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Author Topic: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter  (Read 100918 times)

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Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #360 on: May 20, 2020, 02:17:59 pm »
Skim fill #1 done.


Sanded:



Primer coat 1:



This is, from left to right, the midspan shelf that connects front and rear pinball cabinet together near the axle, which is part of what sets the distance between them and provides some of the strength -  the floor that goes behind the driving pedals, under the power control box - and the back/left wall. 

The primer reveals that these aren't ready for black paint yet - there will be a sanding, a skim coat of fill on top of this, then another coat of primer first. 


wallmachine

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #361 on: May 22, 2020, 01:25:08 am »
The primer reveals that these aren't ready for black paint yet - there will be a sanding, a skim coat of fill on top of this, then another coat of primer first.

I've tried so many hardware store paints primers/fillers etc and still had to do sanding/painting/spray painting etc pain in the arse.

Found this paint and so far I have not needed to prime/sand, just 3 coats minimum of spray paint and smooth as a babies bottom.

See example here

Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #362 on: June 06, 2020, 06:22:56 pm »
As predicted, another sand/skim/sand was needed...

(This is a close up of the floor that goes behind and between the pedals frame, and under the power control box.)



Primer and sand over all of that, and a first coat of black...



I sanded all that and put another coat of black on it. 

Most of these are basically interior surfaces - the back wall is going to be about 3" from a real wall, the other side of it is the end of the driver's footwell, and so on.

I've decided it's okay if those are all B-grade surfaces.  The only one of these that will really show much at all is the top face of the midshelf.
If it's transformed into a sim-pit, and you walk around to the pinball side, you'll be able to see the top of the midshelf behind the flipped up playfield TV. 

Given that, that surface gets a third coat and a mildly obsessive polish, until it reflects light like this:



The rest, though... they don't.  Sorry, Ond, I tried. 


That floor panel butts up against the back wall with big brackets like so:



(This whole thing is laying on it's back in this photo, rotate it all 90' CW in your head.) 

The power box air vent duct in the rear will nose into the cutout in the back wall between the brackets.
The pedal frame will nest down around it, to the depth of those steps you can see in the floor near the brackets.

I'll be putting four thread inserts into the back wall for the brackets to screw into, so that those two pieces remain separable.

I'm altering my plans a bit for the main brackets that attach this rear wall to the front and rear cabinets.

Initially, I was planning this:


using more small brackets of the type the midshelf uses, in order to clear features in the front and back cabinet. 

The more I look at that, though, the less I like it.  I think instead I'm going to buy another pair of the larger brackets, and modify one of them to clip the excess nose off slightly.

If I do that, I'll be able to JUST clear the metal plate in the back cabinet that all the connectors go through, and I think I can still keep both screwholes.

Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #363 on: June 06, 2020, 06:24:18 pm »
I've tried so many hardware store paints primers/fillers etc and still had to do sanding/painting/spray painting etc pain in the arse.

Found this paint and so far I have not needed to prime/sand, just 3 coats minimum of spray paint and smooth as a babies bottom.

See example here

Thanks!  I'm pretty well committed to finishing this project the same way I started it, to keep everything matching, but I appreciate the tip.

Arroyo

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #364 on: June 17, 2020, 01:10:41 pm »
Looks like you're getting pretty good at that painting technique buddy.  Keep moving this thing along, I'm very eager to see the final product!

Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #365 on: June 20, 2020, 05:45:11 pm »
Thanks, Arroyo - both regarding the paintwork, and for the prod of encouragement - it helps. 

The paintjob on the back wall still wasn't good, enough even for a back wall.  Another two sand-and-paint iterations, and now I've got something I'm happy with. 

The lower brackets to the floor are attached via thread inserts so this can be disassembled and reassembled.  The upper brackets now match, those smaller ones previously were not feeling sufficient to me.  The odd vertical positioning is carefully set to miss everything it needs to miss on the front and back cabinet... I hope.   

The short leg of the upper right bracket has been shortened and redrilled, so that it won't quite hit the metal plate carrying the 2x DB25 / 2x DB15 passthrough connectors in the rear cabinet. 

Here's the back wall, sitting in the orientation it goes into the machine in, next to the machine.



There's going to be a full teardown before this can get installed, but I think that will be the final full teardown.  There will be 8 thread inserts, 4 per cabinet, with machine screws through these brackets into those inserts.  The playfield-rotating actuator will mount to the sliding clamp in the middle of this panel.

This will be one of the three bridges that connect the front and rear cabinets.

The second bridge is the midshelf.  For improved sound from the little tripath amplifier and small speakers I'm using, and for a little 80s retro cred, I'm hanging a full size graphic equalizer underneath the midshelf, via six woodscrews up through new holes drilled in the metal case, into the underside of the shelf.

Here is the graphic equalizer as mounted up under the shelf:




The third bridge will be the axle for the TV itself.  It's going to get some holes drilled in it, some inserts made, some screws installed, and flats and divots placed for set screws in the bearing carriers, so that it can also be a tension and compression resisting member and another strut bridging the front and rear cabinets and helping to keep them parallel and square.

I don't think it's going to need the H-shaped floor webbing bars between front and rear cabinet that I initially designed it with, and omitting that will help the chair roll smoothly, as it won't have to jump the metal bars. 


