30 replies to this topic

[Vanlon]

Finally after 2.5 years of messing around with this cabinet it's done (by done I mean I'm sure there's more).  It's been a lot of fun to build and this forum has been a great resource to get it all done.  Did a lot of 3D printing on it, didn't own a printer before I got into this cabinet so spent quite a few hours learning and having fun with that.  I counted an there are over 100 individually 3D printed parts.  Took all the skills I had and had to learn a few more to get it done.  I did a few things different so I'll post about how I did them as I got a lot of this from everyone else's posts.  I think a few things turned out really well in regards to printing like my speaker panel holder and knocker bar brackets so I'll post those on Thingiverse.  Thanks to everyone in the community who made this possible, and my awesome Wife.

 

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Software

 

So instead of posting the build specs which are readily available here is a list of the software used to make this happen.

 

CorelDraw - I used this for designing the cabinet files for the wood which I sent to get CNC cut. My go to for 20+ years for anything 2D.  Also used this for making my decal templates to get the dimensions right and then moved that over to Photoshop.  Cost money but I personally can't live with out this software, there are free vector based designers out there.

 

Photoshop - I used for the decal design, it's pretty much the gold standard for that.  Though I'm sure Affinity Photo would work just fine and is more cost effective.

 

Blender - Used this solely for the cannon and fire picture on the side of the backbox.  Lot of learning for just one element, downloaded a 3D model of a cannon, got a top down view of that.  Then generated an animation of a fire which you can tweak for shape, color, smoke, etc. paused that and took the image and attached it to the front of the cannon.  Then took it all back to Photoshop to add the boat and the water.  Pretty cool open source software but I'm sure there were blisters on my brain when that part was done.

 

Sketchup - Great place to learn 3D design, easy to use and there are a lot of online tutorials, and it's free.  As my designs got more complicated though it became very difficult to keep the surfaces from breaking and had to move on to learning Fusion360.

 

Fusion360 - Just an amazing piece of software for 3D design, if programs were measured in Horse Power this would be a rocket ship.  Lots of good tutorials online and it's free for makers.  Had to move to this for the final versions of the topper and flasher cannons.  Little daunting to start on probably get your feet wet on Sketchup if this is your first rodeo.

 

Simplify3D - Slicing software for my 3D printer.  Had to pay for this one as the free ones didn't work with the first weird printer I bought (love my new Creality printer).  Cura or Slic3r are free and work just as well.

 

Shotcut - Free open source software I used for creating topper videos.  Used animated loops and then overlayed a logo on another layer.  Pretty good to work with.

 

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3D Printed Parts and How To's

 

Speaker Panel Retainer

 

Contactor Bar Supports

 

Hidden Speaker Panel Fan

 

Multi Function Power Button

 

5 Cannon Flasher Bar

 

Coin Door Button Supports

 

Service Button Support w/Volume

 

Speaker Panel

 

Topper Cannon

 

Playfield Support

 

Round Topper Video Download

 

Google Drive

 

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Here's the link to the image album https://vanlon.imgbb.com/ or click them one by one.

 

The Outside

 

 

 

The Artwork

 

 

The Cannons

 

 

 

The Apron

 

 

 

Video Overview

 

https://youtu.be/gRAjsjIu1zI

 

Lower Cabinet Wiring

 

 

Backbox Wiring

 

Edited by Vanlon, 21 November 2021 - 05:58 PM.

[cdvaight]

Amazing!!! You are an artist.

[Slydog43]

That is totally cool.  One of the best builds if not the best I have seen.

 

As soon as my next pinball machine is sold, I'm going to start a Widebody build to go along with my standard, 4 Bartops, PinStubby, and MicroPin.  Getting out of hand   I think I will steal a few ideas from you

Edited by Slydog43, 29 May 2020 - 02:27 AM.

[chokeee]

Where did u get that round topper screen?

[Vanlon]

Where did u get that round topper screen?

That was a wake up at 4am with an idea thing and scour the internet until I found it, think I had it ordered by 10am.  Alibaba is your friend on that one.

 

Thin 5 Inch 1080x1080 screen with driver board

 

Those guys were great to deal with, had it in my hands in four days I think.

 

Guess if anyone else wants to do this we'll have to come up with a round topper video repository somewhere.

[watacaractr]

Wow! Great job! Amazing attention to detail and organization.

