This is the introduction to building your own Virtual pinball table. In here you will find everything you need to start building with all the items I bought for my build. There are other alternatives available but my guides will use the items described here. This part includes cabinet designs, special effects, information on the artwork, TV specifications and much more. This is a large project and I recommend to thoroughly plan your build ahead so you don’t run into troubles while building it.
DIY Virtual Pinball
Introduction & Design
Building the cabinet
Installing computer, controls, special effects
Adding games & tables
Setup PinballX & Controllers
Photo Album
Since I was already building an arcade cabinet, it would be great to have a virtual pinball table that goes along. Pinball tables are generally easier to build as most the woodwork are just simple panels and there are a lot fewer controls. However, the pinball table may be more expensive as the arcade cabinet so keep this in mind if you are choosing between one or the other.
The cabinet of a pinball table is fairly easy to build but before you can build your cabinet you should choose your design. Pinball cabinet plans are available on the internet and there are 2 main types: standard body, and widebody cabinets. personally, I would never choose the standard body but I recommend watching some youtube videos and decide for yourself. Below are a few links to plans but there are definitely more if you don’t like any of these:
For my build I went with the Williams wide-body cabinet, this should fit most 46″ TV just fine:
If you still haven’t found what you want, you could design your own cabinet if say, you already have the TV and want to make it fit as tight as possible, this is very important as you want the side bezels to be almost nonexistent for the best experience. In my case, I went with a Williams widebody design that should fit most 46-inch TV’s. I even found a forum post of someone who cramped in a 47″ TV by cutting a groove on both sides to slide in the TV. But if you want to be safe you can change some measurements in the design to make it fit. Try to keep everything in proportion and keep in mind when you change the width of your cabinet, you may need a custom length lock bar for your cabinet which may be more expensive and harder to find, also you can probably not use the virtual pinball set I’m using and you have to find all parts manually yourself.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m using the virtual pinball set, this is a handy set containing all parts you will need to completely build your own pinball table. There are many parts to this bundle and it will save you a lot of time.
- Ultimate Cab-Builder’s Kit (Mini)
- Ultimate Cab-Builder’s Kit (Standard Body)
- Ultimate Cab-Builder’s Kit (Widebody)
- Ultimate Cab-Builder’s Button Kit
The button set is an add-on to the big set and comes with all the buttons you will ever need, I bought a few other buttons as spare or to switch out later.
When you decided on your design, we can look into the controls. Most real pinball tables have very little buttons. Usually a left&right flipper, a start and launch button will do. But since we’re building it from a computer, we can add as many buttons as we want and map these to any key or function in Windows. I went with 13 buttons however when my build was done, I found that I only used 6 so far. You may take this into consideration for your build.
These are my mappings to give you an idea of what options are available in the software.
- Green – Enter button (Start a table, Open menu in pinballX)
- Blue – Select button (in some games used to enter menu)
- Red – Exit table
- Orange – Genre (PinballX select table genre)
- Yellow – Flyer (Show Flyer image in PinballX)
- Green – Help (Show Help in PinballX)
- Launch – Digital Launch button
- Blue – Special 1 (Special button in gameplay eg. missions)
- White – Change View (Change view while playing)
- Plunger – Analog Plunger input
There will be multiple different games on your machine, every game has slightly different controls and the front-end has a lot more. The following games will/can be installed on your machine: Pinball FX2&3, PinballX, Pinball Arcade, Future Pinball, Visual Pinball. You can google the required controls per game and see which ones you find important. I found myself playing Pinball FX3 the most, the controls for this game are mapped to an Xbox controller. Eventually, your input will emulate these buttons and control the game as if you have an Xbox controller connected.