Some of the recent progress doesn't lend itself well to pictures.  Quite a bit of progress on that power control box - I finally got to power up the control panel sliding actuator under software control via the PC, and with me holding the tail of it in place approximately where it belongs, I actually drove the whole control panel in and out a few times under it's own power.  Big moment of glee there.  Seeing it go VRRRT out to deploy and VRRRT back to retract... hee hee yeah, that's gonna be cool and I think that's gonna work. 

After the great disassemble / reassemble, when the back wall gets installed, I'll then be able to find the exact correct location in all three dimensions for the control panel actuator tail mount, and then I can design and build the metal thing on the back wall that puts an anchor at that point in space. 

Still have to build the counterweight arm for the TV, that's moving up towards "next". 

On the software side, I got Sky Rogue running on the thing, with the flightstick and throttle and rudder pedals - that's been a lot of fun.  It's kind of a deeper updated Afterburner. 

Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #366 on: June 22, 2020, 05:56:44 pm »
Minor update; I've ordered a bunch of hardware and fasteners for the counterweights.

I want to make them adjustable so I can fine tune the center of gravity to land exactly on the axle in two axis.  So I'm thinking there's going to be some compact 80/20 rail involved, for the sake of having a slide-adjustable anchor in one axis, then I'll make my own slide-adjustable arms off that base. 

Parts should arrive by the fourth of july, and since pandemic quarantine has wrecked my usual plans for that, I should be able to fabricate instead.

javeryh

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #367 on: June 23, 2020, 09:25:28 am »
You are making great progress on such a complex build.  Putting the rest of us to shame!

bobbyb13

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #368 on: June 24, 2020, 03:56:10 am »
This build rocks.
Building and still getting to engineer as you go is where it's at.

Glad to see the actuator appears to be working as designed!

And of course it would be impossible to overstate the radness of the equalizer-

Bobby
Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools! I can fix it.

Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #369 on: June 25, 2020, 04:42:18 am »
Thanks, javeryh and bobbyb13!

Tonight's update is about metalworking. 

I spent a while designing, and redesigning, and redesigning, the playfield TV counterweight arm.  Arms.

Ideally, they should be adjustable to zero the center of gravity out on the axle centerline, and I'd like it if they didn't hit anything like the midshelf, the TV actuator, the wheel or the flightstick when the TV rotates...

I think I've finally got a design that'll work, so:  Layout!



The whole assembly will slide on some 80/20 rail, 2012 series, 0.5" x 2".  The two rectangles will be the flanges that pick up the T nuts, the arms will go between them.  The cartoon 7 shape is the rear counterweight arm, which will attach to the flange, and carry a plate holding 4 4lb lead weights.  (The front arm I have yet to lay out, it will carry one more 4lb weight.)

Fabrication!

The rear arm is cut out of half inch thick aluminum, and 0.7" on the other axis.  My bandsaw will cut it nicely.



The bandsaw leaves a pretty rough finish, so I use the mill to clean it up and make the part look nice.

Some faces are easy to mill.



This leaves a nice finish. 



Unfortunately, because of the shape of this part, some parts are more difficult to mill...  this is all the room I had on this face...



Some faces I had to get really creative to set up.  This is one of the more... (cough) "creative" lashups I've used, but as you can see from the top face, it worked. 



If it's stupid, and it works...     ... okay, that was still a pretty stupid lashup, I admit it.


There will be a plate carrying 4x 4lb lead weights that will slide on two 1/4-20 screws along the angled segment of this arm.  The screws will go through slots in the arm... so I'd best make some slots in the arm.

Here's the layout:



One slot would have been easier, but it'll be a bit stronger with a web between two slots, one slot per screw.

I'm cutting the slots with a 1/4" endmill.  Because I have to stick the end mill way out to make the reach work with the shape of this part, and because a 1/4" endmill is pretty skinny, I can only comfortably cut about .005" per pass.  This arm is 0.700" thick in this axis...



so that's about 140 passes, or about 70 passes back and forth... or 140 passes back and forth to do both slots.

I'll be doing this for a while.   :)

J_K_M_A_N

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #370 on: June 25, 2020, 07:23:37 am »
I love these updates. So very cool.  :notworthy:

You still need a live cam like the movie, Truman Show. I would buy the Laythe pillow and watch for hours from my couch.  :laugh2:

J_K_M_A_N

Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #371 on: June 28, 2020, 10:41:56 pm »
Thanks, JKMAN.   No can do on the live cam and throw pillow - but to make it up to you, here's another update.   :)

I finished milling the slots in the arm, over the course of about six hours.  These are 1/4" wide, leaving 1/8" of metal on either side of the slot.  0.7" deep; they go all the way through.



One 1/4-20 screw each will go through these, and the length will give me +-1" of adjustment to move the weight carrying plate closer in or farther out.  Loosen the screws to slide it, clamp them down (over washers) into lock nuts to set it in place. 

On the other end, the base of the arm will clamp in T-nuts in 80/20 rail, which is the other axis of adjustment.  The base plates are 4" by 2", mounting with short screws on 1" centers.  Here's the holes...



... and here's the result of radiusing around the holes and cleaning the part up a bit.



These will show, if you look behind the TV, like by standing in the pinball position while it's in simpit mode.  So I figure it's worth the effort to make it look nice, that whole area of the machine is kind of fantasia for billet aluminum anyway, it should blend right in. 

Here's the parts kit:

 

From left to right:  Base plate for the rear arm, base plate for the to-be-fabricated front arm, weight mounting plate, rear arm. 

