Planning is done!

Now the plans for the cabinet body are finalized. 

We spent hours of mainly brain-work for this part, at times full of doubt that we could ever bring a self-made cabinet to the screen which would come even close to real cabinets. That was for we had to deal with a LCD-montior we practically had to build (or erm..plan) this thing around, instead of an actual playfield. 

First thing we literally DID plan the cabinet around the TV, there was loads of measuring and running around (from one room to the other, where we had the legs and TV stored) until we had something on-screen that looked like a pretty neat cab, but still we were not quite happy with the result (which was a good thing), it just didn't feel right. So we , besides purchasing some parts for the cab, consulted the owner of a pinball-online-shop, who was awesomely nice and offered us to look through the plans. 

Here's the link to the shop:

http://www.vpin-shop.de/

His critics were very helpful for he sort of led us the way to wide-body cabinets, which he thought we had used as a pattern.

That came in extremely handy for after browsing the net for a while we found out there was already some patterns on SketchUp for downloading. We decided to go for Williams' Red and Ted's Roadshow as a comparism, downloaded the pattern and placed it besides our graphics. Actually we'd nearly got it right away and it wasn't much effort to adjust our cab so that it looked similar to the original. Just had to correct the height of the legs and the angle of the cab itself (totally easy, just measured the angle of the Roadshow cab an implied it in the plan) and there we were.

Now our cab is in fact a little wider and shorter than the Roadshow-cab but that is due to the TV. We just didn't want to leave too much space around the TV, it may have looked awekward standing in front of it.

So here's the finished plans:

It's actually kinda hard to find useful patterns on the net, we know all too well. So if you'd like to use our plan with angles and all as a pattern, feel free to leave us a message, we'll share.

Next steps - out for the cutting and making some decals for the cab. 

playfield and SketchUp

Today the postman paid us a visit and brought us our playfield.

As previously mentioned we decided to got for the "LG 42LB550V TV", as for its (for a LCD Full-HD TV-set) affordable price of only EUR 300,00. Of course we could have purchased a used one for quite an amount less, but hey, we like to play it safe and prefer to have the convenience of warranty at least for some parts of our future-precious.

Also we received the table legs today, used ones. Got 'em for a reasonable price of EUR 88,00 (shipping included). Haven't unboxed them yet, as soon as we have, pics' ll  follow.

Here's some pics of the TV's box, the playfield itself and me trying out Visual Pinball's Addams Family. So far everything seems to work neatly. I'm very content with the image quality, no ghosting effects a.s.o.

The hubby already took the scales which are

outer frame 560 x 956 mm
inner frame 525 x 930 mm
+ 10 mm in the middle for the LG logo

Knowing the scales the planning of the case was done via SketchUp.

SketchUp is an easy to use CAD-program for, you know, planning stuff. It's available for free right here:

http://www.sketchup.com/

Took only a little while after watching some how-to-vids.

So here's the visualization of the case:

Let the adventure begin

We were thinking about building a virtual pinball for a long time now and as the prices for LCD TVs have drastically dropped we have finally decided to start the adventure.

There's a lot of research to be done as most of the needed information are scattered around the internet. So we thought a complete build log would help people who also want to build their own virtual pinball.

So far we've decided to build a 42/32/19 inch cabinet.
For the 42" inch playfield we're thinking about buying the LG 42LB550V TV, but further research needs to be done.

For the real thing, many components are neccessary to provide force feedback, lit buttons and so on. We're thinking about using following components to control the solenoids and leds:

Sainsmart 8 Channel USB Relay 12V
LEDWiz
IPAC



Software

We've tested visual pinball 9 and it seems it works great. There will be a more detailed post about the whole setup when the time comes.

First Screenshot