Plunger (+Nudge)
As you can see in the FX3 controls, the right analog stick is assigned to “Analog Ball Launch” and the left stick is assigned to “Table Nudge”, With the digital plunger from virtual pinball, we can have both features working. The set comes with a real plunger assembly and a digital sensor tube that slides over the plunger. This will measure and convert the plunger pull length into the analog stick value required to use the plunger in game. The controller board of this plunger is also equipped with a motion sensor, this sensor can be mapped to the Nudge table analog stick and will allow you to have the in-game table shake when you shake the cabinet. Nudging is allowed in pinball to prevent the ball from leaving the table. However when shaking too hard the game will TILT, the sensitivity for TILT can also be assigned here just like real pinball tables. The Digital Plunger Kit also has 15 IO pins that can be used to connect your buttons, including your flipper buttons so this is basically the best all-in-one you can find.
A Pinball machine requires a few parts other parts besides controls, below is a list of all the parts you will definitely need to buy. For each part, I added my preferred option and a few other available options that are more or less expensive:
DMD Screen
All 90’s pinball tables have a DMD screen, this is a matrix display to show the score. These screens have evolved over the years and are now even capable of playing short animations & videos. A Real DMD screen is very bright and the resolution on these newer screens are pretty amazing. These screens are about 300$ and are highly recommended, I went with a PinDMD which is an RGB matrix panel of 1040×272 LEDs, powered by the same PSU used by my computer. This way the DMD will only turn on when the computer is turned on. The less expensive alternative for this is using a regular monitor but just show 1/3’d of the actual screen (hiding the rest behind the wooden panel). This is a popular alternative at the fraction of the cost but will require a bit more configuring during the setup of the software (I will not cover this in my guides), the other downside of using a regular monitor is the brightness, real DMD screens are Extremely bright (they really blind you) and I’m currently running my screen at 30% brightness. This brightness can never be achieved by a regular monitor… The most popular DMD screens are:
If you decided to go with a monitor, ideally you want your DMD monitor to be the brightest, you also want the parts of the screen that are not used (black) to be really black which in case of some display technologies is not the case. Some leave a white glow showing that the screen is on which you want to avoid. A 19-22″ Widescreen monitor should do fine and are pretty cheap these days. Also, you don’t want the screen to be too wide because you will need some room left and right for your speakers.
Speakers
The back panel houses a set of speakers on both sides of the DMD screen, You can choose anything you want as long as you find a way to connect it to your computer. The Virtuapin shop has a few audio bundles including a subwoofer, two normal speakers, and an amplifier which are quite cheap. I went for the 5.25″ pinball fidelity set that comes with 2 backboard 5″25 speakers, an 8″ subwoofer, a suiting amplifier and a power brick. The only thing I had to buy was a 3,5mm to RCA cable and I was done. The audio from these speakers is decent for music and very good for voice and pinball effects, the subwoofer is a lot better than expected (especially the flexible excursion) and the amplifier comes with a power adapter and is just the perfect size. The amplifier has volume controls for the high and low, main volume control and a “crossover frequency” knob (what frequencies get send to subwoofer). The amplifier has a momentary power switch so it will turn on when you plug in your table.
Backglass Monitor
All pinball tables have large back panels showing the game artwork, in older pre 90’s tables, the score is displayed inside this artwork using number wheels. These are usually square where most monitors are widescreen now. I did find large square screens that are used in stores for displaying advertisements. These were extremely expensive so not a real option for me (Eizo EV2730Q-BK). I will instead use a normal widescreen monitor, this monitor doesn’t have to be a new or decent one as it will mostly display 1080p photos as most of the artwork you can find is still 1080p or even lower. 4K monitors are at the time of writing still too expensive useless for this purpose. For my build, I went with an old 27″ iiyama monitor I had laying around. The casing on this monitor is also very easy to remove so the bezels were even smaller.