The arm-to-baseplate screws need to be countersunk, to clear the sliding action of the base on the 80/20 rail.  I countersunk those holes in the baseplate, drilled and tapped the arm to match, and screwed it together.  The weight bracket screws are still overlong, I've got shorter ones coming.  Here's the result with the weights temporarily zip-tied in place through the holes in the plate...

In driving mode, when the monitor is upright, this arm will cantilever back horizontally.



In pinball mode, when the monitor is flat, this arm will hang down vertically. 



The angle and shape of the arm is to dodge the op-rod in the TV tray that the actuator pushes and pulls against.  The angle of the weights is to orient the thinnest axis of the package to (hopefully) knife in between the back wall and the midshelf, if all my calculations are roughly correct.  (If not, well, modify it until it works.)

I hope this is strong enough for the cantilevered loads plus inertial forces on stop and start.  The dimensions were kind of limited by the effort to make it adjustable - any more thickness along the axis that matter would cost me adjustment range.  I -think- it'll work. 

Next steps are probably getting the correct hardware in and installed for all this, priming and painting the lead weights black to encapsulate the lead on general principles, correctly mounting the weights, and then fabricating the rest of the front arm.

Arroyo

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #372 on: June 29, 2020, 12:47:20 am »

Here's the parts kit:

 

I thought for sure that it was Clutch, Brake, & Gas pedals

The metal fabrication I am envious of.  To be able to think up cool ways of doing things that right now seem impossible must be really liberating. 

Well done as always, those parts are super clean.

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #373 on: June 29, 2020, 03:52:48 am »
I wondered where you were headed milling that arm so carefully.
Really nice design.

Clever use of (always so oddly shaped) dive weights gets bonus points!
Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools! I can fix it.

Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #374 on: July 04, 2020, 08:04:23 pm »
My fourth of july plans were of course cancelled - so instead, there shall be consolation progress posting.

I got the 2012 profile 80/20 rail extrusion that will be the rail these counterweight arms slide on. 

It will mount to the back of the TV tray, behind the television, via countersunk hardware from the TV side, installed before the TV goes on over the top.



Here, I'm drilling the rail for the six 1/4-20 countersunk screws that will hold it to the plate.

There is a wrinkle, however.  Recall here the compound 3 degree by 3 degree angle tomfoolery that lets the pinball table be inclined 6 degrees, while the simpit view is dead square and straight. 

This means I really want this rail attached at a 6 degree angle to the plate.  The screws are going into the backside of half-round T nuts inside the extrusion, pulling them down into the bottom of the channel, so that can conform to a degree to pick up the angle.  But, I need some precision shims.

I found a 6" round scrap punchout of 1/4" aluminum sheet, and laid out three 2" squares in it.



Sawed those out on the bandsaw, then milled all four of the edges down to make them nice, square, and parallel. 



I want all three of these to match well, and to have a 6' taper in them from the thick side down.  To do this, I took my set of angle blocks, and laid up the following in my vise:



The big rectangular blocks are the jaws of the vise.  Inside them, you'll see three smaller pieces.  On one side, it's my 4' angle block and my 2' angle block, and on the other side it's my 5' angle block and my 1' angle block, so those both add to 6'.  I'm using a set of parallels on their sides to shim the height up a little - this is bad form, parallels aren't nearly as accurate sideways, so don't do this.  By shimming the height up, I have a visual reference to even with the jaw tops. I can slide the angle blocks along the faces of the vise against each other until the top corners are dead even with the jaw tops. 

When I drop the shims on top of this, this sets the 6' correctly, and if I have the heights set just right, it should be level side to side other than the deliberate tilt.  The vise jaws are clamping parallel flats on opposite sides of the shim, which were already machined, so that grabs nice and solid.

Here's one of the three shims in the vise, on top of that stack.



There's a diagnostic check you can do here, to see if you got the heights right.  The first pass of the mill makes something like this:



If I wasn't level, front to back, the milled area would taper - wider at the near side, if the near lashup was higher, or wider at the far end if the far lashup was higher.  You can loosen the vise up and nudge the stacks around, drop the mill a little deeper, cut another pass, and keep tuning the line until you get something pretty straight like this.

I continue milling these until I -just- touch the left edge, which means I've removed no meaningful height from the 0.250" thick end, and that means I'm consistent in thickness.  Then layout and drill the two screw holes without moving the part in the vise, so I know the holes are very perpendicular to the angled milled face. 

Here's the resulting three precision shims:




These will go on the backside of the rail, between it and the TV tray.  The countersunk heads will be in the tray, then through the shims, then into the backs of the T-nuts in the rail.  The counterweight arms go on the frontside of the rail. 

The resulting assembly:




This shows I should have quite a bit of adjustment to slide the arms along the rail, and both weight packages can be moved nearer or farther out.  Between those four adjustments I hope to be able to zero the center of gravity out onto the centerline of the axle, so the actuator doesn't have to fight gravity lifting the weight of the whole rotating assembly, just inertia to stop or start it.  We'll see how close these adjustments let me get. 

I can't actually mount this thing to the machine yet - there has to be a full teardown to get access to the TV tray for layout and drilling and so on. 

The next great disassemble/reassemble cycle will bring in this, the back wall, the mid shelf, and the floor.  Also possibly the front skirt bracket needed to carry the side skirts.

