You can make your own pinball playfield rotisserie. Having a rotisserie to mount a pinball playfield is a great time saver and makes a tough job much easier. There are commercial ones (sometimes) available and they are extremely well engineered. However, if you want to save quite a bit of money and are a bit handy, you can build your own.

My design is outlined below. Quite frankly, it is not the best one out there. The better rotisseries use pipes that connect the two ends and keep them at a fixed distance. But this design is more expensive and it takes up room when not in use or requires disassembly for storage.

To save a little money, I made a compromise. I had two spare sawhorses and attached the moving components to the top of each. This cut out a lot of galvanized pipe from the design and makes storage quite a bit easier, especially since my saw horses fold up.

The pictures I have included are prior to installing the thumbscrews. These are installed by drilling a hole at the top of the 3/4" Tee with a 13/64" drill bit. A 1/4" NC tap is then used to thread the hole. If I were to do one thing different, I would try drilling a short distance into the pipe that spins within the Tee to give a place for the thumbscrew to set in. I would drill four holes, one at the top, the bottom and then the two sides, to make it easier to lock the rotisserie in place. If you try this, let me know how it works.

I used a 3-1/2" pipe (Nipple) within the 3/4" Tee so that the pipe will not slide back and forth. It would be possible to save a few dollars and just use a longer pipe that connects directly to the 1/2" flange. However, the pipe will then slide back and forth and it might make the design less stable. It would also make any pre-drilled holes for the thumbscrew, outlined above, useless.

The size of the angle iron is tricky. Too small (1" for example) and it can be difficult to attach the playfield. Too large and the iron will cover too much of the bottom of the playfield, making it difficult to remove parts.

To attach the playfield to the rotisserie, most use c-clamps. This will work quite well, but lends itself to slippage and a catastrophic fall. While some might consider this a sacrilege, I connect the playfield to the angle iron with screws and nuts. In this example, there were already enough holes drilled in the lower (bottom) part of the playfield so I did not have to add any. However, to secure the playfield, I would not hesitate to drill a couple of holes in areas where they are not visible in the assembled playfield.

At the top of the playfield, I remove wood screws that hold the top wooden board in place and then use slightly longer screws to attach the playfield to the angle iron.