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Day of the Pinheads - Widebody 46/32/DMD


Aurich

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Nice and sweet. Sounds like you have done all of your homework. Keep the pics coming, I am a visual learner!!!:laugh::laugh:

I'm kinda crappy at stopping in the middle of working to document things, there are some much better build threads here for that. I've definitely read them! I'll keep taking pics of things that makes sense to me though. I scoured the web looking for a disassembled shot of that Indiana Jones gun so I could make sure I could repurpose it before giving up and just buying the parts and assuming it was all good. Which of course it was, the manual made me confident, but still, I made sure to get a shot of that in there in case it helps someone else.

As far as I'm aware I was the first person to try the XPin DMD with the pinDMD board, so made sure that was documented too.

Slowing down slightly right now. Things I am waiting on:

Paint to cure! Still have touchup and coats to put on too, that part is just slow.

Custom lockdown bar (the price I paid for making the cab 1/2" narrower than standard!)

PCB to build coin door circuit (as I said, I'll have extras too, maybe I can hook people up)

Zebulon's latest toy wiring board (need to buy the toys too)

Laser cut pieces for launcher gun project

I need to finalize my DMD panel design so I can send it to mameman for CNC loving. I have the basic layout finalized, but I'm sort of feeling like if he's going to cut it for me that I ought to take advantage of it somehow and make it a bit more fun somehow. I have some general themes for the artwork in mind, but haven't completed enough sketches yet to really make the panel design obvious. So that's probably the next step since there's going to be a bit of turnaround on that.

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DMD panel design is in mameman's capable hands. Nothing super duper crazy, but he is going to do some engraving on the front panel for me, and I'm excited to see how it comes out. He was great to work with too!

Laser cut pieces should be here tomorrow.

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Got my laster cut pieces today. :)

As much as I love the launcher gun, I was thinking that it was a pity there was no way to light it up with the LEDWiz for the launch ball function. I didn't really want to drill a hole in the metal, a bit thick, and it would look lame to just have a bare LED sticking out of it. So I thought what if I replaced the trigger with an acrylic one, stuck an LED inside the gun, and side lit it?

8253807102_9af93a59a4_c.jpg

8253806940_f39f3ecf89_c.jpg

I scanned the original metal trigger and traced it into a vector I could have laser cut. I had a bunch cut as long as I was paying for the square inches of the sheet, so I experimented with various levels of etching and design and left plenty of blanks to play with. I'll take some of the extras and mess with sanding them to frost them a bit etc, see what works best for being lit up. Initial tests seem to indicate it's going to work, but we'll see how it is when I can set it up with a proper lighting system.

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One thing I just learned from this process is that engraving acrylic with a laser produces some hazing, I guess from the vaporized plastic getting deposited around the areas you're etching. (If you're just cutting they leave the protective sheet over the top, so only an issue with engraving.) Got a Novus plastic polish kit coming my way from Amazon for something like $10 to make sure everything is crystal clear. No point in going through all this work and expense and effort to half ass the final result! ;)

I'm hoping my lockdown bar will be here next week, I think I have a trip to the powder coaters planned before I put all the hardware back on the cab. Still need to design all the side art, but I won't wait for that, going to take my time with it, have to find the time around my normal design work.

I got the back doors on the main cab and back glass installed, with locks and 200mm fans. Need to touch up some paint though, was slightly off in my estimate for the height the hinge added and had to plane off a little of the tops of the doors.

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you should sell them as "Indiana Jones Crystal Skull Lighted Gun Trigger mod". Should be enough IJ owners out there with plenty cash to spare.

Haha, I thought about it, but it sounds like more hassle than it's worth!

On the subject of triggers, I got my Novus plastic polish, and only took a couple minutes to get the haze off so it's crystal clear all over.

One idea I was playing with last night was laser cutting some steel or aluminum speaker grills that would go inside the speaker holes (so 1/4" deep) but that would line up with the web pattern I had mameman CNC in for me. So something like:

laser-spider-grills.png

I think I'll wait until the DMD panel arrives first though to see how it might work. My plan was to lay down a chrome paint base coat, either enamel with a striping brush or airbrush, inside the web carvings. Then I'll shoot a candy overcoat. I'd use the same paint on the grills, and if I did things right, paint a connecting line across the rounded edge of the holes, down the 1/4" gap, and then connect up with the grill. Not sure if that makes sense, I might have to illustrate it out.

Edit: So like this, but imagine the blue grill is behind everything, so you just see it line up inside the CNC'd speaker hole.

spider-grill-placement.png

Pretty rusty with my airbrush, better get some practice time in!

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Easier way would be to use a mesh, either the metal ones I cut or screen door mesh, have a vinyl mask made apply it and spray the web effect on to it. Or even pinstripe it with a brush. Should look cool and still helps to hide the speakers.

Same thing I did with the Bbb pin

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My original plan was to leave grills off entirely, I don't actually want to hide the speakers. In a commercial setting of course you want a sturdy grill to keep people from poking your speaker cones, but at home I'm more into an open look. So if I did do the grills like that it would be cool with me to see the speakers behind them.

We'll see once I get it all set up I guess, no rush to make a call. I'm in wait mode for the most part right now, need parts, so just messing with ideas. ;)

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Welp, stupidly tried to fix a wire I had sloppily jammed into the PC power supply while the machine was on, shorted across the contacts accidentally and the machine shut off. Now the sound output no longer works, along with the rear USB. Oddly enough Windows insists all the hardware is fine and working. Smart!

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So after I fried my sound I was stuck, I really wanted to get my multiple outputs back so I could direct cabinet noises to a different output than ROM sounds. I picked up a cheap PCI sound card with multiple channels, but while I could get sound to come out both the front and rear, VP wouldn't see those outputs as separate, so I couldn't assign them like I wanted.

The solution was to grab an inexpensive USB Soundblaster dongle, $20 or so, and plug that in. Now I can direct VP to the PCI soundcard, and set the normal sounds out of the USB Soundblaster, and I'm back to my split outputs like I wanted. :)

So if you want to mess with the idea it's pretty easy to toss an inexpensive USB dongle in.

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