I'm running out of things I can do before this great teardown, but I'm doing everything I can beforehand.  I want to keep the teardown stage as short as possible, because "it's in a bunch of boxes in the garage" is how projects die.

LTC

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #375 on: July 04, 2020, 08:33:01 pm »
because "it's in a bunch of boxes in the garage" is how projects die.

That would be a real shame. You're doing some incredible work here.

Arroyo

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #376 on: July 04, 2020, 09:36:06 pm »
At a boy, keep it up!

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #377 on: July 05, 2020, 07:13:37 am »
You have 10 pages of people who will badger you so it can't die...  just sayin... 
My Arcade Cabinet Build and other projects here:
Centipede, Joust, Joust Cocktail, Asteroids, Galaga, Ms. Pacman Cabaret, Defender, Space Invaders Cocktail
https://bperkins.wordpress.com/

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #378 on: July 10, 2020, 05:35:04 am »
You have 10 pages of people who will badger you so it can't die...  just sayin...

This.

Too good to not complete as soon as humanly possible
Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools! I can fix it.

Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #379 on: July 13, 2020, 02:14:57 am »
Thanks.  I really appreciate the support.  It helps to know you've all got my back.

I approached this part of the project with a bit of trepidation. 

The great disassembly has come.

The first thing I did was crawl around under the machine with paint pens, and I color coded every connection that could possibly ever be confused.  There's six USB cables on the back of the PC, for instance, and if I plug them in in a different order during the rebuild, they might re-enumerate and screw up who knows what in the configurations of the games and emulators I've already set up.  I did all the video connections, the audio in versus audio out on the graphic equalizer, pretty much everything.

Here's the back of the PC with ports identified.  The cables that go in to each of these have identical paint rings.



Then, I undid many, many connections.

The control panel then slides off the fronts of the rails.  It's tied by a cable to the pedals, so those move together.



Here they are, laying on the floor in the room where the great rebuilding shall occur.

After that, there's a scary several person job where I undo a bunch of temporary scaffolding, hold the playfield monitor by the axle, and have my assistants tilt the front and back cabinet away from it, unplugging the axle from the bearing blocks.  This breaks the machine down into three main pieces.

Here's the back cabinet leaned up against the wall.  You can see the amusingly thick cable bundle that comes out the bottom of it.



This freed everything up into loose modules.  PC, back cabinet, front cabinet, control panel, back wall, and rotating playfield.


What I thought was going to happen at this point was that everything I'd been working on for all this time would go from looking basically done, to basically a pile of parts, and I figured that was going to be a depressing setback.  I thought it would feel like losing ground, and kill the sense of momentum, and be depressing, and that I'd really have to push to keep going.

That didn't happen.

There's a ton of tasks I've been unable to do while the machine is assembled that have been piling up.  I've been blocked on more and more things that require this disassembly before I can do them. 

If you've played many computer RPGs...
You know that effect where you move to the next big area, and suddenly you've got like twenty new quests to pick from and everything is abruptly opened up? 
It feels like that.  There are a -ton- of things I can do from here that were blocked until now. 

It's not depressing at all.  I am suddenly stoked.  So stoked that I did a bunch of work, and now you're going to get a long post about it.

The TV tray is now free of the machine; it has so far been a giant solid rectangle of metal.  The back of the playfield monitor has some air circulation vent holes in it, and I don't want to block them, so I spent a while estimating positions and doing layout.  This looks weird because, remember, the monitor mounts at a 3' angle to the face of the plate, so it's intentionally crooked as part of the cancelling 6' playfield trick with the crooked axle. 

Here's the beginnings of the layout, on the solid rectangular 1/4" thick aluminum plate.



I drilled holes in the corners of the vent-holes-to-be, then jigsawed between them with a metal cutting jigsaw blade.  This works pretty well, but if you go too fast it melts aluminum into the teeth and hangs up, so you gotta go easy on the variable speed trigger.



Here's the roughed out hole.

It's ugly, but I just wanted to remove most of the excess material, because I'll be milling it from here.



It took some creativity to clamp a piece of metal bigger than my mill in my mill, but I was able to clean up the holes nicely.  Here's a shot from the first passes with a big endmill.  I used a smaller endmill to get closer into the corners afterward.



The angled lines along the bottom edge of the plate, I cut with my bandsaw. 

Here's the revised mounting plate screwed to the monitor so you can see the alignments.  The vent windows are tilted 3' off the plate, which makes them square to the monitor.  The new cuts along the bottom follow the raised center section of the monitor, then swing up to make it easier to connect or disconnect the video cables, then swings back down on a 45' to catch the bottom screw in the side axle bracket. 

I'm now no longer blocking any of the vent holes in the monitor.  It looks like I am, on the upper right, but if you look closer you'll see there's two depths of mismatched vent holes - the outer case has more grill than the component beneath it does, and I miss almost all the actual holes there in the second layer.

While I had this plate out, I drilled and countersunk the six holes for the counterweight slide rail.  After a bit of file-based hole nudging between the plate, the shims, and the rail, I was able to get the alignment to work and the countersink machine screws to engage the T-nuts inside the rail.

Here's the thick side of the three precision tapered 6' shims that angle the counterweight rail against the plate, installed. 

 

You can see the counterweight rail is aligned to the TV, not the plate, and is nicely aligned to the vent hole on the left, not the 3' offset angle of the top edge of the plate. 

