From a reliability standpoint, the fewer moving parts, the better.

yes I suppose so as never seen one up close. idea would be that half the ferris wheel would be above the playfield and the plunger or ball launch arm shoots through the top centre hole or and bottom centre hole could be the feed point with one switch down there to tell the micro stepper to rotate "x" degrees to load another ball.

as for the traditional ball launch chute if 3d printing a very angular one a lot of pressure will be directed to the crease of that flap but if built up and have a nice radius (maybe a little more than what I drew in) the force on this area will be greatly reduced but instead of dribbling the ball out it will shoot out.

here is a quick sketch (no fixed dimensions) of a beefed up vuk style chute with a nice radius, last image is a section.
trough chute 1.png
trough chute 2.png
trough chute 3.png

totally agree but depends if you want to introduce a different feature - coloured ball management. Imagine an avengers pinball with a black, green, red and blue ball and the theme was to select hulk (green) for more damage. Rotate until the green ball is loaded. Use a nema motor from a 3d printer which are cheap to rotate the ferris wheel ball mech and some sensors that are optical not mechanical (reduces mechanical parts). Biggest wear point would be the gear between the motor and the ferris wheel but using a belt drive like in 3d printers, and think you could have a reliable and affordable mech that could turn for hundreds of hours = thousands of hours of game play.

was not aware of this, any photos out there...

troughs take a pretty good beating, thus the issues we have seen with divets forming where the ball first lands in the rough and balls getting stuck, which led to multiple enhancements/add ons to correct that including Mantis going to the rods instead.

The 'distance' thing is an interesting concept, but the reliability of that would be a big question mark, as talked about, if the trough reports incorrect number of balls, all sorts of bad things happen. Reality is the WMS opto trough, while expensive, does work pretty darn reliably in the scheme of things. Not saying don't try to make a better one, but not sure the effort is worth it, I can see a lot more room for failure than success. I can better see doing this for a production machine, when looking to reduce the cost, since it is one of the most expensive parts currently.

think I found the Python trough design

screen-capture-10.png

I don't think it is new, while I could be wrong, I think it is just a slight variation on an old stern or data east one.

Hah that's a mockup of almost exactly what I've had in mind for the VUK chute on the trough I'm drafting. I don't know how curved it would need to be as I was intending to print it extremely thick on the back/topside and I'm trying to angle my eject from the bottom of the PF as much as possible (~70° right now?). The trough under the playfield resembles thicknesses closer to sheet metal but the above PF part I want to look like a 'block' of plastic with the VUK carved out of it. Come to think of it a chunk of wood with that curve routed out of it could even suffice lol...

RE: a new trough design entirely

I think there's for sure room for improvement/innovation on a ball trough with 'lower stress' ball delivery using stepper motors, and there are some neat possibilities that could result from them (colored balls, different densities of balls, maybe even pucks or different sized balls, or balls sent from the trough to different locations other than the shooter lane) but for me personally I'm struggling to stay focussed on building a generic flipping whitewood to code and play with lol. Last thing I need to do is spend all my time developing a new trough technology for a game I'll never end up making I'm already burning up days modelling something I could buy for ~ $150 or so, but the hope is myself and others might not need to spend that cash anymore for boring old troughs at the prototype stage.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the sound and feel of a ball trough and coils firing is likely something that would be "missed" with plastic troughs and/or stepper motor alternatives. The clunking and clanging is part of a pinball experience for many mechanisms and changing them alters the feel of a game even if the function is preserved.

Like chimes vs digitized sound, it took awhile to break free from the 'sound' of pinball, and I personally think the sound of draining balls into a metal trough and the trough cycling balls is probably going to feel 'empty' if replaced by the whirr of a stepper motor I actually do miss the extra drain-coil firing from the old Sys 11 days to put drained balls into the trough, even though it makes no sense at all to have it lol...

Thanks for sharing. I had been tinkering with a design (sounds like we all are) and it had a rotating ball loader. I didn't think I was the first to think of it.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Archimedes-screw_one-screw-threads_with-ball_3D-view_animated_small.gif

They have one of these at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. It is pulling water from a fountain pond. Mesmerizing in its own way.

Aaron
FAST Pinball

Yeah but if you are going to make them in any kind of numbers it's not going to be a $120 part.

