3D Printed Pinball Ball Feed Demo | DIY Pinball
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- Опубліковано 17 вер 2024
- Demo and explanation of the 3D printed ball feed mechanism for my pinball machine.
At this point I'm very happy with the ball feed and trough and I'm moving on to designing flippers, targets, pop bumpers, and more.
Check out the video below to see how this mechanism evolved over time:
• Building a Ball Feed M...
BACK STORY:
At the beginning of January I decided I was going to build a pinball machine to help me learn electronics. It evolved from me wanting to build something simple out of wood to watching videos like Ben Heck's builds and actual pinball machines, and decided I was going to go all out with 3D printed parts, proper graphics, and more.
Subscribe to my channel to follow the journey!
I'm no expert but that seems like it would be one of the hardest parts to get right. Nice work.
Haha it definitely is! Thank you :)
Loved the fast action shot of the 3d printer doing its thing :)
Very cool Matt. I like the production quality and different camera angles and zooms on this one.
Thanks so much!
awesome!
Wow, nice project, great video. I love your enthusiasm!
Super neat
3Dimensional thinking for the win... after a few tries haha!
oh neat.
Good job !!
Thanks so much!
Nice, but as You've mentioned multiball and that ball sometimes is stuck and need to be pushed by other ball... what with the situation when 4 balls are in play and 5th should be shot into the playfield but is stuck in the ball feed ?
Thanks! Hopefully the answer is "I'll get a version where the ball doesn't get stuck". But a backup plan is to just use 1-2 more balls than is strictly needed by the game.
@@MattInglot that's a choice
any update on this project?? I wanna see where it's at now!
Slow going! I've been distracted by many many projects.
@@MattInglot Would you be so kind and release the STL file? I've seen your comment above saying you were not comfortable with that due to the project testing not being complete however that would still be helpful for a handful of people, including me. Unless of course you're planning on monetizing/selling the stl, then I'll understsand. I'm actually in the middle of building my own pinball and planning final layout including the feeder which for now I'm planning to build with a servo operated feeder arm. However should you decide to release, I would possibly change that. Anyways, just wanted to see if you changed your mind maybe?
@@s1mon1231 Hey that's really exciting that your building your own machine! Honestly I haven't touched the feeder in a couple years and I don't think the STL would be nearly as helpful to you as you think. If I manage to return to this project I actually plan on redoing the model to fix a few design flaws because it only works like 99% reliably (not nearly enough). Also keep in mind my machine is 67% scale, if that's not the scale you happen to be using it's even more useless.
My advice would be:
1) If you're building a full-size machine, then seriously consider just buying a ball feed mechanism and the other mechanical parts. Most home-brew pins take that approach. I didn't go this route because my goal was to learn new skills like CAD, mechanical engineering, etc. The pinball machine was secondary to the learning that it allowed. If that's also your goal then ignore this point. Or don't because even with off-the-shelf parts a pin will teach you all these things and you'll have a much greater chance of reaching the finish line. It's a little ridiculously how complicated of a project a pinball machine actually is.
2) I chose this particular feeder design in order to conserve vertical space because portability was a design goal of this machine (and let's face it, I had no idea what I was doing). It borrows heavily from Gottlieb's design (I think it was Gottlieb at least). However IMHO it's a mechanically inferior design compared to modern machines like Stern's where the balls are kept in a vertical hopper and then flung upwards into the trough. This solves a lot of reliability problems caused by more than one ball being fed to the second solenoid. At that point either 2 balls get fed to the trough or the whole thing jams. Soooo... even if you are building your own, consider copying Stern's design instead.
Hope that helps and good luck.
I think this is a great design and just wanted to ask if it would be possable for you to release the stl files for this mechanism.
Hey Niklas appreciate the kind words. I can't share an STL at the moment as this is still in (slow) development, and while it's pretty reliable, I don't feel comfortable or ready to share an STL. For ex while it works pretty reliably, the model in the video took a lot of tweaking with hot glue to get the solenoids in the right positions. Someone trying to use this in any meaningful way would go mad pretty quickly. That said feel free to copy the idea and make your own model. The basic concept builds off videos I watched on how some pinball machines make ball feed work.
Which solenoid and how many V and amp you use for it
JF-0826B (12V/2A) Note that the specs on these things tend to be a little fluid... I've also had success running it at a higher voltage with infrequent pulses but obviously YMMV.
Unless my eyes are deceiving me, these are not regular pinball sized ball, what size are they?
It's all scaled down, including the balls. They are 3/4"
@@MattInglot oh sweet. Thanks.
What solenoid were used for the #2?
Pretty sure it was the JF-0826B
Seems over-engineered. It should be feasible to do all of this with a single solenoid. A one-way door over the drain to retain balls in the chute, and a simple gravity feed queuing them up for a nudge into the plunger lane.
A common mechanism in modern games has the ball feed underneath the table and then yes gravity does some of the work and you have a solenoid shooting the ball straight up, hitting a curved top piece, and feeding into the ball shooting lane. I may experiment with this at some point. The downside for this particular game is that it requires more space underneath the playfield, and that's a problem for a game designed to be portable.
@@MattInglot What if, instead of firing vertically from below the ball trough, the solenoid was mounted horizontally and drove a wedge which would pop the ball upwards? That way, you would only need a depth below the playfield of just over one ball diameter.
Stealing this idea haha
Marry me o/