#Canada - #RepairCafé sews, bolts, and seals up the leaky, slow, and damaged

Written by Hayden Michaels Tuesday, Apr 01 2025, 6:00 AM

"The #SwiftCurrent Repair Café has once again come and gone and left the world a better working place.

"From clocks to mixers, from radios to jackets, almost anything that could fit through the door was examined, diagnosed, and put back in working order. While the volunteers can't tackle anything too out there or too large, they make sure to stitch, staple, and suture what they can mend.

"This year, Keegan Story and the rest of the volunteer handymen and women were happy to help fix 80 per cent of the items brought to them.

" 'Electronics and appliances are one of our busier areas,' shared Story. 'Today they fixed a kid's toy DVD player, a vacuum cleaner and a few other miscellaneous electronics.'

"One of the special booths at this event was the #PinballMachine corner. Kids were infatuated as local Pinball Wizard/technician Darwin Gooding built one of his '70s machines and let them play with the finished product.

"Other interesting fixes were computers, mechanical clocks, clothing, and just about anything and everything else that Swift Current brought out.

"The goal of the Repair Café is to mend items that normally would go in the trash. Be it their disposable nature, or the unrealistic monetary nature of certain fixes, this bi-yearly event unshackles practicality in favour of keeping what is old, new, and what is broken, pristine.
A child learns about circuitry, causing a rotor to fly up, up, and away!A child learns about circuitry, causing a rotor to fly up, up, and away!

" 'We've got a lot of people here that are handy that just like to offer their support,' said Story. 'We're keeping some stuff out of the landfill and keeping some money in people's pockets.'

"The next Repair Café will be held on October 25, 2025. Anyone looking to volunteer is encouraged to reach out via the Repair Café website or to contact them on Facebook."

https://swiftcurrentonline.com/articles/repair-caf-sews-bolts-and-seals-up-the-leaky-slow-and-damaged

#RepairCafesCanada #SaskatchewanCanada #RepairCafes #RightToRepair #BuildingCommunity #ReduceReuseRepair #ReuseRepair
#SolarPunkSunday

Start saving up your quarters now, because a new Dungeons & Dragons pinball machine entitled "The Tyrant's Eye" is coming in 2025 from Stern Pinball and Wizards of the Coast. We get our flippers on all the details. https://dungeonsanddragonsfan.com/dnd-pinball-machine-tyrants-eye/ #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #wizardsofthecoast #wotc #sternpinball #pinball #pinballmachine

Oh my…

Hold all my calls.

#pinball #pinballmachine #metal #HeavyMetal #ironmaiden

The greatest invention of mankind:
The #pinballmachine

Sharkey's shootout has the oddest looking backbox. It's a shame they didn't go wild with the design more often. #pinball #arcade #arcadegames #pinballmachine

Introducing The Motörhead Homebrew Pinball Machine!

https://ausretrogamer.com/introducing-the-motorhead-homebrew-pinball-machine/

@shoq What about #Wealthy #White #Conservative #Men playing a system built by #Wealthy #White #Conservative #Men like a #PinballMachine don't you understand?

@flexghost @peteorrall The reason: You are watching a wealthy, white, privileged, conservative, man play a system built by wealthy, white, privileged, conservative, men like a #PinballMachine.

Sometimes I think to myself, while listening to podcasts or watching videos, that someone from X should meet this person from Y.

I am watching a #PinballMachine video from @TechConnectify and I think to myself that he should really meet Kevin Day from #ThatHappens (because that latter owns a lot of pinball machines, even worked for #MidwayGames and famously broke Goro from #MortalKombat). I even think to myself that it should work out great since I believe they both live around Chicago.

Hopeakuula Arcade - our little piece of (pinball) heaven. This is the 90s and 2000s side.

