thanks for the headsup. Like Ted says another Vortex and time???? I really need to start retirement now if i am going to get near my long list of things i want to have a go at. How can you be bored in retirement ?
 
Rob Keeble said:
One of my long time desires since coming to North America, has been to do something different at Xmas with the Xmas lighting. I dont mean the usual sound light show light up the neighborhood stunt , just something more local like say a digital sign in the front yard wishing folks a merry xmas and changing to say a santa sleigh outline of something else graphical thats related.

This could be a great method to do that. My thoughts were always to take a sheet of plywood , draw out something like a Santa sleigh with reindeer on it and then light it up so it has motion by doing what they do in a animation to provide sense of motion. Figure this could be a good tool to use for that.

Can see how one would quickly want a matrix in order to change the image say to turkey for Thanksgiving.

Wondering aloud how long it would last in the cold and with the town sign authorities. LOL Thanks for the headsup. Like Ted says another Vortex and time???? I really need to start retirement now if i am going to get near my long list of things i want to have a go at. How can you be bored in retirement ?
Click to expand...

I'd like to give that a try too some time. I was thinking i'd like to just make our lights a permanent install, just install them as part of the trim on the house. Did a little googling and came across this company...

http://trimlight.net/store/c2/Full_House_Kits.html

It doesn't look like they are using the addressable LEDs' but really like the idea of their system, and are hardly visible when off. Could change the lights to any color for different holidays and for sport events, such as red and yellow for Chiefs, or white and blue for Royals game days. Even have some separately controlled ones for entertainment areas, like the deck/pool.

For your animation displays, you might check out the software at http://www.vixenlights.com/ I think it's what a lot of the folks doing whole house displays are using.
 
So I had a little time this evening and my string lights I bought I found are only spaced 3" apart and my lenses were spaced about 3.5" apart.
2016-01-30 20.35.13.jpg

So, I ended up modifying the rear lens piece with 5 lenses spaced about 2 3/4" apart, which is going to work just fine. I shot it over to the cnc and cut a new piece. Just got a shot of lacquer on it, a couple more coats and I'll tear down the pinball and start getting the LED's installed.
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Today I got all the components installed for the LED Flashers and Launch lights. Also was able to get the launch light holes milled in on the cnc. I'll have to modify the game tables I want to use these on, so will be a limited number of them, but once I get it down where all I need to add the scripts it will go pretty quick.

Here are the launch lights...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDsvEvaYfLc

And the play field flashers...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFRe9NQuL6Q

The mostly just do a random flasher on any time a bumper or kicker is hit. I may get a few more coded to do sequence when the flippers are hit and such, but this will do for now.
 
Nice...but I can see those flashers working against a player lol I would have missed that ball too.
So its all done, now for some serious playing.

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk
 
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