286 replies to this topic

[nebrunner]

Nice one with the strobes on either side, and putting art over the top. I may have to steal that idea from you

[antropus]

Gamester,
thank you so much! What made me build this one was the inspiration from other amazing projects I've seen here, so I'm glad mine can somehow do the same to other people!

faralos,
yes! My lady is very understanding and she is gorgeous too, making me a very lucky man
Those posters are "Mondo" posters. Those guys create AMAZING artwork using retro-style. They are limited editions, but you can find them on ebay.
For example: http://www.ebay.com/...=item2a28b1cb8e

They are much cheaper right after release, but the price goes up as they get more rare. I think this one is a 250 copies edition.

Here's their website: http://www.mondoarch...m/archive/2013/

They are INCREDIBLE prints, really vivid colors and really perfectly printed.

nebrunner,
feel free! The lexan cuts really easily and it looks good.

-Kris

[kruge99]

Wow! lots of great looking pictures. 

[antropus]

Thank you kruge99! Working on the electrical side of things now. Got the general power on/off button/outlet installed in the back, plugged to the Belkin Energy Saving Outlet inside. Looks pro! It turns the whole cabinet on/off for good, but the power on button (to power the computer) is yet to be installed under the machine.
I also got the RGBs aluminum internal bar assembled and will probably do the soldering tonight. Wish me luck...

-Kris

[antropus]

No pictures yet (soon), but I'm making a TON of progress on the electrical side:

 

Done so far:

- back completely up and running: all fans wired and working, fused power connector+main on/off button installed and working.

- complete mounted motherboard drawer

- TVs mounted and working

- back box glass assembly done, with working lock/key

- all push buttons+lights installed and connected to the iPac/Ledwiz/Zeb booster board combo

- sound up and running

- slingshot and flipper contactors working. I'll tweak the flipper ones to make a slightly different sound from the slingshot ones, by adding a metal washer to the inner bottom of the contactor

- RGB/strobe lights assembly done, but some of my RGBs are defective (no red in one of them and one is completely dead), so I'm waiting for the replacement ones. I made the aluminum assembly modular by adding two 12-pin molex (4-pin per RGB + strobe)

- Plasma DMD mounted and waiting for the 80v transformer before I can test it.

- Most wire clutter is organized now and the inner front side of the machine looks pretty neat

- the new knocker ROCKS!!!! I thought 32v would not be enough for a good knock, but man was I wrong! The knock is pretty damn loud! (managed to wake up my son sleeping upstairs yesterday night, so, big success )

 

To do list:

- replace the defective RGBs. I'll actually replace all of them, using 4-wire instead of 6-wire ones, so no need for ugly daisy chain soldering

- I'm designing some custom pop bumpers using my current 24v contactors. I actually bought some pop bumper assembly parts and will modify the contactors to use the same metal parts of an actual pinball, hoping to get some sweet metallic sounds out of it!

- need to wire the under the cabinet on/off button to the motherboard

- need to build a base, paint, assemble and Install the shaker and the wiper motors

- assemble the cables and transformer connections to power the plasma DMD (still 3 weeks left or so before I receive my 80v transformer)

- install the play field glass (ready in 2 days or so)

- print all internal and external labels just for fun

- artwork for cabinet, back box and RGB/strobe bar

- download and configure more tables

 

I started collecting the parts for this project in the beginning of January and got the raw cabinet/box about a month ago. I've been working on this almost everyday since and I'm very happy with the results so far. I think I can get the whole thing done in a month or so (no artwork plan for now) if everything goes according to the plan, making this a fun 3-month project where I had to learn a lot just about everything.

 

To create something like this in such short period of time wouldn't be possible without the contribution of Noah, Zeb and Mameman. Their products helped me to speed up the process considerably, specially the wiring side of things!

 

I'll post some pics over the weekend. Stay tuned.

-Kris

[Nemo]

Cool ! Can't wait for those pictures, especially when you're making such progress !

[antropus]

Here's some of the progress on the wiring, shaker+gear motor assembly, back box wiring, my solution for open door sensor using a "v" type micro-switch, back tray, knocker, Zeb's AWESOME booster boards etc etc etc.
The RGB bar is basically done as well, but I'll be replacing two defective RGBs this week, before I can install it and run a video demo with all the stuff that is already working.

Behind the speaker panel: DMD power board mounted, 12v, 5v, ground ready, DMD interface cable assembled and pinDMD2 waiting as well. Only thing left is the 80v transformer I'm waiting to build the remaining connector with the high voltages. I'll be adding an acrylic cover for the DMD power board and some nice sticker about the high voltages, no doubt:




Back main on/off installed and working:


Back of the cabinet with custom sticker applied:


Knocker installed and it sounds LOUD! Love it


Back tray:


Tray out:




The next three pics show the open door micro-switch in action. I still need to add another spacer to keep it in place, although it doesn't move the way it is, but over time it might:






Wiring porn. I still need to cleanup some more, but it's very good to have all this open space. I might add a coin box, dunno:






Zeb's speed control board, shaker and gear motors. I assembled them in a more compact way. I built my own base and used a baseball display acrylic box to fully enclose the shaker and painted the base and the gear motor according to the rest of the machine's color scheme:




Things already working:
Knocker
Gear motor
Shaker motor
Flipper and Slingshot contactors
Fully wired and functional coin door, including open door switch, slam, coin mechanisms, 4 buttons
Push buttons + LEDs
Main and under the cabinet on/off swithes
Sound System

In terms of wiring, there are only a few things left:
- wire the 4 remaining contactors used on the top playfield. I'm modifying them to add metal sounds by using real pop bumper parts. Lets hope it will work.
- wire/install the mercury switches I just got
- replace the defective RGBs
- wire the 80v and the 100v transformers to the DMD power board so I can finally fire up my real plasma DMD (still waiting on the 80v transformer, probably for another 2-3 weeks...)
- Do some more wiring cleanup, mostly on the power cords section.

