(Topic ID: 257530)
Kansas City, KS
These https://www.pinballlife.com/britecaps-evo-pop-bumper-lighting.html bright caps are not doing it for me. I can’t control them or change my GI lighting color. I like the RBG LED in my TNA pop. But it is a little dim. I’ll try to squeeze in a multimorphic flasher in each pop. It works if I print a ring around the flasher, bend the header plug and put an “ice” pop top on it. Better but not perfect.
502F5186-74C8-413B-9563-AF109322341C (resized).jpegC2AF751C-0949-43CD-A2AC-152DF726AAC4 (resized).jpegF31BB499-F33A-4412-BAC3-5E712EDFC896 (resized).jpegHere is a closeup of my ramp and diverter. The diverter uses two 12V coils to push and pull the flap to one side or another. It works pretty well but I will probably change it to a stepper or servo. The lock works great, though. It uses 2 12V coils controlled by the PD-16 to stop the ball. The coils fire and hold for 200 ms to let a ball past. Just before the lock are two opto switches which can open the lock when triggered for non-locking mode or leave the solenoid closed to stop one or two balls. Super easy to control with MPF. And, of course indicator lights. I only wish the whole assembly was smaller and looked less hacker.
IMG_4905 (resized).jpgI have an old Nikon digital SLR which I had the IR filter removed from the sensor. This lets me shoot in IR. The IR LEDs are really really bright to the camera. When I want to accelerate the ball, you can see that the ball trips the first beam on the way to the magnet and the second beam turns the magnet off so as not to stop the ball. To reverse the ball direction, first pin the ball then let it drop away from the magnet and re-fire the magnet as if accelerating. This required one of the MPF guru's to write me a few lines of python code. Otherwise all the other pinball control is just YAML config files.
UnderworldIR (resized).jpg
Here at the bottom you can see the RGB ball timer. It’s time to start thinking about version two with inserts and improved geometry. I am a little worried about getting the shape of the inserts just perfect so they fit properly when hammered in. I Ran a test board with some shapes I found online and they don’t fit the inserts I ordered from pinball life. Furthermore, hammer space charged me $100 for about a dozen holes in a 12 x 12” board.
0C555F0A-9CCD-4BCE-9BA8-2CDA6DF03231 (resized).jpegThose heat set nuts from McMaster are great. They are extremely strong and bond to the plastic when inserted with a soldering iron. I am using them all over the place. Better order another 100.
Ok, the Kansas City hammer space CNC router is not Going to work out for me. Too bad, too. It’s a great machine but they revised their pricing and I am probably looking at $400 or more to grind out the next play field with them. Double that if I screw up my design. I’ve been doing a little bit of math and for about $800 I can build my own CNC machine if I use the Root3CNC plan. This system uses a 3-D printer to make many of the parts and runs on stepper motors and belts that I am familiar with from a project in college. Another pinball friend of mine made one and it works for him. He has even agreed to grind out a couple of the wooden parts for me. I figure this is going to put my project back about six weeks to build a CNC Figure out how to use it and dial it in. https://rootcnc.com/machines/root-3/
Ok, I’m printing parts like crazy for the Root3. Some of them take up to 11 hours each. ABS plastic did not working out at all. It shrinks too much for the large parts and warps as it cools. So I have started printing in PTEG (same stuff that makes 2L bottles) it is slightly more flexible but seems just as strong. It also does not smell when extruding. But I lost more time fiddling with the feed rates, temperature and layer height.
Parts are beginning to come together. The Root3 lets you chose the size of the cutting area. I’m making mine big enough to cut a playfield in one job. Many of the parts use nuts pressed into plastic. Heat set nuts would work better.
FE04A56F-E537-4150-A4C6-751DF0898278 (resized).jpeg1C0F265E-4AC6-401A-A33C-ECF29A1EC9B7 (resized).jpeg361C393F-3EAF-402C-8687-90E39EE88272 (resized).jpegComing together nicely. It’s just big enough for the job. But this on the floor stuff is killing my back. I put the 24 v supply and 4 stepper motor drivers in a Keurig Cup dispenser no longer being used at work. Yay. Saved $20.
