Under The Knife

I have received the last shipment of parts now, but I've got sidetracked and created drawings for hinges, brackets and what not that needs to be completed. I've also decided that Mr Bubbles needed to have a little more surgery...

First - I needed to be able to move the drill-arm, but the old idea was to use an external servo and extensions. Not cool. So I decided to put the entire servo inside the Big Daddy. Guess what? It's a perfect fit!

1) Servo inserted into the chest of Mr Bubbles. I had to cut away some of the supports inside
but they won't be needed. This toy was made to be played with and has a lot of unnecessary supporting parts
that can be removed without sacrificing any stability.

2) Partly assembled and looking good! There are smaller servos, but this one pulls approximately 5Kg, which
is plenty of power to throw the arm around! 

3) The new joint very closely resembles the old joint, meaning the seam will be invisible. 

Once that was done, I needed to fix the servo "head" in the arm itself, otherwise it would just rotate around its own axis instead of moving the arm around...

4) Part of the servo inserted and glued in place. The glue is just an extra precaution since
I carved out a perfect hole before inserting the piece.  

5) Fully assembled (well, sort of) and ready to drill your balls out! 

Before assembling it for real, I need to replace the old multi-LED version of the helmet-light with a single LED that can show all colors. The reason for this is that the various colors shone with uneven brightness which the new one will hopefully remedy.

After that he's pretty much ready to roll - besides the angular motion from side to side, but that will be done using an external servo. I see no reason for Mr Bubbles to become fully mobile...

Slap some paint on it!

While waiting for my parts that are currently residing in customs-land, my girlfriend who works professionally applying decals helped me attach the last decals on the pinball machine - on the cabinet itself. It looks awesome!

1) The completed exterior - minus side rails and lockdown bar, but their time has not yet come.
It's really starting to look like a proper pinball machine now!

Doing so also allowed me to mount the legs in their final mode including the plastic protector, fixing the cabinet head and attaching the "fold-lock" on the back. The plunger, buttons and cabinet door is now also attached properly.

As soon as the parts arrive I'll jump right in creating the harness!

The Harness...

...is NOT completed.

I had to order a couple of things in order to complete the harness. Should arrive in a week or so, so I'll focus on my family and music the coming week instead.

See you in a week!

The World's Longest Stairmaster!

I'm not dead, I've just been AFK a couple of weeks doing this...

... so not much has been done with the pinball machine. As in, nothing at all.
Hopefully that'll all change soon as I'm planing to continue making the wire harness.
With a little luck the light board will be finalized in a couple of days as well.

I noticed before my vacation that I'm a couple of solenoid drivers short. Those last minute changes in the playfield design somehow escaped my planning of the electronics so I'll have to add them now. Nothing major, a couple of cables and a driver board that needs to be ordered...but terribly inconvenient!