The Modern Firepower Pinball Project - Cabinet Assembled

I finished painting the cabinet, and with Troy's help we got it mostly assembled.  For now I'm going to leave off any artwork, I find the all black cabinet to be classy and different.  The paint is a semi-gloss, so those are soft reflections you see on the side of the cabinet.

The cabinet looks classy its black and chrome motif.

I haven't painted the backbox.  The front wood panel that covers the monitor and holds the speakers needs to be designed, routed and installed before I paint it.  The speakers that are dangling from the monitor are the original speakers that came on the 32" TV.  Since they are not very good, I will replace them with either 6 1/2" or 6" x 9" car audio speakers, which I haven't yet picked out.


In case you're wondering, decasing a TV or monitor is very easy - simply remove the dozen or so screws that hold the plastic housing to the TV.  I would hazard a guess that cheaper TV's come apart easier, which is a bonus.  The benefit of decasing is twofold.  Primarily, the LCD panel inside the case is smaller than the bezels on the case, so you can integrate it into your own cabinet without an overly large border.  Secondly, the panel inside is nice and square, making it easier to install into a custom cabinet.  I routed a groove into the side panels of the backbox, and the TV simply slides into the groove.

Wanna play?  Not yet...

You might also notice that the side rails appear white - they still have the protective film on them.  I plant to do a little more buffing and polishing of the black paint inside the cabinet before I permanently install the side rails.

The inside is black and white, like an Orca, or Airworlf.

You can see that I left the inside of the cabinet primer white below the playfield.  I applied a few gloss coats over the primer to protect it.  It's not the most beautiful finish, but for something you will almost never see it is plenty good enough.  Leaving it white will help on the few occasions I need to work inside the cabinet.

Yes, those are quarters - we were testing the coin mechanism.  That's right, pay to play, baby, pay to play.

Though there's still a few little odds and ends left to complete, it feels good to see the cabinet come together so well.  It's extremely hard to resist throwing the unfinished playfield in to see the progress. 

Soon.  Very soon.