I'm also printing a bunch of stickers right now (thanks chriz99 for the Williams ones!).

I think I'm about 90-95% done on the cabinet now (not counting artwork).

-Kris

Attached Files

•  pinballwip3-16.JPG   62.03KB   1090 downloads
•  pinballwip3-15.JPG   51.08KB   1066 downloads
•  pinballwip3-14.JPG   47.29KB   595 downloads
•  pinballwip3-13.JPG   55.6KB   601 downloads
•  pinballwip3-12.JPG   39.23KB   597 downloads
•  pinballwip3-11.JPG   54.7KB   580 downloads
•  pinballwip3-10.JPG   59.59KB   593 downloads
•  pinballwip3-9.JPG   57.75KB   600 downloads
•  pinballwip3-8.JPG   63.92KB   595 downloads
•  pinballwip3-7.JPG   61.7KB   589 downloads
•  pinballwip3-6.JPG   62.85KB   586 downloads
•  pinballwip3-5.JPG   82.67KB   625 downloads
•  pinballwip3-4.JPG   54.41KB   608 downloads
•  pinballwip3-3.JPG   72.07KB   592 downloads
•  pinballwip3-2.JPG   54.26KB   581 downloads
•  pinballwip3-1.JPG   51.8KB   577 downloads

Edited by antropus, 04 March 2013 - 11:34 AM.

[kruge99]

This has the feel of an antique car resto project. 

[chriz]

awesome work! love your open door micro-switch

[Gamester]

Fantastic work Kris!  You've definitely been a busy man!

 

Quick question: where did you get that tray your PC components are mounted in?  Didn't see it in your parts list.  Sorry if it was somewhere else in the thread and i missed it.

[antropus]

Thank you so much guys and wow! What an honor having the legendary chriz here! Your projects really inspired me. Thank you so much!!!

The micro-switch works great. Never missed a click till now

 

Gamester, the red tray is a leftover Ikea bookshelf door we had in a closet (I still have another one). My wife didn't like the color so I decided to use it in my machine

To keep the graphics card in place I got one of these:

 

 iopanel.jpg   50.64KB   29 downloads

http://www.mountainm...anel-p-486.html

 

It's a 22.00 bucks back I/O panel, so you don't need to get a whole cabinet or mount the card using other methods. It's a pretty cool little piece and the mobo+NVidia combo feels solid using this little panel.

 

-Kris

Edited by antropus, 04 March 2013 - 05:53 PM.

[Gamester]

Thanks Kris, that IO panel is EXACTLY what I need!  cheers

[Nemo]

As you stated before: Pure Porn ! This pin just oozes quality, you and your family are gonna love this one ! Great build !

[Gamester]

One more question for ya Kris...do you by chance have the de-cased dimensions of your playfield display by chance?  I have the same TV but I'm not ready to de-case yet, and it would be helpful to know the dimensions for planning my shell construction.

[antropus]

Not from the top of my head, but I can slide it out, measure and give you a precise number when I get home tonight. The de-cased thickness if you are going to router is half an inch... very thin.

 

-Kris

[Gamester]

Thanks Kris.  The width of the TV (in relation to cab width) is what I'm most interested in, so hopefully you'll only have to slide it out a little to get that measurement.  

 

I'm pondering the idea of building the cab wide enough so I can build a hinge mechanism to raise the playfield, rather than slotting.  Given the small bezel on this TV, I suspect it won't require much extra width to accommodate that, but I don't know yet.  Obviously that approach precludes me from having an edge-to-edge playfield, so I have to decide which is more important to me, easy access to the internals or the minor aesthetic improvement of a bezel-less implementation.

[antropus]

22" 3/4 for the image itself + half an inch on each side (decased bezel thickness). Total: 23" 3/4 decased.

You know, I thought about it for a while, but I decided to route the sides to make sure I'm working with "official" dimensions, so I can actually use wide body parts instead if depending on custom made stuff. It's your call though. If you want functionality over aesthetic, I say go custom. Otherwise I would stick with the wide body dimensions. Mine is an exact wide body and it feels kinda too wide already!

-Kris

[Gamester]

Thanks Kris!

 

So, re: going wider than the 'official' size....is there something else custom that would be required other than the lockdown bar that I'm not thinking of?

 

And I hear you on concern about being too wide from a play-ability standpoint.  That's an important consideration.

[antropus]

You are right, other than the lockdown bar, the back playfield glass plastic holder and the playfield glass itself, everything else should be ok. Same goes if you want to make a custom wider backbox: H channel, lift channel and top frames would have some considerable gap, depending on how wide you go.
When the machine is off, my Monster Bash looks dwarfed by it, not sure if it's because it's painted white, but it looks pretty big the way it is, so I couldn't imagine going wider!

-Kris

Edited by antropus, 06 March 2013 - 05:38 PM.

[Gamester]

Ah, yes, all good points.  D'oh, I can't believe I didn't think about the playfield glass.  

 

Yeah, it's sounding like slotting is in my future as well.  I guess the accessibility factor is probably mostly important in the early stages of the build anyway.  Once everything is nailed down I expect that access inside that part of the cab won't be necessary much.

 

Thanks again for the info and feedback, Kris.

 

--Scott

Edited by Gamester, 06 March 2013 - 05:59 PM.