plans for machine

[rundgrenjunkie]

Hello all,
I'm new here and am looking to build a pinball machine from the ground up. A new Hobie. I have a machinist background and have done electrical automation wiring and schematics. I'm sure this will be a brand new world and I am stoked about it. Any help or directions from the masters is appreciated.
RJ

[pinballwizard79]

You're nuts

[slycrel]

Few have tried and fewer have succeeded.  There's a ton of work that will go into a project like that.

My advice from an armchair point of view is to take an existing machine and re-theme it, maybe make a few modifications, and redesign the electronics.  If you still want to go forward with a from-scratch pin, please post your progress here, we'd love to watch you do it.  =)

[Cyberflexx]

Yeah.. show us the pictures.. keep a running log of it with pictures for us to view.

Good Luck!

[Xiaou2]

If you can help me with supplying electronics... I could help with
design.  Ive got an idea for a custom pin, and Id love to see
it realized.

 More later...

[JeepMonkey]

have done electrical automation wiring and schematics.

Do you work in a panel shop?  PLC, HMI, MCC wiring?

[rundgrenjunkie]

Thanks for the input everyone. I had one good email response from someone who I plan to learn to learn alot from. He has sketches and pictures of a macine he is building so that will be a great staart for planning for me. I am going to do some autocad work for him.
I found a thing called virtual pinball that you can layput what your machine can look like. I also found a reseller and renovation shop in san marcos,ca about 30 minutes from me. I am still a little while from starting out but when I do I will log it and take pictures to share everyone.
As far as the panel shop, no my day job is with SMC pnuematics and instrumentaion. I used to sell moving coil actuators and had a side bussiness that was a small automation corp for 3.5 years. I have done panel work, soldering, some programming and I was a machinist for 10 years prior to getting into engineering and design. before. I am hoping that some of the controllers and experiance I have used in automation will translate to pinball machines.
There is so much to learn here and I had no idea how far things have progressed since the days of early the 70's pinball machines.

[Xiaou2]

Be aware that Virtual Pinball physics are not going to be accurate and will be
Very different if you build an actual table.

 The best way to design good gameplay is by making test fields with real
materials.

[rundgrenjunkie]

Thanks for that tip. That would have sucked building it to that and having it react differntly.

[BobA]

Future pin handles the ball movement more realisticaly.  The engine they use is documented on their site.

[Xiaou2]

More realistic and SAME are very different.

 You could design a shot that worked well in Future pinball... but turned out to
be nearly impossible to hit on a real machine.

 That would then invalidate an entire design.  IE: wasted hours and hours
of virtual pinball work.  Having to scrap the entire design, and start again from
scratch on real parts.

[gajaman]

I wish you the best of luck - I can't even fix the basics on my table without posting constantly for advice on here...

Sounds like a really cool project though!