Playfield TV
The playfield TV is what will decide the major cost of the cabinet. You can buy commercial frameless TV’s but these are about 1500$. After some looking around, I found a used Samsung UE46ES8000 – 3D LED TV – 46 inch – Full HD monitor which, according to the official Samsung specs is EXACTLY the same width as my cabinet. I only had to remove the built-in camera and logo, but then it fits perfectly. It even clammed in place between the sides of my cabinet so if you happen to find the same TV, I highly recommend this one. This is a 2012 screen so the chance of finding the same may be very small. I went with this TV because they literally don’t make 46″TVs anymore. If you find a different TV, I recommend checking if the TV turns on automatically when you connect the plug, this is not required but something you want as this will make your pinball table turn on using only 1 switch instead of turning the TV on manually. In case you found a suitable TV without this feature, there are guides online on how to use an Arduino to turn on your tv automatically using IR signals this way you can still have your pinball table turn on with only 1 power switch. The Samsung luckily had this feature which could be enabled in settings.
The frame of the TV is different for each brand but recent screens tend to have almost non-existing bezels. As mentioned, frameless TV’s are an option if the cost doesn’t matter, you can buy commercial “frameless” monitors but at a very high cost:
Special Effect Controllers
For the special effects, you need an interface board to control these with your computer, the most commonly used interfaces are a SaintSmart 8CH Relay board & the LEDWiz.
The LEDWiz is a controller board that allows you to control up to 32 different effects that run off 5 or 12 volts. This board will be used to control our button LEDs, cabinet lights, and flashers. A nice feature of the LEDWiz is that it has dimming capabilities (PWM), this way you can have buttons fade in and out slowly. Make sure to buy the LEDWiz with 32 outputs and not the one with 16 outputs and 16 inputs.
The SainSmart is a relay board with 8 relays which can be controlled over USB, this is basically the same as the ledWiz but for higher voltages, this board will be used to control my 230V rotary light and relays/solenoids. If 8 high power relays are not enough, you can buy multiple SaintSmarts and add up the number of outputs.
A real pinball is full of lights and music to lure you into playing. During the game, there are the rear flashers, playfield lights, cabinet lighting… to spice up the intensity of the game. This is the same for virtual pinball tables, we can have the same effects including flashers, under cabinet lighting, rotary lights, a real knocker (when scoring extra ball) and solenoids for reproducing the sound of a mechanical pinball. Here is a list of all effects I used for my build including some alternatives.
Cabinet Lighting
Under and/or backlighting looks very nice and I would definitely recommend everyone to go for this. The color and intensity of the stips can be mapped to almost any event in a game, you could have them change color every x-seconds or just have them match the table you’re playing. LED strips are fairly cheap these days and the ones with 144 LEDs per meter are bright enough to really light the room. another plus is that these strips can be powered by a spare computer power supply, I plan to use one for powering my button and cabinet lighting as I had one laying around. Using a Pc power supply is recommended as it supplies 12V as well as 5V so no need to worry about the required voltages. You can always go with a dedicated power supply per voltage but that will probably end up more expensive than this very easy DIY trick. Converting a PSU to power led strips will be covered in my guides. I went with 2 strips on the bottom, each 1m30 and 2 strips on the back of the cabinet each 1m50. This makes a total of 5m60. LED strips come in 5m lengths and you can make them a bit shorter to only need a single strip but in my opinion, you can never have enough led strips laying around and the spare 4m20 ended up lighting the underside of my bed and couch. I also ordered an aluminum profile to keep my strips protected and some easy connectors for when I need to remove the backboard.
- 12V RGB LED Strip
- LED Strip Aluminum Profile
- RGB Ledstrip Wiring
- LED Strip Connectors
- LED Strip Amplifiers
Rear Playfield Flashers
Rear Playfield flashers are common in most (post-1990) pinball tables, these provide extra feedback when the ball is hitting targets. In most cases there is are 5 or 7 flashers in the back of the playfield, I suggest sticking to these numbers as this is easier to map in games.
Backglass Effects
As the main effect, I choose a blue police rotary light because its a illuminates a big part of the room when lit. I also went with 2 Flashers on top of my backbox. These will illuminate the playfield and I currently have them flashing when I hit any bumpers on the back of my playfield.
