37 replies to this topic

[DDH69]

Painting and stickers have progressed.  The black has been sprayed on for all internal parts, and more sanding plus some clear coat for the stickers to stick to.  The artwork is very similar to the first machine I build with some tweaks performed, ie moved a few characters to see them better around legs, rails, etc. Plus replaced the skull with R2D2.  All thanks to Stuzza.

 

 

As you can see it now has legs attached and a couple of buttons screwed in place.  As of yesterday its off the saw horses and standing on its own four feet.  Its so lovely when they take their first steps 

 

I've also now built the main power switch box for the front right hand corner underneath.  I've gone with a momentary switch to fire things up, the 12VDC from the PC will then power the relay keeping power applied until the PC is shutdown.  When the PC loses power all power is cut off via the relay no longer being powered.  ON the side of the box I have a toggle switch to override that can be switched with the front door open.

 

 

I also started to prepare the PC chassis.  I bought a $60 tower case with PSU, have drilled out a lot of the rivets, removed the sides, and will fold one side up at 90 degrees.  There are a few photos of the stripped down PC case plus it folded.  I'll add some more with the aluminium bars I added to hold it in shape plus the 2 x fans that blow over the CPU when I get around to taking them.

 

 

Might go and start tinkering with some wiring today.

[Nemo]

Nice ! Good progress there   Love your DIY "smart powerstrip" that's a neat way of switching things.

[DDH69]

Well I've been stuck on a power supply problem for the last couple of weeks.  The new cabinet needs more power so I decided to parallel some LM317's and LM338's whereas last time I just had singles.  When I then connected up my new more powerful solenoids and a couple of test motors for the shake and grind, I burnt a few of the voltage regulators out - oops!  So I replaced them, and burnt them out again, then I thought, I'd better not do this a third time.  The strange thing was the circuit worked fine, but it seemed to just blow up with the motor and sometimes with the solenoids.  Anyway, I decided the power supply design needs to change, research on paralleling voltage regulators has now shown me that its a bad idea (OK I proved that in practice as well!)  So now I'm going to move to a voltage regulator and use it to drive paralleled 2N3055 power transistors, that will definitely work.

 

All I have to do now is wait for some new electronic components to turn up in early January.  In the interim I'll keep building the screens into the cabinet, and maybe even do some more on those 2 x MAME coffee tables.  Oh yeah, I can also build the PC for the new cabinet and figure out how to copy all my tables and settings across.

[DDH69]

Well, despite all of the power rails not working, there is still some preparation of the electronics required.  The main issue I'm working on is getting my shaker and gear motor sorted out.  I've got the dual speed controller working via the booster circuit on the LEDWiz board.  Here is some of my stuff;

 

 

I also got the PC built and running.  I've gone with Windows 10.  So far I've only loaded the OS and a few utilities, I'll get to VP and PinBallX in a few weeks time.

 

 

The Christmas break is a great time to get stuff done.  Today a lot of cricket watching and some cabling.  I got the backbox cabled, its now complete without screens.  Some basic cabling is underway in the cabinet, but not much can happen until I get the power supply issues sorted out.

 

 

I also had to make a new bracket for the coin door.  The door I have is different to the last one I used and it has no bracket for a door switch.  What I did was mount a micro switch against the 4 adjustment switch frame.

 

 

And when all the hard work is done there is always time for a game .....

 

Edited by DDH69, 27 December 2015 - 11:44 AM.

[DDH69]

Just got back from a few days away, so the time between arriving home, doing the necessary jobs around home and dodging the 38 degree heat are on the cabinet.

 

Over the last couple of days I've refurbished my coin door.

• pull it apart


• strip it back


• spray with hammered finish  black


• rebuild


• rewire


• change the two coin lamps to 6.3v LEDs with a 300 Ohm resister in series to make them 12v


• add two micro switches to the coin return buttons, just because I can


• add a new 12 way in-line plug to the end that I can marry up with a 12 way socket (as opposed to the standard circuit board header used ion real pins)

A couple of shots from the back;

 

 

Once I rebuilt this early yesterday I decided while I had the paint that I'd better strip and repaint my first coin door.  That distracted me for a few hours!  I'll have to distract myself further and put it back together today so that I've got something to play.