The 3'-by-3'-cancelling-6' playfield incline trick is cool, but it makes working in this area a special kind of pain.  Everything is intentionally crooked. 

Now that the rail is installed, I can put it all together.




This is most of the rotating playfield monitor assembly. 

From this side:



you can see one of the reasons for the weird shape of the 4-weight carrying upper arm - it has to go under, then reach around, the 1/4" shaft that the actuator that rotates the table pushes and pulls on.  It can adjust from this close in to the axle, out to flush with the end of the rail.



The lower/front/1-weight-carrying arm is differently shaped, because the constraints of its design are that it has to knife thinly in between the flightstick and the steering wheel when the control panel retracts up under the pinball table.  It can also slide along the rail, from in here to out flush with the outside of the rail, and the weight can move up and down on it by changing holes.

This isn't quite the entire rotating playfield assembly - there will be a big aluminum-cased linear actuator back here too. 

The yet-to-be-built red 7/16" thick plywood side skirts that carry the flipper buttons and run along the sides of the pinball machine, up against the sides of the rotating playfield monitor, will be mounting to the ends of the counterweight adjustment rail - it is precisely centered to and aligned with the playfield monitor, though it looks off center and crooked as compared to the plate.


Long post, thanks for bearing with me.  There's so many things that might be next that I'm not even going to predict which one I'm taking on in the next post.  I am, however, now feeling really confident that this is not going to die a quiet death of broken momentum.

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #380 on: July 13, 2020, 07:12:50 am »
As a guy who fortunate enough to have more than his fair share of tools..  I drool over yours.   :notworthy:

Nice update - there is nothing better than getting through a knothole. 

I spent 7 years building a 23' boat - I'd guess a few hundred hours of that was some form of sanding and for a while I could not get myself to the shop to do more..
If I just couldn't do it...  I would tell myself - go out to the shop for 10 minutes and just pick up and put away.. Which I did..  it often got me sanding for at least 10-20 minutes, cleaned the shop and kept me going. 

I need to make me a "Pick up and put away.." sign. 
Love the project!
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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #381 on: July 13, 2020, 07:50:31 am »
I tend to have too many projects, while some are in boxes at some point they are not being ignored as parts are still added, and work constantly, forgetting to eat and sleep sometimes...As for this project, The choice of aluminum confuses me...perhaps an attempt to make parts light, as to limit weight on the overall concept of morphing two heavy machines into one? Or the ease of workability, and machining?... But while aluminum is a good conductor it is not historically compatible with copper as far as grounding (saftey) goes without sulfating at the the connection (thermal grease slows it down)...Love the build...Carry on.

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #382 on: July 14, 2020, 12:45:48 am »
I'm always stoked on the amount (and precision!) of your milling in this project.
Where do you find all this metal stock (like that aluminum sheet?!)

Good to hear that your disassembly got you more motivated rather than less.
That Laozi guy was right about just getting started on something.

NoAlox has proven to be a great compound for mixed metal grounding (and non grounded conductors too for that matter I suppose) when necessary.
The marine environment in my neighborhood causes me to regularly go through tubes of it fixing people's electrical woes here.
Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he's got this ultimate set of tools! I can fix it.

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #383 on: July 21, 2020, 02:26:38 am »
I spent 7 years building a 23' boat - I'd guess a few hundred hours of that was some form of sanding and for a while I could not get myself to the shop to do more..
If I just couldn't do it...  I would tell myself - go out to the shop for 10 minutes and just pick up and put away.. Which I did..  it often got me sanding for at least 10-20 minutes, cleaned the shop and kept me going. 

Words of wisdom.  Thanks for sharing them.

I'm glad you made it through to the end of that gauntlet.  I've had a five year project once, but not quite a seven.  (Yet?)  I was well and truly sick of it by the end, but I slogged through.

I tend to have too many projects, while some are in boxes at some point they are not being ignored as parts are still added, and work constantly, forgetting to eat and sleep sometimes...As for this project, The choice of aluminum confuses me...perhaps an attempt to make parts light, as to limit weight on the overall concept of morphing two heavy machines into one? Or the ease of workability, and machining?... But while aluminum is a good conductor it is not historically compatible with copper as far as grounding (saftey) goes without sulfating at the the connection (thermal grease slows it down)...Love the build...Carry on.

Glad to hear your projects have not gone dormant.  Good on ya!

I went to aluminum construction for the rotating assembly mainly for volumetric rigidity.  I don't have much space to fit all this stuff packed tightly together, and I figured I could make a thinner rigid aluminum structure than I could design something out of plywood like the rest of the cabinetry.  Lighter weight is a side benefit, the lack of rust is also a side benefit, and the machineability sure doesn't hurt. 

Grounding, honestly, never occurred to me.  Maybe it should have.  I'm currently trusting the LCD panel's exterior case to be the protection, and the actuator's exterior case.  Most of the other components will be mounted to plywood.  A smarter person than me probably would have designed a grounding provision for this plate, particularly if this was going to be installed commercially for the general public to access.  (It'd have to be a bit different in a few places to be safe for the general public, really.) 

Thanks for raising a good point I hadn't even thought of!


Where do you find all this metal stock (like that aluminum sheet?!)

Mostly, I buy it.  Places like Speedy Metals will ship you quite the selection.  I scrounge some of it; most of the smaller pieces I make come out of various scraps. 