But you can choose anything you like, as long as it can be powered by 5,12VDC or your main AC power. Some alternatives are:
USB 3.0 Ports/Hub
I added some easy accessible USB 3.0 ports for when I want to plug in a USB controller for playing MAME games, or a keyboard/mouse for when the cabinet is closed and I need to make some changes, some even added full arcade controls with a joystick to be able to play MAME games in portrait. Arkanoid/space invaders are great and it was a hard choice but since I already have a dedicated arcade cabinet I left this out. I can still play MAME games by simply plugging in a USB controller though.
Solenoids/Relays
Solenoids are used in real pinball tables to move objects on the playfield, in the slingshots and your flippers. These solenoids have a very distinct sound when they trigger and are a big part of the pinball experience. Solenoids use 50volts to trigger initially and 20volts to stay in position. This is hard to replicate but 24Volt relays are a great alternative that sounds very close to a real solenoid. The most popular relays are Siemens industrial relays. People on forums that have tested multiple relays say these tend to have the closest match to how a real solenoid sounds. You also need a Power supply to trigger these, 24V DC 200watt is enough. Because you usually don’t have all the relays triggered at once. The relays will be controlled by the saintsmart board. The placement of the relays is also important so when you hit your flippers the sound seems to come from the front of the cabinet but that will be covered later. Virtual pinball tables usually have 2 at the flippers, 2 slightly above the slingshot and 3 in the back. but generally the more the better. For my build, I went with 7.
These relays also come in 110V and 230V AC voltages, these are usually a bit cheaper but create a high risk of blowing your other components in case of a failure.
Knocker
As a real pinball table, you can install a real knocker, these are used to let you and your surroundings know that you just won an extra ball. Basically, it’s a big solenoid that knocks very hard against the inside of your cabinet, in older tables this is was a bell. The sound is very loud with some players even getting jump-scared when it fired. I personally have not installed a knocker in my table as not supported by many games but if you want one, below is a link where you can buy complete assemblies ready to be installed. I will not cover this in my guides but the same principle of the relays will apply here.
Light gun
While building I had the idea to add a lightgun to play light gun shooter games on the backboard monitor. You are forced to stand at a distance that is about perfect and it would be a very neat addition to the all-in-one pinball cabinet next to the 400+ horizontal MAME games.
- EMS Topgun 3: Generally cheaper, wireless, recoil, 4 IR emitters, hard to set up initially
- Aimtrak: More expensive, high quality, wired, no recoil, smaller IR bar
The virtual pinball table will run on a Windows 10 computer that will be installed inside the main cabinet. A medium spec PC will do fine but if your main monitor is 4K, you might want to invest in a more powerful graphics card. The other components will be fairly basic and cheap. I also had some parts laying around and eventually ordered a new CPU, Motherboard, and RAM:
- Intel I3 8300 CPU + Cooler – 102€
- MSI 310m Pro VDH – 50€
- 8GB DDR4 2133Mhz – 85€
- OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD
- 1000GB HDD Seagate
- MSI GTX 770 2GB Twin Frozr OC
- 600Watt PSU
- Cooling paste, anything is better than Intel’s included thing.
The speed of this small PC is pretty amazing knowing it only cost me about 250€.
USB Hub
To connect all the controller boards to the computer I highly recommend to get a decent powered USB hub, it’s very important that the HUB is powered by an external power brick to minimize issues like devices randomly losing connectivity in-game. I went with a Powerillex HUB but anything will do as long as it’s powered. 6 ports are the minimum here.
