Bottom holes routed out

And another new tool! We got ourselves a router!

To make precise holes for the 120mm bottom inlet fan and the subwoofer it's way better and easier to use a router. We cut the hole for the 200mm exhaust fan on the backside with a jigsaw and it's not as pretty as i'd like. With a router and a circle cutting jig it's working like a charm.

We've also cut a little hole for the control unit of the 2.1 sound system, as we'd like to be able to adjust the volume without opening the cab.

We still have to cut out an opening for the PC power button and and USB outlet, as you can see in the plan. I have a few arcade button leftovers somewhere and the USB outlets should arrive in the next days.

Here's the plan

We're going to use a be quiet! Pure Wings 120mm fan for the inlet.

Btw, we've also fixed the power connector hole in the backside

Leg leveler length

Just a word about the length of the leg levelers. As mentioned earlier, we want to achieve a slope of 3,3° for the cab. So how long should the leg levelers be? They can be expanded to a max. length of 10cm. The length of the legs is 725mm (without the levelers).

So for the calculation, we have the desired angle of 3,3° and the length of hypothenuse of 1216mm. (the length of the cabinet's bottom) Let's do the math!



The rectangle triangle has a sum of 180° on all angles,
Alpha = 90° Beta = 3,3° so Gamma = 86,7°





That means we need the length of b which needs to be added to the length of the backside, then we can calculate the length for the leg levelers we need.

Here's the basic formula:

With the values we've got:

So we have approximately 70mm difference between the front and the backside when the cab is in a 3,3° slope. 

On the front side we have 104mm from the bottom hole to the bottom, which is c in the picture of the triangle above. On the backside it's 50mm from the bottom hole to the bottom plus the 70mm we've calculated.  That's a difference of 14mm.

That means, the leg levelers on the backside have to be 14mm longer than the front leg levelers.

For a better understanding, here's a bad drawing:

She's got legs and she knows how to use them

That's one great ZZ Top song and so are the new pinball legs!


Unfortunately, the old leg levelers that came with the legs are too rusty to be restaurated properly. The bottom was already crumbling away, so we had to replace them.

Old leg levelers.

We got shiny new legs levelerss from www.arcade-shop.de and leg mounting brackets including screws from www.bestofpinball.de

The new leg levelers from www.arcade-shop.de

But, as always, there was a catch. The old leg levelers had a M8 thread, the new ones have an M12. So it won't fit. No problem here, we drilled a M12 hole and cut a thread so they do fit now.

M8 hole

M12 hole

New leg levelers attached.

So the legs are prepared, but where should they be placed? Sven from www.vpin-shop.de told me, that the front height from the floor to the lockbar should be 93cm. That's not possible with the new leg levelers being a bit higher than the old and with the Launch ball button in the way, but it's pretty close.

The original measurements for the bottom screw of the legs should be 100cm in the front and 50cm in the back, but with the higher leg levelers, that has to be adjusted a bit.

Front leg holes

Didn't know how to draw the holes in a 45° angle but this should suffice. The distance between the 2 holes is 57mm and, due to the Launch Ball button, the max height for the top hole (and the bracket) is 160mm. This should result in ca. 96cm height for the lockbar. Close enough for rock and roll!

We can't really measure it right now, as we don't want to screw down the bracket before painting. We don't want the holes in the wood to wear off.

The cabinet should have a slope of 3,3° so the 50cm can be used here as the leg levelers are long enough to reach the 3,3° slope and nothings in the way.

We used a 10mm drill for the M8 screws so they fit in without any hassle.

Backside leg holes

Front legs attached

Leg bracket with the culprit button

Backside legs attached

Doh! It happened again! When we cut out the hole for power connector, we didn't think of the brackets. We'll fix this tommorow with wood and filler...

Oops i did it again...

It's beginning to look a lot like... pinball!

Yes indeed, it does now, doesn't it?

Now first here's the schematic for all the drillings of the front the cab.

Drilling plan

Plunger holes

Flipper and Magna Save button holes

Took a good while until we got that one finished. Actually it all went more like bit by bit than finishing the schematic first and then do the happy drilling. Was a whole lot of comparing pics of other custom cabs because it's a very subjective thing where one wants to put all the buttons and should they be rectangular or round. 

We decided to go for rectangular ones for all buttons except the start button. And we put them quite close to the upper edges of the coindoor. The holes for the plunger look like they were a little deeper, hence the bracket of the plunger exceeds the holes, so the upper edge of the bracket is in fact at the same height as the button in row to the left.

Last time we told you to measure twice, cut once. It should be three times instead of twice, as you can see on the coin door. Cut too much, fixed it up with left over MDF, the filler will do the rest. 

Everything cut / drilled

The parts we used for our pinball machine were all purchased from www.vpin-shop.de, the rectangular buttons and the start button are from www.arcadeshop.de.

The original Williams coindoor was the priciest part hence this one is fully functional and to keep even closer to an orginal pinball machine we decided to invest even a bit more for two coin checking devices.

The Plunger Kit from www.vpin-shop.de

The power connector

Cab parts from www.vpin-shop.de

We couldn't wait and see the cab with all the buttons in place, so we just assembled everything test-wise. And here's what it looks like:

Everything's in place

Well, the cat kinda likes it we guess =^.^=

The cat pinball inspector says it's looking purrfect! An inside job?

Backside fan hole and lock cut out

Backside's finished! 

Ok, almost finished. We still ned some rubber for the fan-hole as it's not perfectly round. We'll have to look around where we can get that....

200mm exhaust fan for the backside.

Got me some new tools :D

Keyhole cut out, with the lock sunk.




It fits nicely!

Finished backside

TV Mounting

The Tv mounting is finished! 

As planned, we've placed the TV on the sidemounted rails. As the TV isn't flat at the back, we've used 2 x M6 40 and 2 x 60 bolts for the TV.

There isn't much to say about this, so enjoy the pictures.




The TV mounts.

Measure twice - cut once! That's what we shoul've done! ;-) 

As you can see on the left, the holes are drilled wrong. We've started from to drill the holes from the middle, which isn't working for this TV.

The siderails, cut at 800mm length and predrilled.

Side rails mounted,

Front view with the side rails

Placed the TV Mounts. They fit perfectly.

 

Used foam rubber to get some of the vibration from the solenoids and those stuff of the TV.

Finally, the TV is in the Cab! Looks awesome already!

Cab is assembled!!

We recently picked up the cut mdf-boards. 

They seemed perfect, they were neatly cut, absolutuely no fuzz on the edges so we couldn't hardly wait to finally put all the parts together.

The planning totally payed off, no gaps, no overhangs, well except for the the back of the drawer where a little extra grinding had to be done for it sat a little tight, a millimetre on each of the four edges less would have done the trick.

So here's some pics of the cab.

We decided to pre-drill some holes instead of just doing some headlessly drilling the boards togehter.

This is the assembled cab from the front. 

Here we put in the back of the drawer, just for testing if it'd fit.

...the drawer without back-board

....and here with the back-board fixed

...as you can see, we both fixed it via pre-drilled holes and in addition via brackets from the inside.