0C3E4C2A-43BE-4068-9F5D-360BF67DF522 (resized).jpeg59ED1AE2-E5E4-4A4B-A3B7-34546BB435F0 (resized).jpeg8D3D4CFE-3E34-4CF6-ADB5-94198167B63D (resized).jpegIt is time to deconstruct Greek gods version one and design a new play field in fusion 360. This baby is going to make it happen. It is a 15 year old flatbed scanner that is no longer available. I picked it up on eBay for $80. It is used by library archivists because the flatbed scanner is set on the object to be scanned.
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Edmonton, AB
The playfield is scanned in overlapping pieces, 16 in total. These are imported into Photoshop and a merge algorithm stitches them together. Supposedly, it is accurate down to the millimeter. Let’s hope so because I am going to take the gigantic image and put it in as a background in fusion 360 upon which to place my mechanism holes. Along the way, I have made a ton of notes of where to move things to open up the ball path. Remember the Sisyphus feature, the Powerball in the horseshoe? I still need to resolve if the flippers can send it all the way around the orbit.
F5CABA15-D8F2-4A1A-9CFB-6960136150C2 (resized).jpeg8A320977-5D7D-433B-AF3A-43E15456DFFF (resized).jpegQuoted from transprtr4u:Impressive... Following
I’m with you I love following these home brews .Keep up the great work CM and it’s a great theme!!!
To resolve the question as to whether or not I can launch a Powerball from one side of the orbit to the other I need to weld up the horseshoe and make and interim Whitewood. Surprisingly, it shoots reasonably well. But it requires a dead on hit against the Newton ball but then the Powerball shoots from one side of the other with a very satisfying “Thunk.” There is a downside to this design however. When the pinball hits the side of the Newton ball without the Powerball present, it is just a brick shot for the pinball. Also, I don’t see a good way to activate a light show with a dead hit.
84A7636F-3F97-427F-8A23-22132B2F4DD1 (resized).jpeg65464EFF-902D-4F2D-B823-25DB81F2AC30 (resized).jpegJust out of curiosity how did you learn to do this? I’ve worked all trades but last 15 years as a building engineer I work a lot with pneumatics and electricity but to put together one of these I’m guessing your a machinist ?
Ok that seems to work so I will build a new ramp around the “Sisyphus” feature. This is getting me into the sheet-metal functions of fusion 360. It’s a really neat environment where I can draft what I want the folded piece to look like and fusion 360 will flatten it out so the sheet-metal can be laser cut. Along the way I am also making new ball guides. This might look like Las Vegas when I’m done but I want to perforate my ball guides in my orbit and outlines with hole spacing that lines up with serial LED strips.
Where did I learn it? Almost entirely on the Internet. I am in healthcare. But I did have a year of drafting in high school, a pascal computer class in junior college (shows how old I am) And two years of high school electronics. Though, when I got to Kerkhoff theorem. I was completely lost.
Quoted from Cmartin1235:Coming together nicely. It’s just big enough for the job. But this on the floor stuff is killing my back. I put the 24 v supply and 4 stepper motor drivers in a Keurig Cup dispenser no longer being used at work. Yay. Saved $20.
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Is this a project you’ve been doing for a while? The amount of updates and progress in the span of an hour or two is pretty fast and furious!
I mean you said “I may build my own CNC machine” and an hour later you post the finished thing!
Impressive.
Quoted from Cmartin1235:People must be wondering by now what about the translucent LCD screen and the underworld? Well, that part is working really nicely. Because the screen is so dark, I have to light the slingshots with really bright 12 V flashers. They are from an automotive website. Each ear has a magnet and four optical switches that can either accelerate the ball, stop it or even reverse its direction. But the player can only see the central square area. Including the upper play field I’m up to five magnets in this beast is getting really heavy. In fact, my play field bows considerably when I lift it. I will need to reinforce that in the next iteration
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So this entire massive unit will sit underneath the game and be displayed on the LCDs instead of using a tiny window like Black Hole, HH, and other games?
That’s a nice idea, a little peephole into the invisible underworld. Definitely a fan of that idea, sounds like a service nightmare though 
The upper playfield seems a bit barren though, and the left sling/bumper nest seems like it will catch the ball for too long.
I like your use of magnets to accelerate and decelerate the ball. Just beware of rapid magnetization.
