Pinball Cabinet Rebuild

[AcadDude]

I have finally gotten all the shop work done and now can get the electronics wired up. Legs are bolted on. Coin door is bolted on also. I like the wood grain on the Oak lockdown plank. Sides show a little grain but mostly really dark. All the buttons for the cabinet are in. I need to get the buttons for the backglass cabinet ordered. I thought I had some but can't find them.

I have a power supply to run the fans and lighting. I screwed blocking around it to hold it in. The fans run off the fan power plugs on the power supply (I think they are 5 volt?) and the lights run off 5 volt power also. 12 volt will melt the buttons I have with incandescent bulbs. I have 5 volt LED's that I like. They are warm white for the top buttons. Bright white are ok for the front and sides of the cabinet but too bright for the top buttons. I don't have the little white buttons lit up. I may look at backlighting them from underneath but the bulbs in them are way too bright for me. I got the plunger in and the VirtuaPin controller installed.

Here are a couple pictures from inside looking at the back of the coin door. I have some flex tubbing to tidy up the wires but have not done so yet. When I get the switches wired up I will clean up and tack down the wires. The second one down shows the plunger, flipper, trackball and buttons. It gets a little crowded in that corner but I test fitted the buttons on a scrap setup so no surprises. When you layout the buttons be sure to look at leaving room for the switches.

Let there be lights! Lights are hard for me to get a good picture of. Trackball is actually green like the button on the front. I drilled a few holes in the bottom of the trackball case. One for the LED light and two others to run zipties through to hold the light in place.

 

[AcadDude]

Time for PC and Sound. First I need power. I drilled a 1 3/8" hole in the bottom of the cabinet to pass the power strip plug through. I then used a strap to attach it securely to the inside of the cabinet. I am using a "Green" power strip. I plug the PC into the Master plug. If I turn off the PC the rest of the system powers off. The 50" TV monitor is powered on always. It does a weird flicker on off when powered on using the green plugs so I use the always on and it works fine. Maybe there is a capacitor that needs to be powered up before it can start? The TV has a remote to power on and off but also has a power switch on the bottom that I drilled a small hole in the side of the cabinet to access if I ever lose the remote. I use an 80 watt Logitech speaker system with Subwoofer. Way more power than I need but, what are ya gonna do?

This picture shows the wiring tubing I used to tidy up the loose wires. I plugged in the usb cables for the trackball and plunger/accelerometer. I had to disconnect the trackball controller from the trackball case and drop it down inside the cabinet so the USB cable would reach. My PC has all the USB outlets on the back as powered always. The ones on the front turn off when the PC is off. I want to use the front ones so I needed a little longer run. The KeyWiz controller has a PS/2 connector.

The left block is for the 5 volt lighting power. The next strip is the ground wiring for the switches. I chose to run a ground from the KeyWiz to the ground strip and wire each switches ground to the ground bar. Then I ran short jumper wires from the KeyWiz to the connector bar.

I spliced a wire to each side of the PC's power switch. I will run this up to a switch in the side of the upper backglass cabinet. This will let me turn on the PC from the outside of the cabinet.
I will add some blocking to hold the PC and Subwoofer in place. My first build I didn't tie these down and the PC would walk around a little over time.

The wiring is by far the most tedious part of the build. Take time to route the wiring in groups. Makes it easier to band them together or run them in a loom.

Not much left. I need to clean the 50" TV monitor and clean and install the playfield glass. Then I will get the backglass cabinet back together with new buttons for volume and PC power on button.

 

[AcadDude]

Getting real close to done. We hit playable tonight!

Most of the wiring is ready. I was a little short of the plastic loom to cleanup the wiring. I used almost 100 feet of double strand doorbell wire. Set TV monitor in, then attached the glass support trim. I used a small piece of the aluminum channel to check the spacing as added the screws. I painted the screw heads black but they don't show when I eventually add the aluminum angle trim.

Cleaned the monitor screen. I cleaned the glass and set it in. The cabinet was a little racked so I raised a leg foot up and using the glass to determine square.

Then I set the backglass cabinet in place. I added three buttons it for Power ON and Volume up and down. I had to add 1/4" plywood shims to the bottom to raise a smidge because of the DMD support extending down a little. It would have been setting right on the glass if I didn't add the shims. As you can see in the picture I have a few wires to clean up.