To finish the cabinet, we need large stickers printed with artwork that can stick to the sides and front of the cabinet. If you know your way around in photoshop, you can design your own but I’m only good at Microsoft paint so I needed a different option. If you are building a replica of a real pinball tablet you can order replacement decals for that cabinet, but these original designs usually cannot be changed in size and are in most cases copyright/license protected and thus will cost more. The third option I went with is using pre-designed artwork. A person called stuzza who is a visual designer created many designs that are very high quality, and freely available on his onedrive (+-35GB :o). He made these in his free time as a hobby and I can not thank him enough. If you really want a unique personally designed artwork, you can contact stuzza, and after seeing the free designs, he definitely knows his business and you probably won’t find anyone else who is better at pinball artwork than him.
For my cabinet, I went with a blue generic design. I chose this because I didn’t want a single themed cabinet like the Simpsons or Angry Birds. Instead, this multi-retro character design matches the retro of the pinball. The multiball text is very well chosen as it is probably your first goal in every table you play. The design comes in Photoshop format (PSD).
After downloading and opening one of the files, You want to make sure the decal completely covers the sides of your cabinet. In photoshop open each image and click “Image Size”, then select canvas size or image size. there is a difference here you may want to know:
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- Canvas size: this will enlarge the printed size but it will add the blank area around the image.
- Image size: this increases the image itself, this is what you want to adjust. if you adjust the image size the canvas size will also grow. this is not when changing the canvas
When resizing your image, make sure to leave at least a cm extra.
To get your artwork printed you got a few options but I choose Retro Refurbs and I can anyone recommend this shop:
The process of applying the decals will be one of my last parts. If you really don’t want to spend time on your artwork, a few sets are available on the VirtuaPin website
After this long read, your parts should be on their way and the main cost of your cabinet is spent. For the following guides you will still need some tools and paint that is not yet included so leave some extra if you’re on a limit. While waiting you can gather the tools needed to get done faster.
Any question or tip, leave a comment below
26 Responses
Hi Steven,
Thanks very much for sharring this.
I’m busy to create a standard body. Only struggling how to mount the tv in it.
Not sure how many cm it shouls be placed under the glass.
And if it is a way to easily create a lift mechanism for it.
I have most of my parts almost 3 months. First started to build the backbox. Thats is after 6 weeks almost finished.
Now building my cabinet.
I have my decals designed by Stuzza as well. The look pretty awesome. Cannot add a picture of it.
I will use your blog for my ‘phase 2’.
That will be feedback and flasher lights
Hi, great to hear… my table is actually done, I finished the blogpost but It just needs some proof reading. expect part 2 this week :p.
Awesome !
I hope to have my cabinet finished this week ( that means, painting, decals, buttons, legs and coindoor in place)
After that I must connect everything.
Worked now for about 5 months on everything. Most time was to setup the software, but have arround 300 tables in pinballx (mostly vpx tables s d some vp9)
Still not sure if I should TPA on it. I have it working with a kinect 2.0, but interface is terrible for a cabinet.
Hi, seems like your build is pretty far already. I personally have TPa installed, but I’m not using it too much. I’m a big fan of their latest Ghostbusters table, however, I haven’t got that one working in my cabinet yet :(, I have camera files for all other tables used by the freeCam Mod though. It’s not the greatest experience but gets the job done decently. I highly recommend FX2 and FX3. these are the most used games on my cabinet. The kinect (head tracking) support for TPA is too much work and requires regular calibrations… I left this out to minimize the issues and maintenance on my cabinet. My electronics are all done and the guide is pretty far in as well, I’ll try to finish them this week 🙂
I’m pretty curious for your electronics manual. I have most in my head that I want, but didn’t test it to the pc. I have a digital plunger and ledwiz board. And a real knocker..
I’m in doubt if i should by the zebs flashers board, or to wait for it.
Just painted the cabinet black. Hope to put the decals on in 2 days.
Just a question. How did you mount your tv in the cabinet (fun fact: I have the same tv in my bed room, pretty expensive one !)