Next update.  Progress ensues.

Now that the scaffolding is gone, the rear cabinet and the front cabinet need 10 thread inserts, each, to pick up the structure that connects them. 

The first four thread inserts on the back cabinet pick up the rear wall. 

Here's the test fit:


You can see where I've shortened the top bracket, to clear the connector plate that carries all the DB15s and DB25s that connect modules together.
It clears.
Just.

I made a template, carefully located it with a ton of measurements, and transferred the locations for the six thread inserts that pick up the midshelf.  Here's silver sharpie marks on the black paint.



The rear cabinet is a bit tricky; I ended up carefully drilling blind into it WHILE it was fully populated with all the electronics, because I'm stupid / brave like that.  And because I'm too lazy to tear out all the internals under this area - there's a LOT of difficult wrestle-into-place tight fitting and wire routing.  I didn't hurt anything under the wood. 

The front cabinet is easier, because it fairly easily comes apart.  Here's the locations for all ten thread inserts on it.



More early fitment testing, here's the midshelf attached to the front cabinet, to confirm it works.



At this point, parts start getting hauled into the house.  This is, I think, the last teardown, and this means this is also the final main assembly.  Maybe.

So, here's the back wall and the front cabinet attached together next to Mimic, where it is all to live.



It comes apart into modules, and that's a lifesaver, because the back cabinet by itself is a gutbuster to lift and carry now.  It made it in by a series of three foot long lift-and-shuffle moves, hugging it and being real careful not to bang any corners or doorknobs or whatnot.



The next part is hard.

The front cabinet gets the midshelf attached - but only on that end - and the axle plugged into the bearing blocks.  Then the rear cabinet gets slid over and docked into all three parts simultaneously - the back wall attaches, the midshelf attaches, and the axle sockets into the bearing block.  These all have to be aligned at the same time, and screwed together.

Here's the result.



I also mounted the screen rotating actuator in the back wall at this time.


Next up:  TV mounting, counterweight tuning.

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #384 on: July 21, 2020, 03:53:27 am »
With the front and back cabinets attached together by the back wall and the midshelf, and the TV tray freely rotating in the middle, and all the new vent holes cut in the TV tray, it was time to stick a propstick under it to hold it in place and mount the playfield display.



With the display attached and free to turn, I could move the counterweights around to reduce the residual weight as much as possible.  With the front single weight as far in as I can get it, and the 4x weight pack on the back arm just almost brushing the edge of the space it needs to run in, I got the imbalanced weight remaining down to about 2.25 pounds as measured with a push scale.  The actuator is rated for 22lb, so this should be fine.  It's a far cry from the full weight of the TV that I had showing up here before the counterweights.

After I got the balance set as good as it can be, I attached the actuator.  Here's the fully extended actuator, and the upper counterweight when the display is in simpit mode.



Under the cabinet, the pedal frame now mounts to the floor of the back wall - here's how these fit together.  The power control box goes into the remaining space, which I sadly did not get a picture of in my frenzy of progress.





Now, we switch focus to the control panel.

The control panel has had some evidence of rubbing along the righthand side, against the legs of the back cabinet. 

You can see marks in the paint from it, here.



To fix this, way back when I made the back wall and the midshelf, I deliberately made them slightly longer than I calculated the gap to be, and I'll be adding some washers underneath the linear rail bearing trucks on the right side of the control panel.  Effectively, this moves the front and rear cabinet about a washer's width apart, and then takes that space back up, adding that clearance along the right edge wall of the sliding control panel.

Getting the bearing trucks off is a bit of a trick, they're kind of buried, between bulkheads, and have cables running near them.  I ended up using a flexible extension on a screwdriver, like this:



The lower bolts are close to the corner, so I ground down flats on the lower washers.  Here's the washers installed.



This also reveals I painted the control panel with the trucks installed, heh.  I put a black line of sharpie around the edge to keep any bare wood light leaks down. 

I reinstalled the control panel, and confirmed the rub is gone.  The actuator has been sitting inside the control panel this whole time, but it has nothing to attach to yet.  I needed to know the spatial relationship of the back wall and the tail of this actuator, to know where the hardpoint for the back end had to be, to know how to design it.

Here's the resulting design - I cut this yoke out of a scrap piece of rectangular aluminum tubing that happened to be the right interior width (0.75") to snugly fit around the actuator tail.



3/8" shoulder bolt in the middle, lockwashers on the ends, two 1/4-20 capscrews on the back to attach it to a plate.

Oh, yeah, I better make the plate, too.



The plate attaches to the backside of the back wall, and the yoke attaches to the plate, like so.  This is the view with the camera wedged in up against the back wall, looking at the backside of the machine.



I thought I'd make spacers to go between the yoke and the plate to carefully set the retract and extend positions of the panel, but it turned out I'd need a NEGATIVE .25" spacer in there. 

I'm not good enough to make one of those.   :)

So, I had to put a doubler plate behind the plate, to space everything back.

With all that accomplished, the playfield and control panel are both attached to their actuators.  Time to, gulp, put the PC back in it.



I reconnected all the color-coded connections I'd marked up prior to the Great Disassembly, doublechecked them all, crossed my fingers, triplechecked them all, winced, and turned it on.



IT LIVES.

Cockpit mode...



and pinball mode...