I attached the speakers with L-Brackets and small screws. Then I set the backglass monitor in place and screwed a 3/4" plywood board behind it to hold monitor in place.

 

[AcadDude]

I then turned on the PC and tested all the buttons and tweaked a few settings and started up Steam to play some Pinball. We are in business. Just need some wire cleanup and some aluminum angle installed. I will get my wife to make some images printed from vinyl for the buttons. I think arrows for the Volume up and down buttons. I might get a few decals from her also for the sides

 

[Jeff Strong]

Nicely done!

 

[AcadDude]

Here are a few pictures of the two Steam Pinball games I play in Cabinet Modes. Time to do math. Depending on where the monitors are set in Windows depends on how all the values adjust. There are plenty of threads that explain this relationship but until you have to play the over under game on pixel math you are in for a treat. Once I could see what my values were doing and realized that sometimes they were negative numbers I was in business. I use both TPA and FX3 cabinet modes. They were similar in that you had to input values for positioning and sizes. The FX3 configuration was in the game though. It was quicker to see the results of changed values when positioning. For me it the toughest to find values for was the DMD positioning because my DMD monitor is covered slightly on each side. Even the Pics below needed a little tweaking to get the "B" to show in "BALL 3" fully on the DMD. Good news though. Set this all up once and never set it up again. Well until the software developer decides to reset it for us! TPA did it to me a couple times on updates. It is a good idea to write these values down if/when they get reset to default.

Here is my windows monitor positioning.

Monitor 2 is backglass monitor. It is set to Landscape 1920x1080
Monitor 3 is DMD monitor. It is set to Landscape 1366x768
Monitor 1 is the playfield monitor. It is set to Portrait (flipped) 2160x3840


For TPA Arcooda settings I use this

Playfield Coordinates
Left: 34 Top: 40
Width: 2110 Height: 3840
Backglass Coordinates
Left: 0 Top: -1828
Width: 1900 Height: 1060
DMD Coordinates
Left: 100 Top: -600
Width: 1140 Height: 500

So notice the math for Backglass Top is negative of height of monitor 2 (1080) plus monitor 3 (768) minus slight positioning (20)
Not sure why I need slight positioning but it gets the backglass right for me.

Pinball Arcade Arcooda with 3 monitor setup.

For Zen FX3 settings I use this

Dot Matrix Horizontal Position
105
Dot Matrix Vertical Position
-600
Dot Matrix Horizontal Size
1150
Dot Matrix Vertical Size
300
Backglass Horizontal Position
0
Backglass Vertical Position
-1856
Backglass Horizontal Size
1920
Backglass Vertical Size
1080

Here again the math for backglass to me should be 1848 but something is off by 18 this time. Maybe a taskbar thing? I use hide taskbar and not showing on other monitors than primary.

Zen Pinball FX3 with three monitor setup.

 

[vfpcoder]

This was a great thread!

Thanks for sharing!!

 

[AcadDude]

It's been a long thread but I think I am done with the rebuild. I got the stickers for the backglass cabinet buttons on and swapped out the white led's for purple ones.

Then I got the siderails fitted up and painted. I took an aluminum angle and hammered the front corner down a little to help fill the gap where the wood is rounded. I then sanded then corners to be softer edges and painted them red. I figured I needed a little accent color. I think as I add decals to the sides it will liven up the dark cabinet some. Here are some pictures of the angle before painting and after attachment.

I almost just went with a silver or chrome paint but I am not skilled enough to lay a thin and even enough coat to get chrome to work. I guess I could hire it out if I want to switch out the rails.

I made sure I measured the mounting holes to avoid the screw heads that hold on the glass support ledge. I used black automotive pan head screws from the hardware store.

And here we have it. 3 weeks of rework, but worth it!

Almost forgot a picture from the back. Just open like a film set. It would not hurt to put a thin backing on. I would drill a few vent slots at the top for some ventilation.

 

[shutyertrap]

So best guesstimate at cost?

 

[AcadDude]

So best guesstimate at cost?

Probably $3500-$4000 range

 

[shutyertrap]

Yowza. Plus time and tools used to build.