So a few months ago I was walking around in a Masterminds Toy Store and came across this treasure chest toy for $6.95.
It looks remarkably similar to the treasure chest toy used on pinballdecals.com for $164.99
Anyways, I picked one up for myself and have been meaning to replicate it for my own game to mount to the left of the shooter lane. I started by drilling out a hole on the bottom of it and normally I wouldn't use a hammer drill but my cordless hasn't been used or charged in a few months.
I asked Adriano to pick me up a few of these cointaker slow fading color changer LEDs. I used a #44 bulb socket and flattened out the mounting tab and you will see why later.
I picked up a bag of these glass beads from Dollarama and drilled 7 small holes in the treasure area of the toy. Then I used some alligator clips and tapped into the game's GI. Before you turn the game on make sure the socket isn't touching anything metal like the side rail, coil bracket etc. I did this to test out the transparency of the glass beads and the cointaker color changer inside the chest and it looked pretty good.
I used a bit of crazy glue to attach each glass bead in the hole to avoid them coming off from the vibrations during game play.
Now I fed two wires from the top of the playfield through an existing whole used for the right ball save cages. The I soldered them to the nearest GI socket followed with some zip ties to keep things clean. I didn't want to do any permanent modifications such as drilling a hole or using a screw to mount the light socket or treasure chest. That is why I flattened the mounting tab on the socket earlier and used some double sided foam tape to hold it in place.
I ran into a bit of problem when it came to even light distribution of all the glass beads. If the LED sits too far inside the chest it only lights up the glass beads on the right side but if I raise it up a bit they all light up. I cut up an old black rubber flipper rubber and stacked enough of them under the chest to create enough of a spacer. I used a screw to hold the rubber in place followed by some double sided foam tape to stick to the plastic.
It is not exactly like the one sold on pinballdecals which uses multiple color changing LEDs so the glass beads light up and change different colors but my mod cost me under $10 and about 20 mins to make
Here is a video of it in action on my game and if you have any questions about it or any mods I make feel free to ask. I don't keep anything a secret and I post these things to show everyone how easy and how much mark up there is to the mods. I also hope it encourages other to post up mods for their games for others to see or replicate.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhRuFrBnMz8&feature=player_detailpage&list=UUeONvLF7yqkCiEM_76-Kg4Q[/youtube]
Enjoy!
-Mike
It looks remarkably similar to the treasure chest toy used on pinballdecals.com for $164.99
Anyways, I picked one up for myself and have been meaning to replicate it for my own game to mount to the left of the shooter lane. I started by drilling out a hole on the bottom of it and normally I wouldn't use a hammer drill but my cordless hasn't been used or charged in a few months.
I asked Adriano to pick me up a few of these cointaker slow fading color changer LEDs. I used a #44 bulb socket and flattened out the mounting tab and you will see why later.
I picked up a bag of these glass beads from Dollarama and drilled 7 small holes in the treasure area of the toy. Then I used some alligator clips and tapped into the game's GI. Before you turn the game on make sure the socket isn't touching anything metal like the side rail, coil bracket etc. I did this to test out the transparency of the glass beads and the cointaker color changer inside the chest and it looked pretty good.
I used a bit of crazy glue to attach each glass bead in the hole to avoid them coming off from the vibrations during game play.
Now I fed two wires from the top of the playfield through an existing whole used for the right ball save cages. The I soldered them to the nearest GI socket followed with some zip ties to keep things clean. I didn't want to do any permanent modifications such as drilling a hole or using a screw to mount the light socket or treasure chest. That is why I flattened the mounting tab on the socket earlier and used some double sided foam tape to hold it in place.
I ran into a bit of problem when it came to even light distribution of all the glass beads. If the LED sits too far inside the chest it only lights up the glass beads on the right side but if I raise it up a bit they all light up. I cut up an old black rubber flipper rubber and stacked enough of them under the chest to create enough of a spacer. I used a screw to hold the rubber in place followed by some double sided foam tape to stick to the plastic.
It is not exactly like the one sold on pinballdecals which uses multiple color changing LEDs so the glass beads light up and change different colors but my mod cost me under $10 and about 20 mins to make
Here is a video of it in action on my game and if you have any questions about it or any mods I make feel free to ask. I don't keep anything a secret and I post these things to show everyone how easy and how much mark up there is to the mods. I also hope it encourages other to post up mods for their games for others to see or replicate.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhRuFrBnMz8&feature=player_detailpage&list=UUeONvLF7yqkCiEM_76-Kg4Q[/youtube]
Enjoy!
-Mike