The actuators work, but they don't work WELL yet.  I've got a lot of bugs to sort out.  The spring rod drive on the playfield rotating actuator has no damping, so it bounces horribly if you let it.  I'm going to try adjusting the actuator to pull a little preload bend of the rod against a rubber stop on each end, to damp and locate the endpoints and hopefully kill the bounce. 
The software I've written does not leave them running long enough for the full stroke, so there's a hesitation in the middle when I retrigger the same move command to finish the stroke.  The combination of these effects means there's a hideous bounce in the center of TV rotation, because the abrupt stop and abrupt start both energize the vibration - neither that stop nor start will be there when I patch up the software.

Additionally, my software is very not finished - I'm manually pushing keys to run each actuator in each direction, right now.  There will be some physical microswitches to inform the computer which end the moving assemblies are on, some timers, and some intelligent logic about how long to run each actuator before you expect to see which microswitch register, and error conditions to pause and cry for help if the expected results don't happen, and some automatic sequencing to do the whole transform for you when you pick 'pinball games' or 'cockpit games' out of the menu.

(Also, per MikeA, it needs to play some audio clips while the motors run.)

I knew Slippyblade would want a video, if he's still reading this thread, so I shot one. 

Remember.  These are the very first halting steps, here.  The elephant does NOT DANCE WELL yet. 

But.

It dances.



There's a lot of work still left to do from here.  You may notice I have no pinball flipper buttons yet.  The red-and-aluminum side skirts for the display that carry the flipper buttons and make it look more like a pinball machine still need to get made, and I have a bunch of tinkering and tuning and fixing to do as mentioned above.  But as of now, you can at least see proof of concept of the dream.  It'll get better from here, and I'm now pretty sure this will all work.

NOW I'm on the home straight.  Estimated time to project completion, maybe three months?  We'll see.
« Last Edit: July 21, 2020, 04:06:13 am by Laythe »

javeryh

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #385 on: July 21, 2020, 07:16:43 am »
You are a mad man and this is insane.  It is so cool to see this in action - like a real life Transformer.

It’s really neat how the software also changes depending on the orientation of the monitor.  Are you using Hyperspin or something else?

It looks playable - that’s dangerous!

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #386 on: July 21, 2020, 07:23:30 am »
This looks so amazing! What an amazing display of engineering! The video is super cool. That flips much quicker than I expected. Thanks for posting such detailed updates. It is very cool to see so much of the work you are putting into it. I usually can't be bothered to take a lot of pictures but I also don't do ANYTHING this involved. :)  :cheers:

J_K_M_A_N

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #387 on: July 21, 2020, 08:58:04 am »
So sick.  You are outdoing yourself, and that’s no small feat.  I’m most impressed with what as far as I can tell is a dead on realization of your vision.  Going back to look at your SketchUp animation it looks identical.  So impressive.

As for the rotating hiccup I had the same thing on mine, and eventually sorted it out, as I know you will too.  Nice update.

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #388 on: July 21, 2020, 11:33:37 am »
You are a mad man and this is insane.  It is so cool to see this in action - like a real life Transformer.

It’s really neat how the software also changes depending on the orientation of the monitor.  Are you using Hyperspin or something else?

It looks playable - that’s dangerous!

Haha, thanks!

It's not Hyperspin - I write my own front-ends from scratch for every machine I build.  The idea has been floated that this thing needs to play the Transformers mechanical noise through the speakers while the motors run...  that's on the to-do list. 

It's been playable since the start - I work on the software in parallel with the hardware.


This looks so amazing! What an amazing display of engineering! The video is super cool. That flips much quicker than I expected. Thanks for posting such detailed updates. It is very cool to see so much of the work you are putting into it. I usually can't be bothered to take a lot of pictures but I also don't do ANYTHING this involved. :)  :cheers:

Thanks!  These are high speed actuators, because I didn't want to have to twiddle my thumbs waiting around for the transform.  The speed is one of the reasons for the big playfield spring rod to cushion the ride for the playfield monitor. 


So sick.  You are outdoing yourself, and that’s no small feat.  I’m most impressed with what as far as I can tell is a dead on realization of your vision.  Going back to look at your SketchUp animation it looks identical.  So impressive.

As for the rotating hiccup I had the same thing on mine, and eventually sorted it out, as I know you will too.  Nice update.

Thanks!  The initial CAD and renders were in 3DS Max, and it's changed a little, but I've stuck pretty close to the plan.  Thanks for the vote of confidence on the rotation issues, and for sticking around throughout this two-years-and-running build.
 

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #389 on: July 21, 2020, 11:38:03 am »
Quote
The idea has been floated that this thing needs to play the Transformers mechanical noise through the speakers while the motors run...  that's on the to-do list.

I thought you had forgotten. :applaud:


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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #390 on: July 21, 2020, 12:09:46 pm »
I write my own front-ends from scratch for every machine I build. 

How do you figure this stuff out???  You are working on an entirely different level than the rest of us.  And here I am pausing a YouTube video every 5 seconds walking through a hyperspin setup with no confidence that it will behave the way I want when I'm done.

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #391 on: July 21, 2020, 06:04:24 pm »
Quote
The idea has been floated that this thing needs to play the Transformers mechanical noise through the speakers while the motors run...  that's on the to-do list.
I thought you had forgotten. :applaud:

I have not.    :D   The question is... what's the most iconic rendition of that sound?  I request a youtube or similar video link to a reasonably isolated example of it.  Some clip where The Noise was made, without a lot of dialogue or other sound effects over the top of it.  Find me the gold standard Transformers Noise, and I promise to include it.

