Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter

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Laythe:
We're getting into the home stretch now. I got the red paint on the side skirts to a point where I'm content with it.

Then, I marked up that aluminum angle that I'm making fake side rails out of, and got the exact dimensions transferred from the side skirt onto it. Trimmed it roughly to length with the bandsaw, then milled the exact 6' matching face that makes up for my inclined playfield.

I set up a stack of angle blocks on the vise to equal 6', then just pushed the aluminum angle against that when I grabbed it in the machining vise, like so:

The side skirts are basically a parallelogram, mostly, less some clipped corners to make room for rotation. The 6' angles align nicely, here's the resulting fit:

I put a little carbide burr in my dremel and just went to town roughing up the inside surfaces of the angle. (For those of you who get the Joy Division reference in my resulting pattern, bravo!)

This, I figure, should give the construction adhesive something to hang on to.

I filled it with glue, and clamped it together.

While the glue was setting, I applied some clear mylar pinball flipper button protectors under the buttons. They show a little, when the light is just right, but I figure they'll slow down me wearing through the paint in this area over the years to come. Here's as much as I can make them show in reflected light.

Finally, when the glue dried, it was time to reassemble everything.

It now looks done. It isn't done, but it looks done.

Now you can see my starting design idea. I wanted the BRIGHT BRIGHT RED to trick the eye into visually completing the shape of a pinball cabinet over all the weird stuff that lives tucked in underneath that. I think it works - you wouldn't ever mistake it for a real pinball table, but it clearly indicates what I was going for with all of this. The illusion would work better if the skirts could be taller, but this is the absolute upper limit that still clears the internals when it rotates.

It may not be authentic, but I think it's cool - and that's the next best thing.

Still to do: Build limit switch brackets and wire them, so that the machine can tell what configuration it's in, and so that I can script the full transform sequence safely. I'm going to program it with both timeouts and expected results - it'll try to push the table out for, say, 4 seconds, and if it does NOT see the limit switch trip indicating that the control panel is fully extended, then it'll halt and throw an error on the DMD, instead of blindly spinning the table into a physical crash.

I'm going to wire these up in a neat way. I'm using keystrokes on the Ultimate I/O board, and obviously holding keys for the limit switches ALL THE TIME would raise all kinds of trouble while booting the machine with "stuck keys" and in all other games and so on. How to work around that? Well, the UI/O detects switch inputs based on the input pin going to ground. All your switches normally have a common ground, and when the switch is on, that's grounding the corresponding input. The UI/O lighting controller works on a common +5v rail and switches grounds to light the LEDs. This means if you wire the limit switches to a lighting controller pin and the input signal pin, instead of common ground and the input signal pin, then the switches are effectively enabled by turning that light on. Light off = lighting pin floating = closing switch contacts leaves the input signal pins floating. Light on = lighting pin grounded = closing switch contacts grounds the input signal pins. So that one lighting controller pin becomes "Switches Active Enable", I can do that in my front end software whenever I need to know what their status is, and I can leave it off during boot, while playing games, or any other time that those keys being depressed continuously would cause problems. Cute, eh?

Additional funny detail: It turns out that if the throttle is all the way forward, it leans forward toward the screen enough that it could crash the rotating playfield as it swings by. But, I can read the throttle's position in my software! So I'm just going to write another check there, such that when you select the other game mode, if the throttle is too far forward, it prompts you with a big flashing "THROTTLE DOWN TO INITIATE TRANSFORMATION" message, and then delays until you comply into the safe area of throttle travel.

I'll have fun with the graphics for that. I also thought of another randomly selected transform noise it should make - the Robotech/Macross VF-1 Valkyrie transform noise should be in the pool as well. (grin)

bobbyb13:
You are absolutely right on your thought with the screaming RED.
It pulls your eye into thinking pinball before you consider what else is going on.

I would argue that since what you have created is a hybrid that didn't previously exist it is authentic in its own right.

Sheer awesomeness of this build continues-

And yes! ...it speaks of Unknown Pleasures

ditchdoc68:
I just started following this project a couple of weeks ago and all i can say is "WOW!" :applaud: :notworthy:
I'm working on my first ever arcade project (from a prebuilt cab :-\) and it's threads like this that give me inspiration to build my own from scratch someday. Keep up the amazing work!

J_K_M_A_N:

--- Quote from: Laythe on October 20, 2020, 01:13:56 am ---It now looks done. It isn't done, but it looks done.

--- End quote ---

:laugh2:

Looks awesome as hell! I love all the cool little ideas you have to cover possible problems. Very creative.

J_K_M_A_N

bperkins01:
Great work on this - if you are REALLY concerned about physical switches.. take a look at hall effect sensors.
trigger of magnetism and may be more reliable. If you are using Arduino for some of the movement - you can use it as a positioning sensor.
Not sure if it's a fit - but figured I'd mention it since you are using 'seconds' as a timeout and obviously concerned.
:applaud:

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