OK I’ve got more metal back from OSH cuts. I went with 18 gauge stainless. I am feeling that this was a mistake because the ball guides aren’t quite as stiff as they should be. The mirror finish stainless that I used originally is stiffer than the brushed stainless that I ordered this time. The mirror metal must be a different alloy that is harder and takes a shine. It would have been better to use 16 G this time. Well, I will use what I have. I trusted the measurement specs on the serial LED strip. It turns out that the LEDs are ever so slightly closer than they should be. This is made more of a problem around the orbit which stretches the strip slightly. I am going to have to cut the strip about every 20 LEDs and solder in a short bridge. But, fusion 360 came through. My ramp entrance is looking pretty good.
211199D9-FB0B-4DE8-A55E-B6C7644EF8ED (resized).jpeg72ADE032-CDDA-4C73-B24F-DD31E5035424 (resized).jpeg7106ABC6-7818-4A17-8850-8E863A4B63E8 (resized).jpegHa, somehow a picture of my brother who is a private pilot got posted and I don’t seem to be able to delete it. Well, I have a brother. He’s great!
I think I’m going to use proximity sensors in place of some of my rollover switches. These 18 mm diameter sensors will detect more than 5.5 mm away from the ball. This allows me to retain about 2 1/2 To 3mm of wood above the sensor which should be enough to remain durable. This way my art won’t be messed up. I saw on the net where a guy was working on putting these under inserts. Maybe I will try that too. The sensors won’t detect a Powerball of course but are good for pinballs. They run on 12 V supplied by the SW-16.
8510E4C8-8916-4D1E-A245-2F372198C54D (resized).jpegThe Root3 CNC came through. Pretty close anyway. It seems to skip a tooth occasionally over long distances causing a bit of stairstep at the two ends. Hopefully this won’t screw things up. I welded up some side rails to go underneath the playfield to reinforce it so it doesn’t bow under the extra weight of the underworld play field. Watch your fingers when lowering playfield! And yes, I was relieved that it fits.
3B48BF83-9ACA-429D-AF5C-D5C5D10DD317 (resized).jpegA4D296F6-11D8-460C-A82E-CCD16E12DA87 (resized).jpeg2B3B37B4-23C0-4B48-B050-94EACB01FF1D (resized).jpegQuoted from Cmartin1235:Where did I learn it? Almost entirely on the Internet. I am in healthcare. But I did have a year of drafting in high school, a pascal computer class in junior college (shows how old I am) And two years of high school electronics. Though, when I got to Kerkhoff theorem. I was completely lost.
This is all Kerkhoff to me but I’ll be following trying to pick up on it.Best of luck
My second version of the ramp is done. I would really like to get it chrome plated but nobody around here does that work. I found a guy on the Internet who specializes in chroming pinball parts but he works on his own time scale which is to say he gets to it when he gets to it. There is a place in town that does reverse electrolysis polishing but that’s mostly for industrial food handling and aerospace equipment. They’re happy to do it but will charge me about $1000. I suppose I will make do with a polishing wheel and a bunch of resin.
DD86C869-D5EF-45DB-9AC3-0DD67F39547F (resized).jpegNow, a few words about the art. I might have mentioned at the front that this is a project with my kids. My daughter is turning 11 and she is already a much better artist than I am. She picked the theme and has been steadily working away at features we are going to print on the playfield. So, if you don’t care for the art, please be kind.
The art process has been extremely interesting to me. I exported the line drawing of the playfield from fusion 360 to adobe illustrator. Illustrator has a iPad app that my daughter uses to draw in the individual features. I pulled these features into Photoshop, put down a color background and blended it all together.
After that the magic happens. There is an industrial printer here in Kansas City that was extremely gracious in taking this as a small job. After I prepped the playfield with a thorough block sanding to smooth out the inserts, I presented the “canvas” to them. They used a high-end inkjet printer which made two passes over the playfield laying down the graphics.
Here is a time lapse of the print.
The actual printing took about 10 minutes and was fascinating to watch. After the first pass we realized that a couple of the inserts were not masked correctly and we had to scrape off the white background. Oh well. It was a small mistake I should have picked up prior to approval of the print. After a little work, it was ready for the color layers.
