This weekend was all about lighting and plastics. First step was to replicate the plastic ball guides on the game.
I knew I couldn't replicate the metal standoffs in my home shop... nor could I really duplicate them easily / cheaply at Techshop. So I jumped in my appropriated Klingon Bird of Prey and slugshot around the Sun arriving in the year 1986... on a mission to procure some Transparent Aluminum so I could machine me some standoffs. Turns out that Transparent Aluminum hadn't been invented yet so I worked out a deal with a materials engineer to trade the formula for a suitable material with equivalent properties. The engineer and myself agree that Acrylic would have to do in a pinch. So I loaded up my Bird of Prey and came back to the present.
The idea would be to laser cut the acrylic... and some 1/8"wall acrylic tubing and bond them together with some acylic solvent. Here's the test piece I created to test my theory:
Why Acrylic Tubing? Well; I feel that the metal standoffs used in the original pieces block a lot of the light from the lamps underneath said plastics. With the tubing; the light transmission should be at the best case conditions. With the test piece a success; I began the work of assembling these pieces. I needed to clamp the acrylic pieces to the tube standoffs while the solvent bonded the two pieces together. What better way than to use the alignment board used by the sign shop to print the playfield. Some screws and we have the ability to clamp:
I opted to recreate the grey standoffs as well; so they'd also be clear.
Here's a closeup shot of one of the ball guides being clamped:
The guide we left to finish bonding overnight... just to be safe.
