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

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Arroyo:
Not my style of cabinet, but I can really appreciate the effort to get that mechanical movement going, very impressive. Well done.

zeorangr:

--- Quote from: SpaceHedgehog on November 24, 2021, 02:50:44 am ---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?

--- End quote ---

Thanks! I really like BigBox - it seems to be pretty customizable, and the dev team seems to be pretty responsive to the community with regard to squashing bugs and fixing issues, and with taking feedback and adding new features.

I'm only running pinball FX3 at the moment - mainly because it 'just works'. I just slowly bought all the FX3 tables on steam over the past year, as they were on sale. In researching things for this build, it really seemed to me like the virtual pinball side of things has the potential to get VERY complex, very fast. I plan to add more in the future, but I want to get this cabinet build finished (or 'done enough, at least') before I start down that rabbit hole. There are definitely some tables that I'd like to have that aren't covered with FX3 though, and there are some of the vpin 'toys' that I'd like to add eventually, if I can figure out how to incorporate them into this overall design.

--- Quote from: Arroyo on November 24, 2021, 09:01:54 am ---Not my style of cabinet, but I can really appreciate the effort to get that mechanical movement going, very impressive. Well done.

--- End quote ---

Thanks Arroyo. I know that this build is kinda weird and probably won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I appreciate the kind words. :)

zeorangr:
Quick update -

I spent Wednesday prepping for Thanksgiving - my wife and I host Thanksgiving dinner, so I spent the day baking pies, chopping veggies, and brining turkey. Thanksgiving was great, and I ate way too much food. I spent Friday around the house, mostly eating leftovers and napping, but I did pick up a few more steam games to put on the cabinet while they were on sale.

I ran back down to the shop on Saturday and brought the control panel home with me - I'm going to work on wiring up the sticks and buttons this week as I have free time.

I managed to get the joystick shafts swapped out - I finally got the pivots (or whatever they're called) moved to the RGB shafts. I wound up taking some sandpaper and just gently sanding them by hand for a few minutes each until they were able to slip over the new shafts without forcing them.

I've swapped out my P1 / P2 start buttons for a couple more of the Ultimarc RGB buttons (which is what just about all the other buttons are) for consistency's sake - as it stands now, the only non-RGB buttons are the dedicated smaller exit button and the huge pinball 'launch' button... and I may swap that one out too, still not sure yet. I did move the P1 / P2 start labels over to the RGB buttons though, and I think they look ok. I'll have to see how it looks with everything connected and lit.

I'm also going to test things out with a spinner added. Depending on how it goes, I may leave it in there, or may just swap it back with the 'center' button which was going to be a dedicated pause / xbox guide button, but I can use shift functions for that if I keep the spinner. I don't really want a frankenpanel, and I'm trying to decide if aesthetically (for me), the spinner is too far in that direction or not. On the other hand, I also want to be able to play the few spinner-centric games with the spinner and not just the trackball. At the very least, my panel is spacious enough that the spinner is positioned far enough back from the trackball that it won't be too in the way for crazy golden tee trackball hits (I tested this), so that's something.

Here's what we're looking like currently, with the RGB shafts on the joysticks, the newly labelled P1/P2 start buttons, and the spinner in place:

I'll get some more pictures after I get all the wiring done over the next few days.

zeorangr:
Progress update:

I started working on wiring up buttons later monday night. I got like four buttons done and realized just how much work it was going to be to wire everything up, and then pull all the wiring so I could paint the thing, and then have to RE-wire it all back up.

So I stopped wiring, and instead pulled all the buttons and stuff out of the panel, and then went to Lowes to get some paint and stuff. I also got a couple of thin sheets of acrylic (0.08, I think?) while I was there.

I have, to this point in my life, never really attempted to paint anything. I don't really have any prior experience with this, and have very little idea what I'm doing here. Because of that, I've been somewhat anxious about painting. What snapped me out of it was that I had a really nice moment of clarity before bed Monday night that I built this thing, and if I screw it up somehow, I've already proven that I can at least get back to the point I'm at now since I built the thing, so I can rebuild things if I have to. Paint can be removed and painted over, or covered up, or whatever. So - instead of wiring, I've been painting (and sanding, and painting, and sanding... ;D)

I used a can of Krylon Black Gloss 'all in one' (which includes primer, according to the label) as the base coat - painted early tuesday morning, then let it dry for most of the day, then sanded it down and hit it with about five coats of krylon black gloss lacquer late in the afternoon / early evening (which is apparently supposed to be 'dry' enough to stand and reapply after about 20 minutes), sanding with progressively finer and finer grit paper each time, up to the last pass which was a wet sand at 1500 grain, and then a very light 'final' coat of the lacquer.

As this was intended to be a 'just a test run' for the larger job of painting the rest of the cabinet, there are some minor things that I will do differently next time. There are a few blemishes in the plywood - tiny nail holes from the finishing nails used to tack the thing together, or uneven / rough spots, or places where the plywood had splintered when it was cut and had peeled slightly, or places where the paint was just slightly too thick and ran a bit, and didn't get fully sanded back out, and I didn't catch them until later. I think it looks pretty good anyway, all things considered. Definitely better than I expected for my first attempt at actually trying to seriously paint something and make it look good, so even though there are things that need to be fixed or touched up, I'm actually kinda proud of this for a first try. I'll be more closely following the book of Ond for painting the rest, though.

Once I was done painting, I measured and cut down an acrylic sheet for the top of the panel, and got it temporarily attached to the panel. I used a drill bit to drill a pilot hole in the acrylic for each of the pre-existing controller holes in the panel, and then used a router with a flush trim bit to finish out the holes. The router got away from me a little in one of the button holes and dug into the side a bit, but I don't think it's bad enough to have to re-do the entire panel... I'll have to see if there's any light bleed from the RGB button once I do get it lit up, but if so I might be able to 'patch' it with some black cardboard in the hole, instead of re-cutting and re-drilling an entire panel. I don't think you can actually see the dinged button hole unless you really look for it, but I'd be interested to know what you all think - should I re-do the panel, or is this minor enough to just let it go and move on?

Anyway - Here's how it turned out:

So - next up, going to get the wiring done, hopefully before Saturday so I can take it back down in a 'ready to plug in' state and start working on getting the rest of the cabinet painted and finishing out a lot of the little detail work that I've been neglecting so far, like getting the rest of the acrylic mounted for the screens and get actual bezels built and installed for the main screen and marquee screen, That's probably going to take me a couple of weeks (since I have limited time in the shop each week, and paint can take a while to dry), but hopefully it won't be too bad.

More to come. 8)

vertexguy:
CP is looking nice in the photos! Is the button router issue just in the wood paneling or somewhere else? If it's just the inner wood, thats easy to patch up with some wood filler. I have photos of me doing that all over on the side pinball button holes in my build thread. Use a dowel like object with sandpaper on it to smooth it out to perfection. If you don't notice the issue without going under the hood, then it depends how much of a perfectionist you wanna be. Keep going!

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