First Time Build - "Chimera" (Completed... mostly)

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javeryh:
Looks good. For safety (and accuracy) reasons you should always cut t-molding slots prior to assembly. Not only is it difficult to use a router vertically, it is also dangerous.

Looks like it all worked out though - your cab is coming together nicely.

vertexguy:
Have you considered another screen when transformed into pinball mode for the back glass? It could be hidden in the back of the cabinet and only visible when the long vertical screen comes down, or is that the purpose of the little marque screen in between the speakers?

zeorangr:

--- Quote from: javeryh on November 22, 2021, 11:03:18 am ---Looks good. For safety (and accuracy) reasons you should always cut t-molding slots prior to assembly. Not only is it difficult to use a router vertically, it is also dangerous.

Looks like it all worked out though - your cab is coming together nicely.

--- End quote ---

Yeah - I'll keep that in mind for the future. I still have to try and cut the slots on the marquee either later today or tomorrow, and then finish up the back.

It definitely seems like some of the trim / finishing work should be done prior to assembly for the best results though. And painting - painting (and sanding, and painting, and sanding, and...) would have been much easier one part at a time, instead of having to either carefully tape everything off or remove all the electronics and then try to paint the 'shell'.

Definitely some lessons learned for the next one! :)

--- Quote from: vertexguy on November 22, 2021, 12:17:19 pm ---Have you considered another screen when transformed into pinball mode for the back glass? It could be hidden in the back of the cabinet and only visible when the long vertical screen comes down, or is that the purpose of the little marque screen in between the speakers?

--- End quote ---

Good catch - That's actually what I'm going for. I don't have the screens mounted back there just yet, but hopefully this will help illustrate:

In the back of the cabinet, I've got two cutouts - For the top, I've got a 21" monitor that will be used to display the 'built-in' dynamic backglass images that come with Pinball FX3. I wanted to put a 27" back there, since it would fill more space horizontally, but it's too big to fit well, so I compromised and went with the 21" instead.
The smaller cutout on the bottom is for a 14.9" VSDisplay Bar LCD i picked up off amazon, which is like 1920x390 resolution, and will be used with DMDEXT to display a virtual DMD when a pinball table is loaded.

The 'little screen' between the speakers in the marquee is a Pixelcade - it can serve as a 'drop-in' DMD for virtual pin cabinets, and when I bought it, it was actually originally intended to go in the back as part of my 'backglass' just for that purpose. After getting it and playing with it for a bit, though, I realized that it could be a lot more versatile, so I decided to move it from the back of the cabinet to the marquee. It can run little 128x32 px .gif animations and has a pretty large library of images and animations included, and you can make your own as well. I've got a custom animation I've thrown together for each platform I've got defined in BigBox ('Arcade,' 'Steam,' 'Music Videos,' and 'Pinball'), and it will load an individual 'marquee' for just about all of the MAME games as well - I think I've got a few I still need to add, but that should be just a matter of moving some files around to get images for anything still missing one.

As configured right now, though, when a pinball table loads, we'll get a custom 21:9 marquee image, and the 'built-in' DMD overlay that Pinball FX generates up in the marquee. The Pixelcade will display an animated PinballFX3 logo. The 21" 'backglass' monitor will show the corresponding backglass image from PinballFX, and the VSDisplay bar will use DMDEXT to show a DMD display for the table. This may be overkill, I'm not sure yet. I'll have to see how it all looks when I get the screens mounted in the back. That's coming soon, though. I'll share pictures and/or a video with all the screens lit up once I get them in.

So - Question for the community. For my joysticks - these are the Ultimarc Servo Sticks. I've got the replacement RGB shafts for them, and I tried to start swapping out the shafts yesterday - I was able to get the e-clip off the bottom of the existing shaft and get it removed, but there's a... I'm not sure what it's called - it looks like part of what helps the stick pivot in the slot - this part needs to be moved from the old shaft to the new shaft, but for the life of me, It doesn't seem to fit.

This piece:

Is there a trick to this, or do I need to just keep working at it?

zeorangr:
I got some more work done today. Finished installing the t-molding on the marquee, and got the 'backglass' screens mounted.

I also got a couple of videos:

It's not going to be finished before Thanksgiving, but shouldn't be too much longer.

SpaceHedgehog:
Looking good! I only discovered Bigbox a short time ago and I have to say that it's a great frontend.

Your additional screens make such a difference for the Pinball configuration. I have a 'stubby' build planned for running pinball in VR.

Are you running any other pinball software such as Visual Pinball?

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