 

Also took a visit to my father who has been making some parts for my shaker.  I bought an old reasonable quality (Makita) 12vDC drill for $5, then ripped it apart for the motor.  These motors happily run on a range of voltages and have quite high torque.  The other cat has been the $8.70 for reinforced tubing used as the a slightly flexible drive link from the motor to the shaker drive rod.  Other than that, scrounging through the shed for old steel, bearings, some brass and screws.  Its all been mounted on a frame with offset brass weights. Bench tests so far shake the bench very well! See below;

 

 

Now all I have to do is strip it down, paint it, make a mounting board for it and the gear motor (not yet finalised) and then mount it.  Before all of that I've still got my real power supply to repair with the redesigned high current output.  The shaker pulls a bit of power as it first starts with those offset weights.

[gigalula]

Good work and really nice build  Keep going my friend.

[DDH69]

Some more progress over the weekend.  I mounted six more of my solenoids, the back 3 with small bike bells to sound like the mushroom bumpers and the centre 3 with some small box section steel so that they sound solid but slightly metalic.  Here are a few pictures of them mounted on the panel to go behind the playfield and the centre cross bar that goes below the playfield TV.

 

 

I've also mounted all of the various sub-boards that I've build for the transformer, power supply, driver board, shaker motor, motor speed controller.  Here's what that all looks like unwired.

 

 

Once I got all of those parts mounted I started doing the switch wiring at the front of the cabinet.

 

 

Next will be a lot more wiring and some finalisation of the power supply.  I've still got some modifications to make moving from parallel voltage regulators to driver transistors.

 

Everything is progressing well.  Soon I must get back to the PC and load some software ready to drive some of this stuff.  Its really starting to get close to the testing phase.

[stuzza]

Wow, you have some crazy electrical skills!  Nice work.  Very neat too.

[DDH69]

Yay - finally got my power supply sorted out.  One of the joys of designing and building it yourself - you also have to debug and fix it yourself!  Anyway, its done now and the satisfaction level is high.  I now have a main PSU that will deliver:

 

• 4 sets of fan outputs that have variable speed adjustable at any time via mounted adjustment knows by the coin door.  This drives 2 front fans, 2 PC fans, 3 back of cabinet fans and 3 back box fans
• 2 x 12v 3A max outputs for amplifiers, DMD screen, coin door switch circuitry and delay circuits for auto power on of the DMD
• 1 x 12v 15A max, for LEDs, motors,etc driven from the LedWiz
• 1 x 15v 15A max for 10 x solenoids and knocker, again driven from the LedWiz

So perhaps today / tomorrow I can start wiring up the power so that I can test all of that and get some screens mounted.

 

I can see the finish line from here!

[DDH69]

The build is now complete apart from months of tinkering and loading of games.

 

I built up the backbox then added the screens.  The laptop screen and driver from eBay works perfectly and allows me to actually fold down the backbox.  I have zero protrusion into the cabinet.

 

 

Fixed up the PSU to use more driver transistors and mounted the shaker / gear motors

 

 

Next put in the flip-top playfield.  I must say the frame and 46" Samsung fits perfectly.  the flip-top playfield is setup to stand very high to give lots of working room.

 

 

Then of course fire it up and play a game or two ....

 

 

Lastly, my the glazier delivered my glass this morning.  So now I need to write the advert to sell my first build.

[DDH69]

Some (maybe) final touches today.

 

Tweaks with the shaker motor.  I've decided that it needed to be dialed down a bit in intensity, fortunately I built in a speed controller , so just turned it down a bit.  Also needed to shorten the grub screw on the offset weight, this stops a bit of the offset centrifugal force. Also, added a guard around the weight and moving parts.  The last item on the shaker is to add a run time limiter.  I discovered that I don't like long run times when playing games (ie Attack from Mars), so I made a timer that controls the reset on the speed controller oscillator.  I can now set the run time to a maximum of anything from 0.5 seconds to about 10 minutes.  I've set it for about 15 seconds.  Yet to rebuild the cabinet and try it out.

 

Tomorrow I will add a reset switch for the PC.  In loading VPX tables I've discovered that on about two occasions I wanted one (locked up the remote keyboard).