I don’t have the fx 2 and fx3 game, but will give the demo a try if my cab is finished. I never liked the tables that where not real, but now with the Williams license it can be a nice improvement
Hi, currently i just have my tv resting on two wooden blocks on the side of my cabinet. I’m currently having troubles with the tv displaying green screen and automatically turning off every few seconds. My cabinet is unusable at the moment due to this issue. The FX games are indeed not verry realistic but the gameplay in these games is imo the best available.
Too bad to hear from your cabinet (or tv exactly)
Hope you have a replacement soon.
I mounted my tv too with some wooden blocks too. It fits nicely, but not sure if the angle is fine. Didn’t test that yet.
I still need a lot of work to do. Hope I can the first tests this weekend or the weekend after as a complete setup
Hi, ive been sick for a few weeks but i’ll make sure to include my tv angle in the upcomming post. still struggeling with my broken television 🙁
Hey Steven
Is your csbinet fixed?
With other words: did you replace your television?
Update my side: my cab is almost finished. All is working only need a glass for the playfield and the backbox.
I installed FX3 on your advise and that is pretty awesome !
Thanks for the advise
Brilliant, thanks for this post. I’m just in the research stage at mo. Did you consider adding cameras or kinnect for Bam. Haven’t really looked into this yet but isn’t it meant to make tables look 3D ish?
Hi, I have looked into a Kinect camera but decided not to install one. They are indeed used to simulate a 3D experience but this won’t work on the most popular games like FX3 though. Also, there is a lot of software that has to work together flawlessly, DOF, DOFLinx, Directouptut… all of them require a lot of work to set up correctly. I’m still having some issues getting everything to run perfectly and adding a Kinect camera will not make it easier. Also, the Kinect 2 camera’s are still quite expensive and I don’t think it’s actually worth the extra effort and money to get this quite bad 3D effect for only a few of your tables. I found myself playing FX3 99% of the time since the graphics and gameplay is simply the best out there. I installed virtual pinball and future pinball on my table but most of the tables require manual editing of the table code to get it to work correctly on your machine which takes hours per table in some cases.
This is exactly the project I am looking for! Ty so much for this. A couple of questions, 1) approximately how much is this going to cost? (Like you, I have considered buying real tables or prebuilt but $10000 is too much to sneak past the wife, haha)
2) any thoughts on the best TVs vs monitors? 4k for best visuals? Is 3D tv adds a lot? What are the most important things to consider? (Putting this much work into it, I want a killer playing field display)
Hi, i would estimate the cost at around 3000$ to 4000$. for the TV, i used a 1080p 46″ screen (2010). 4k tv’s are very cheap nowadays so if your pc has a decent graphics card, i would definately go with a 45 screen.
Hi, first of all, thank you very much for taking the time to document your build. It’s very helpful to others such as myself who are considering building their own cab! Question: For the special effects like strobes, LEDs, solenoids, etc., is it game-specific, i.e. the table has to support the functions and then once something like zebboards ezkit is physically installed, it just “automatically works” depending on which table(s) support it? Or, can any game be customized to access the special effects. Thank you!
This is indeed the most complicated part of the build, getting all your effects to work. for pinball FX2 and FX3, they have many outputs that can be mapped to your build fairly easily. for future pinball and visual pinball, it’s a lot harder. the “compatible” effects differ for each table and may even require some coding to get them working correctly for your specific build. In the end, I stick to FX2&FX3 most of the time. setting up all the tables correctly in visual pinball and future pinball would take ages to do, although many VP and FP tables support a 5/7 led flasher bar and some cabinet lighting out of the box without much thinking. The issue is with less used effects like a knocker, blower, shaker. getting these to work usually involves some coding and requires a lot of time.
I tried to “reply” to a previous note but it didn’t seem to work, so I’m sending a new note. My nephew is selling his old system with the following components. Can you please let me know if you think it would be adequate for playing the virtual pinball games with no lag:
i7 2600
32gb ram
500gb Ssd
1060 6gb
750w PSU
Thank you!