[robertms]

Congrats @vanlon, that is pro-grade craftsmanship. Beautiful, timeless theme carried out successfully throughout the entire build, some really great original ideas, impressive work! What is the blue material you used for your 3D printing?

[coreduo0099]

Blown away.. not only is the artwork part of the table amazing, but the technical and electrical aspects are amazing as well.

 

Incredible Job!

[Vanlon]

Congrats @vanlon, that is pro-grade craftsmanship. Beautiful, timeless theme carried out successfully throughout the entire build, some really great original ideas, impressive work! What is the blue material you used for your 3D printing?

Thank you. It's PTEG, I used it for pretty much everything. PLA prints nice but it's too brittle to provide any structure or handle screws.

Sent from my MI 9 using Tapatalk

[Vanlon]

Speaker Panel Retainer

 

This is the 3D printed speaker panel retainer I designed.  Must be printed out of PTEG for flexibility.  You also need a rear door on your backbox for this to work.  Get the files on Thingiverse

 

Edited by Vanlon, 01 June 2020 - 02:47 PM.

[Vanlon]

Removable Contactor Supports

 

Work great for holding your contactors in the right place and getting them out of the way with relative ease.

 

Thingiverse Files

Uses PTEG for all your printing, PLA is too brittle

 

I used 2" square thin wall aluminum tubing from my local metal supplier, up here we have Metal Supermarkets, great place to go, I imagine there are stores like that everywhere.

 

I ran all the wiring through the tube to keep everything clean.

 

Embedded plugs for quick release.

Edited by Vanlon, 01 June 2020 - 02:48 PM.

[robertms]

Thanks for sharing these files. What brand of PETG did you use and at what temp/retraction? I would imagine the aluminum tubing helps the contactor sound better but aren't the plastic brackets isolating the feedback too much?

[Vanlon]

Thanks for sharing these files. What brand of PETG did you use and at what temp/retraction? I would imagine the aluminum tubing helps the contactor sound better but aren't the plastic brackets isolating the feedback too much?

I got my PTEG from a local supplier Rep Rap Warehouse, so settings will vary on whatever you are going to get.  This one I used 245 on the extrusion, 60 bed temp, 4mm/s retraction (bowden)

 

Seems to work good, brackets are pretty solid and I have the bars cut the exact length with no side end play.

 

Funny side note, I've had your wiring pictures on my PC and used them as a reference the whole way through.  My bars if you notice look similar to yours too. Got the pics from Zeb's site years ago, never knew who's they were until now.  Nice job.

[robertms]

 

Funny side note, I've had your wiring pictures on my PC and used them as a reference the whole way through.  My bars if you notice look similar to yours too. Got the pics from Zeb's site years ago, never knew who's they were until now.  Nice job.

 

 

Ha ha, I thought that design looked familiar. Way to improve on it. Wish I had access to a 3D printer back in 2015 

[Vanlon]

Hidden Speaker Panel Fan

 

This was a bit of a toss up between putting a fan here or a Kinect, fan won the debate.

 

I used a 15 inch fireplace blower fan readily available on Amazon. 

 

Thingiverse Files

 

Edited by Vanlon, 02 June 2020 - 02:54 AM.

[Vanlon]

5 Cannon Flasher Bar

 

Watch a few tutorials on YouTube and you'll be rolling with 3D design pretty quick, there are some good instructors out there.  I did it the first time in Sketchup but I printed the first one a year and half before I got to building the flasher bar so I did the redesign in Fusion 360.  Draw a profile you like and the rotate tool is your friend here.

 

 

Off to the 3D printer with our file.  Did these ones in PLA but would not recommend, use PTEG, sands easier and handles screws better.  PLA likes to crack when you run a screw into it.  The small parts were a bit of a pain, hard to get everything to stick that small. Actually with all these little parts I can say there are over 100 individual 3D parts in my build.

 

 

Off to the paint booth.  I painted the cannon metal with Tremclad Hammered Metal spray bomb.  Doesn't hurt to spray it down with a coat of primer first.  For the frames I went down to Michael's and picked up an acrylic paint set with way more colors than I'll ever need.  Start slapping on strokes of paint til it looks good.  Use a red brown primer under this.