Next comes the hard coat. I don’t have an automotive paint shop set up which is the proper way to do this sort of thing. Instead, are used this product. Each can has a smaller can inside that is punctured from the bottom. This mixes the chemicals and after a good shaking you have some thing that is very similar to automotive clearcoat. And it’s just as toxic. I work at a hospital and the paint shop crew was nice enough to let me use a hood. I already had a respirator mask after cleaning up mold at my parents place in the Florida Keys when a hurricane came through three years ago.
AE4213A9-0ACC-45C3-A6E3-F1F98CECEC35 (resized).jpeg919CC50E-C60D-445D-A38B-C25B6E9C76FD (resized).jpegJust started today with reading this post. Please teach the guys from Deeproot how to complete a game.
One person ,innovative features no experience, no team of experts...
Again impressive.....
OK, there were some problems with the print. It turns out that my play field ended up about 2 1/2 mm compressed on the Y axis. Probably this is from the home made Root3 CNC machine skipping a tooth on the belt. My black rings around the inserts aren’t quite right but it’s good enough for who it’s for. If I could do this part over again, I would use drive screws instead of belts on the CNC machine. Much more reliable for a longer worksurface. I would also go with a shorter CNC table and do the playfield in two cuts. The more I learn about how to use a CNC table it really doesn’t gain you very much by doing the playfield in a single run. You just have to line everything up for cutting the upper and lower parts of the playfield separately.
If you look closely, you can tell which are the pinball life and which are the home printed inserts. With the lights on there is a bit of crosshatch texture on the home and made ones. I will just call that quaint.
Back on the rotisserie. About halfway through the last build I upgraded from a swivel vice and a workbench to some gas pipe fittings. Yes, I know the wiring is looking pretty messy. I guess that’s not my talent.
66A7EEFD-3ACA-4782-AEF7-D5495C445915 (resized).jpeg0984F022-7370-4F36-8633-416549596916 (resized).jpegThese RGB flashers in the pops are not doing it for me. I want something even brighter. It would be really cool to use LCD displays in the pops but that is a pipe dream. I found these motor cycle 12V angel eye RGB rings. They are meant to go around headlights. I’m going to try to hot glue two of them in a pop bumper top. I’ll drive them with MOSFETS controlled but the PD-LED. They have 4 22G wires I will need to bring out the bottom of the pop. That will take a little drilling and make changing the pop a (hopefully worthwhile) pain. I am using “ice” pop covers. The clear is just for illustration. If you try this yourself be sure you are getting common anode rings. The common cathode require a more complicated control circuit.
3EB6BD86-CAE0-4C7F-942A-E84DAE73C3D1 (resized).jpeg2177DFC9-AB68-4F47-8FDB-ABC857268F6D (resized).jpegOh man, I’m hosed. After finishing putting on the mechs I see that the ball won’t roll through the gap between the slingshot and the outline divider. One of the gurus at multimorphic saw my CAD online and PM’ed me that it looked a little tight through there. I had a false sense of assurance That it was fine that it was fine since I was just tracing over the old design and I had only slightly tweaked the lower slings. I mean, it had to be fine. That scanning process was rocksolid. Except, the ball won’t roll through. Going back to my scan of the first version playfield I see that there was an artifact we are photo shopped stitched the 16 images together. I lost about 9 mm along the Y axis exactly between the level of the flipper and the slingshot. I am so hosed.
OK, maybe I can sort of salvage this. I can move the post supporting the lower end of the slingshot band up about 3 mm. But I still have to move down my in line, outline divider. And I have to change the angle of the L so it still meets up with the flipper holes.The only way it’s going to work is if I fabricate some new type of divider that sits offset from the general illumination holes that are already in the play field.That could gain me the additional millimeters I need. But I will lose the general illumination.
Quoted from Cmartin1235:OK, maybe I can sort of salvage this. I can move the post supporting the lower end of the slingshot band up about 3 mm. But I still have to move down my in line, outline divider. And I have to change the angle of the L so it still meets up with the flipper holes.The only way it’s going to work is if I fabricate some new type of divider that sits offset from the general illumination holes that are already in the play field.That could gain me the additional millimeters I need. But I will lose the general illumination.
That’s rough, always test your white wood and test it again!
I’m sure you can make do with it
Old, and new. Yeah, the 3D printed divider looks a little funny but I think I can make it work. I am really going to miss the illumination. By the way, the proximity sensors set just below the level of the in line and out lane indicator inserts. They work reliably.
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