 

Shortly I will add a GTX970 4Gb video card to fix up the frame rate.  I bought the card today, a couple of converter cables to turn up over the next week or two, then I can add it in.

[blackvulcan3]

Hey DDH69 lovely build, it's looks fantastic, those electronics look scary though.

Question, is your 15.6 inch a screen a laptop screen, if so, how does it power up & connect? If it's an older monitor disregard.

Also, how are you finding Windows 10, I did a clean Windows 7 install and am happy but I don't really want to miss the boat on the free update.

Cheers mate, again, it looks awesome.

[DDH69]

Hey DDH69 lovely build, it's looks fantastic, those electronics look scary though.

Question, is your 15.6 inch a screen a laptop screen, if so, how does it power up & connect? If it's an older monitor disregard.

Also, how are you finding Windows 10, I did a clean Windows 7 install and am happy but I don't really want to miss the boat on the free update.

Cheers mate, again, it looks awesome.

 

The 15.6 is a laptop screen.  I bought it off eBay with the driver board.  The driver board has SVGA and DVI inputs.  The driver boards can be 5v or 12v, mine is 12v.  The connector from the driver board is very small and I presume a bit fragile, having said that, I had no issue connecting it.  The screen is powered from the driver board.  The driver board has a set of buttons for setup.  It "remembers" the power state, so simply applying 12vDC starts it all up every time.  This solution is definitely a step up on using an old monitor.

 

I have had no issues with Win10.  My Win10 installation was done as a clean Win7 install then the free upgrade.  I then installed all the software.  I can't see why doing it the other way around would be an issue.

 

I've seen your build thread, all I can say is keep reading, investigating and asking questions.  I'm most happy to share any and all experiences.

[blackvulcan3]

Cheers, thanks DDH69, very much appreciated. My MAME cabinet was daunting at first, but I reckon I could put on together in my sleep now, this has got me scratching my head a little.

[TerryRed]

I've been so busy having fun with DOFLinx that I never even noticed your build thread.  Beautiful job man. I admire you desire to make your power supplies...

 

After doing 1000's of electronics repairs over the 15 years before I became a tech for the military.... my ambition for "building" electronics instead of buying cheap Chinese has left me.  Also not having good equipment or parts available where I live now, doesn't help. I have to order EVERYTHING online (isolated military posting), and I hate having to wait weeks for simple little things I may have forgotten.  So I always go for what's cheap, what I have available, but works, as long as it looks good in the outside.

 

The only real pinball part in my cabinet are the pinball legs.     Sadly, parts in Canada are expensive....even though the US is right next door. I used to live in Windsor (next to Detroit), and was able to get parts from Michigan easily...so a trip to VitruaPin would have been a drive away....now I live in the colder part of Canada....  

 

Show us your lights when your done! Gotta show off DOFLinx somehow!

[gigalula]

Beleive me i'm at 1 hour north in car from montreal and it's not better it's cold too

[TerryRed]

I'm across the river from Quebec, in Pembroke, Ontario.  I've been to Montreal and St. Jean, and I feel the cold coming our way.  I gotta try to find some places with real Pinball in Ottawa the next time I'm there. I got some parts at Pinball Medics once, and he has a basement full of Pinball machines....but I was taking my daughter to Comi-Con that day....so I sadly didn't get the tour.....  

 

Maybe when I'm in Kingston for a course in January (for 4 months) I can find my way to Barcadia!

 

 

On the build.... I do love when I see a cabinet like DDH69's that looks super clean inside and very tidy. I have WAY too much stuff inside of mine (pinball and arcade, gamepads, 4 speakers, blower fan, etc) to make it look like that. Simple little things like terminal strips and connector ends make such a big difference. With what I can usually find around here, I tend to resort to soldering way too much stuff together.  I think the first time is always the hardest when building a cabinet.  Last year, I barely knew anything about pinball beyond just playing it years ago in arcades. If I were to build a normal pincab, I think the 2nd time would be much easier.

 

Do you have a thread for your MAME cabinets DDH69?

Edited by TerryRed, 27 September 2016 - 05:32 PM.

[DDH69]

.......

 

Do you have a thread for your MAME cabinets DDH69?

 

As a matter of fact ......