Trivia: the name Hopeakuula means Silverball, so we're pretty straight forward about what we have! #pinball #arcade #pinballmachine #kouvola #finland #retro

Tilt
-March 29, 2023
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https://pbase.com/image/173606665/original / https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr6lblLpPqV/
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#cleveland #tremont #vintage #pinballmachine #basement #march2023

Really happy to share some final before and after pics of our latest pinball restoration project, a 1985 Williams Comet pinball machine. We finished off the last few tweaks over the weekend. It was in pretty rough shape when we got it and we've spent many, many hours cleaning and painting and replacing components to get it looking close to new. #pinball #pinballmachine #pinballlife

Great short documentary about Suzanne Ciani’s sound design for a pinball machine. 🎛️🎚️ https://youtu.be/r28i-k3mL3o #SuzanneCiani #RetroGaming #Electronic #ArcadeGames #Pinball #PinballMachine #Retro #SoundDesign

A Great Resource For The Would-Be Pinball Machine Builder

Those of us beyond a certain age will very likely have some fond memories of many an hour spent and pocket money devoured feeding the local arcade pinball machine. At one time they seemed to be pretty much everywhere, but sadly, these days they seem to have largely fallen out of favour and are becoming more of speciality to be specifically sought out. Apart from a few random ones turning up — there's a fun Frankenstein-themed machine in the Mary Shelley Museum in Bath, England — a trip to a local amusement arcade is often pretty disappointing, with modern arcade machines just not quite scratching that itch anymore, if you ask us. So what's an old-school hacker to do, but learn how to build a machine from scratch, just the way we want it? A great resource for this is the excellent Pinball Makers site, which shows quite a few different platforms to build upon and a whole ton of resources and guides to help you along the way.

P3-ROC pinball machine controller mainboard - note the Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA

Building a working machine requires some serious skills from a wide range of areas covering woodworking, metal bashing, graphics design, electronics, game design and programming. For a newbie, there is so much to learn that it must be really daunting trying to work out where to begin! Luckily Pinball Makers has sections for each of these disciplines, and many more, with guides to the special pinball-specific construction techniques as well. Want to know how to construct a slingshot? Covered! What about an electronics platform to build upon? There are many options, some based around then Open Pinball Project (OPP) and some not so much. Now, hands up who fancies building a Hackaday-themed pinball machine (dark theme, naturally), and what would the game be? Answers down below!

Boy, have we covered pinball machines a lot over the years, here's a beautiful machine built into a coffee table form factor, that might help you sneak that out of the workshop and into the living room. If that's too big, and you 'got the look' when you wheeled your creation into the house, here's a teeny tiny PI-based virtual machine to make you feel better. Finally, if building one is not your game, and you're hankering for the real-deal, you might need some debug help with the older machines!

Thanks [Keith] for the tip!

#games #howto #construction #diypinball #electronics #pinballmachine #retro

Clear Off the Coffee Table, It’s Pinball Time

Like many of us, [BuildXYZ] has always wanted to own a pinball machine, but doesn't have the space to justify buying such a big and heavy toy. But where there's a will, there's a way. [BuildXYZ] figured that if they could build a pinball machine into a coffee table form factor, they'd be at least halfway to justification.

[BuildXYZ] didn't choose just any pin. After doing a bunch of research, they settled on 1981's Bally Centaur because it's an early solid-state machine, and it's one of the best. It has no secondary playfield levels to deal with, making it much easier to do this project.

Where do we even start to describe this beautiful labor of love? There are too many details to list, but know that it seems to be equal amounts of restoration work and custom work that brought this table together. The build video after the break is definitely worth your time, and you'll gain a much better appreciation of the amount of time that went into this, from the custom score decoder chip built on an FPGA to the 3D printed replacement drop targets and new acrylic bits to replace the yellowing ones from the playfield.

[BuildXYZ] started by building a pintisserie, which is exactly what it sounds like -- a rotating barbecue spit for a pinball machine's guts that makes it a breeze to work on. This maintenance-friendliness reappears in the new cabinet design, where the circuit boards are screwed to a pair of drawers.

No, you don't have to play it flat. But you do have to clear off the top before pressing Start, because a pair of mini industrial linear actuators raise the back end by 5-7° depending on the setting. We were a little sad about the lack of plunger, but [BuildXYZ] is right -- it would knock at your kneecaps. On the bright side, [BuildXYZ] reused the 'free ball' solenoid as the ball launcher, which is driven by that shiny metal button. Again, be sure to check it out after the break.

Honestly, we haven't seen this much work go into a pinball machine since this one, built entirely from K'nex.

#games #coffeetable #fpga #linearactuators #pinball #pinballmachine

flippers and bumpers…

#cat #pinballmachine #animatedgif

flippers and bumpers…

#cat #pinballmachine #animatedgif

vape rings...

#vaping #smoke #smokerings #rings #pinballmachine #storefront #animatedgif