How do you figure this stuff out???  You are working on an entirely different level than the rest of us.

I don't think I'm working on an entirely different level - your cabaret is looking nice.

That five year project I mentioned above was writing a computer game, solo.  We all come in to these projects with the different hats that we've worn other places; I'm a game programmer, so that specific part is a little easier for me.  One of the fun things about a big project like an arcade cabinet is getting to engage a bunch of other hobbies at the same time.  You can tell I'm a (rank amateur) hobbyist machinist, for example.  I look at the work of somebody like Pixelhugger, and I know I'm looking at a serious woodworker.  One of my favorite things about the projects forum is seeing what skills people bring, and what their different skillsets get them in terms of how they approach the project.

(That said, I'm not sure that bringing the skillset of a farmer is necessarily helpful.  That barn wood and roofing nails construction... man.)

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #392 on: July 21, 2020, 06:06:24 pm »
I will get that sound for you.

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #393 on: July 24, 2020, 02:41:33 am »
I've got some soft bumpers, fitment adjustments, and improved programming going now.  Trimmed a bit of dead time out of the transform sequence.

Here's my first round of motion improvements.  I think I can improve it a bit more, but it's up to "Pretty OK" now, I think.

- check out the chair motion via the wheels!



Still got lots to do, both in hardware and software.  But, I'm having fun again. 

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #394 on: July 24, 2020, 03:43:19 am »
Congrats on bringing another concept to reality. The motion looks great!

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #395 on: July 24, 2020, 07:04:27 am »
Well done  :applaud:

I remember way back you were trying to automate the chair and it turned out to be a pain (and I can see why)

Seeing it in action - a Roomba style push back and roll into storage robot base would do the job..
Since I'm using your time of course..  So you didn't need rails - you need a robot..
Well done  :)
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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #396 on: July 26, 2020, 06:51:23 pm »
Congrats on bringing another concept to reality. The motion looks great!

Thanks!  I'm chuffed.   :)

I remember way back you were trying to automate the chair and it turned out to be a pain (and I can see why)

Seeing it in action - a Roomba style push back and roll into storage robot base would do the job..
Since I'm using your time of course..  So you didn't need rails - you need a robot..
Well done  :)

Thanks!   :)

I'm fairly content with the chair being pushed out by the control panel, you pull it out from there to wherever you want to sit on it, and push it back in when you are done - but driving the chair directly is definitely an idea still in play; my dad isn't giving up on the idea of a fully powered chair yet. 

A roomba-like robot won't work, because here is the approximate relationship of the chair wheels and the foot pedals when everything is nested:



The chair box has an open front, and it swallows the whole pedal frame and half the power control box when everything nests together in pinball mode.  The chair base box is full, that's why the chair base box is the size it is. 

So, absolutely no room for a roomba.   But there's still been some mulling over the idea.  To drive the chair directly, my dad's current idea is a long coil spring surrounding each side of the rear axle, with one end attached to the center mount, and the other end attached to the wheel hub.

That makes the chair into something like a kid's spring-powered car toy, the ones you pull it back that launch themselves forward - only in reverse; you'd set this up so that you push it forward to wind the spring, and it pulls itself backward.

Then, you put a winch type drum in the space between the T-shaped back wall and the house wall, threading two thin wire cables on each side of the T bar, just off the carpet to eyes mounted low on the front of the chair.  The spring pressure through the driving wheels holds the cables tight.  Winding the drum in retracts the chair against the spring pressure and winds the axle springs.  Winding the drum out lets the axle springs drive the chair by the rear wheels, which are the ones with most of the weight. 

This requires that the springs be able to power the whole 4-foot travel of the chair, and that the rubber tires don't slip on the carpet under that kind of spring pressure with only the weight of the empty chair upon them, and it means you have to nudge the chair in or out using the VR buttons, and that you have to step over one just-above-floor cable when getting in and out.

There is physically room and clearance for the springs and the drum, and there are reserved control lines and relays in the system to operate that.  It seems risky to me, I'm not certain it will work, so that's being pushed forward to a maybe-version-2 thing, if we get the machine finished and we still want to mess with it. 


bperkins01

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #397 on: July 26, 2020, 09:26:13 pm »
I was messing with you a bit - You've done a great job getting it all to fit and keeping going.
Glad you are posting progress :)
My Arcade Cabinet Build and other projects here:
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Laythe

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #398 on: July 26, 2020, 10:29:44 pm »
I was messing with you a bit - You've done a great job getting it all to fit and keeping going.
Glad you are posting progress :)

Hahaha, all good!  I just thought it was funny that I've seriously thought of that.  Electric motor to the rear wheels, drag a cable back and forth from the moving chair, the robot doesn't have to move farther than a power cable can reach...

Keeping going is one of the problems with something like this.  I see a lot of attrition in rotate projects.  I'm hoping to see Jimbovision finished some day, for instance.

I think the roadmap from here is going to be, function testing the contactors for flipper/slingshot/bumper feedback, then building the side skirts.

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Re: Mimic's Sister - Shapeshifter
« Reply #399 on: July 26, 2020, 10:52:06 pm »
Off the charts Bud!  You are working on another level.  Very fun to follow.