 

 

I used 1" x 30mm aluminum slugs for the heat sinks.  Got these from my favorite metal shop, they cut them to length for me, about 5 bucks for all of them including the cuts.  Stuck the LED's down with some thermal transfer tape.  For the wiring portion I used Zeb's boards for this so it comes with a board you wire all your flashers to and then connect to the main board later.  I printed a slot and a hole in the bottom side of the cannon to handle the wire.

 

 

For the lenses I headed on over to Marco Specialties and grabbed a handful of 1.5 Inch frosted starburst playfield inserts.  The wood grain I used some Walnut grain sticker material I got from Amazon.

 

Finished product, this was certainly one of my favorite parts of the build.

 

 

[Vanlon]

Speaker Panel

 

The speaker panel has a few 3D printed elements including the speaker grilles, fan grille and DMD surround.

 

The Speaker grilles were the first Cannon that I made and installed on the table.  They were too large to print in one shot on my little printer so I had to use a 3D pen to weld the parts together.  Did the same on the fan grille and DMD surround.  Worked pretty good, like a mini MIG welder.

 

Getting it ready for paint I used spackle first and then primer and sanded it smooth.  Did this before I figured out high build primer which works way better.

 

Used acrylic paint for the wood and a shot of Tremclad Hammered Metal for the Cannon part.  Give the Acrylic a shot of clear coat after to seal everything up.  The actual grille part I used 140mm computer fan filters.

 

The actual speaker panel I drew in CorelDraw and then found a local plastics manufacturer who cut it out.  He had a laser table but just used a CNC and it worked great.  Then I made up a sticker that looked like wood planks and had it printed at a graphics printer.  Small grilles are 2way taped on and the speaker grilles I designed in a few studs on the back that I could screw into from the back side of the panel.

Edited by Vanlon, 04 April 2021 - 11:10 PM.

[Vanlon]

Topper Cannon

 

Now for one of my favourite parts of the build.  One of those wake up in the middle of the night and wonder if they have screens like that.  After a couple hours of trolling Alibaba I had one ordered.  Found the drawing of it and started designing.  Search term for Alibaba is "1080 5 round screen".  Should get you a 1080*1080 5 Inch round screen, get one with the HDMI driver board included.  Here's the supplier I got mine from, shipped really quick.  Alibaba Link

 

Next on to the design, this took me a while but it was fun.   Used Fusion 360 and a bunch of Youtube videos to get the job done.  Lot of trial and error and test prints to get the front ring to fit on the screen proper.

 

 

Making the prints took a while, as with all things you don't just print it once, you print a couple garbage ones first.  I think all totalled up this cannon would have take 40 hours of printing in one shot.  You can find the STL files here:

Cannon Topper STL Files

If you're going to print one, please post a picture of your finished painted cannon in this thread, would like to see it.

 

 

All the parts ready to go for assembly.

 

Here's how I designed in a holder for the driver to sit inside.  Made a slot in the bottom to allow access for plugging the cords in.

 

 

Had to test everything before I printed it (also I really wanted to try it out)  Those rings are jewellery box pull rings I got off amazon.

 

 

Off to the paint booth!  Haven't done stuff like this since Art 10 in school.  The Cannon was first covered in spackle and sanded.  Next I used high build primer and sanded some more to get all the layer lines out. Once smooth it was spray painted with Tremclad Hammered black paint.  Gave it a real cast iron look. I also sprayed the wheels, clamps and screw heads with the Tremclad paint.

 

The base I primed with a red oxide primer to get in the right colour range.  Then I used acrylic paint, blended up many shades of brown and layered it up unit it looked like wood.  Once it all dried I covered it with a clear coat.  Don't get to excited and put it together before it drys like I did, give it a day.

 

The glamor shots

    

 

YouTube

 

Install worked out well in the end, I designed in a few holes in the bottom to allow for screws.  Drilled a hole in the top of the back box for the cables and screwed it in from the underside.

 

I used a free program called ShotCut to make the videos for it.  Pretty easy to use, you find an animation loop and overlay a logo on it.  Makes a pretty simple looping video.  Here are some early testing videos.

Screen Test 1

Screen Test 2

 

Video's I've made to date here

Edited by Vanlon, 23 September 2021 - 01:22 AM.

[wrd1972]

Major bad-assery going on here folks!

[brad1x]

That is awesome - incredible job, I love that the speakers are connons.