Hi, your nephew’s pc seems pretty decent and should run all games fine at 1080p high settings. I’m not sure about the 4K capabilities of this machine. FX3 is probably the game with the highest system requirements. you could ask your nephew to download Pinball FX3 on steam. The base game is free and should come with a free table.
Hi Steven, are you willing to share or sell your plans for your cabinet and backbox? I’m considering building my own as well, as opposed to buying one of the pre-cut kits.
Hi, for the plan, I used the Williams widebody blueprint which should be posted in one of the virtual pinball guides. If not… the blueprint is definitely available on the internet.
I have something like all of this in mind, but I think I’m going to have to go about it backwards, as I already have a “Space Shuttle” pinball. It would be interesting……….
Hi! Love the build guide, thanks for that!
I’m currently looking at building a virtual pinball cabinet myself. I’ve built my arcade cabinet about two years ago and now I want to go the pinball route. I’m in between choosing the standard Willams Body or the wide, because the TV I’m going to use is only 40 inch. I need to measure it to see what works best.
Can I ask why you would never choose a standard body size?
And seeing I’m also Belgian (Dutch speaking), where did you order your parts? 😉 Did you use pinballshop.nl ? I was also looking at buying the VirtuaPin Cab-Builders Kit there but 600 euro for a few plastic and metal parts seems pretty steep 😉 so I hoped to find a cheaper alternative.
If you got a 40inch tv I would probably go with the standard body cabinet. my tv 46″ tv was temporarily broken and I replaced it with a 43″ which made it look terribly with the large open spaces between the cabinet and the tv. If I would build again, I would probably go with a 50″ tv. I got many of my parts from pinballshop.nl but at my time of building, there were not as many kits available here in Belgium/Netherlands so I had to ship parts from the US. shipping 350€ of parts was about 200€ shipping 🙁
Thanks for the reply!
In the meantime I did some measuring and I can’t fit my 40 inch tv in a standard width cabinet. Which sucks.
So either I go for the wide or I go custom which means a custom lockbar which is going to be a expensive pain to get in Belgium… Like you said, shipping (and import tax) costs a lot! :O
Today I cut the wood for a wide cabinet + mounted it using dowels (not fixed yet). So I can try out the size. If I don’t like it, I can always make it more narrow.
you could mount some led strips on the side, I originally planned to install some ws2812 led strips left and right of my tv but the fit ended up too tight. it could be a great option to fill up the sides and make the gap feel less “open”. gettings these to work is quite difficult though and not very cheap but there is a lot info about them.
I builded a normall body a couple of years ago as well. Hard part is to get nowadays to get a 40″ tv in it (or monitor)
I have a samsung 4k 40″ tv, but on fast ball movements it looks like the pinball ball is dissapearing.
So think about it orrectly before you buid or buy a cabinet.
If you use pinballx as a front end, I build a program called databasemanager that makes it very easy to add tables and its media
For some kits pinballshop.nl is good (but expensive). If you don’t buy kits, yiu can order real pinball legs, coindoors (if you want), plungers, bolts, buttons etc on other pinball ships that are much cheaper.
But if you have a lot of money, you can order at pinballshop.nl
I ordered a lot on aliexpress as well (wires, extra buttons, extra speakers and recivers for ssf, addressable led strips and matrix).
indeed, I got a 46″ tv which are not being made anymore for over 6 years now, got no clue why that is. about the issue on fastball movements, you could try overclocking your tv (from the Nvidia control panel) since it’s 4k it may not work but if you put your resolution on 1080p/1440p you could try to force your tv to show 75hz (native) instead of the default 50 or 60hz (never go with native 50hz tv’s, they are not fast enough for the ball movements). I managed to force my Samsung tv (60hz) to display 75hz. this 15hz really made a big difference making fastballs move much smoother. Aliexpress is indeed very useful to lower the overall cost of your cabinet, I also found that if you don’t buy the kits but look for the cheapest price for each of the parts you can probably save quite a lot on as well.