An auger is easy enough to 3d print, it's not fun or cheap to manufacture (molding or welded steel)

This is probably a good place for me to start, because I tried it a few months ago.

Archimedes_Screw_Trough.jpg

The problem with this model is that the ball can still be at an indeterminate place and there's no real simple way to say "yes, a ball is in position X".

I moved on to a dual auger system that allowed me to move balls up and down a very closely sized channel.

I started by printing a set of test pieces to check for fit:

trough_fit_test1.jpg

Once I was happy with that I made the first, hand powered prototype:

trough_concept_1_1.jpg

trough_concept_1_2.jpg

For the next revision I decided to change to a better form factor, include a stepper motor, and have some type of feeder designed to feed the track.

First up was a test of the new form factor:

trough_fit_test2.jpg

Then I moved on to making the parts for the next real test, a stepper powered auger with the capability to also back up balls to the trough. The balls are detected in positions on the track, the augers are intended to go the entire length of the track to the exit, I just haven't printed them yet.

I'm working on the PC for Spaceballs right now, but once I've got that up, my next piece to work on is getting this newest design turning through software.

infinity_trough_new_version_parts.jpg

infinity_trough_new_version.jpg

infinity_trough_closeup.jpg

I drew that with a 1/2" curve but after sectioning it feel it needs to be no less than 1" radius to 1 1/2" radius

For Spaceballs, I wanted to handle more than just a handful of balls, and also be able to transport them up the playfield a bit against gravity. The design is intended to be printed in as many segments as you need, not just the 4-ball trough pictured.

This design requires no solenoids or mechanical switches and also with a pretty high degree of certainty knows when it has dispensed a ball. At least, that's the goal.

I tried a star shapped wheel, the problems I had was, mine didnt feed the fastest into the trough, and the software became a mess, I had optos under each position. the other problem, i needed a lip for the ball to slip into so when it rotated it didnt fall back out, as the trough was angled down from the apron toward the bottom corner of the pf. had issues with the stepper motor rotating exactly X each turn etc and I'd get out of sync (I had a bug somewhere in the software).. in the end I scrapped it, it started getting too complex and too many parts. it showed promise but I was not sold on the idea of a stepper motor and the hardware required to drive it (overall its not a lot but i have two williams and two stern/sega troughs I was playing with).

I sketched out several different designs. you want reliable feeds, fast feeds, no hangups, no missed ejections into the lane etc. the 'standard' below pf kicker trough of stern/williams is a pretty good design. They went with what they knew, its just a glorified VUK. I'd rather have microswitches over williams opto's. It becomes a trade off, faster reliable feed needs a certain depth, but I had a shallower design where the ball was just below the level of the pf, but that makes a slower feed down to the bottom of the trough, requires less kick to get the ball onto the pf, and with much less distance to travel you get much more reliable feed onto the shooter lane, essentially you dont need to try more than once because the solenoid plunger is long enough to feed the ball the distance without 'throwing' it clear as it pushes higher than the pf.

Let's look at this as a little 1 time exercise.... And since we were talking about troughs, and i happen to have a drawing of the wpc trough, How many would you like me to price?

Bob

3d printing a ball trough for multiple games doesn't make much sense (if you owned a 3d printer and don't mind the wear, maybe). I think the happy medium between 3d printing one-offs and production tooling (or even prototype aluminum tooling) would be RTV molds, which can produce about 20-30 parts out of urethane before the mold starts to wear. I only say this because even the toughest 3d printed material (polycarbonate) can break unless you REALLY beef up the walls, which would mean a much bigger slot in the playfield. urethane isn't ideal material, but I'd say it's probably 1/3 to 1/2 the strength of say a polypropylene. This could also prove out how well a plastic trough would hold up over time, how it would wear. If you were to REALLY seriously tool up a production mold, and you made it out of 15-30% glass filled nylon, and you did FEA in solidworks to estimate material yield with a few factors of safety, I guarantee you could easily get years and years of use out of it before it came close to breaking or wearing through. I bet you could easily shave off a pound or two making it from plastic vs steel too. I know that doesn't sound like much, but every pound counts when you're shipping overseas.

If you used a couple steel rod inserts like Kerry's improved Williams trough the balls would barely touch the plastic anyway.

true, but you have to think more than just weight, you have to also think assembly.. Unless you made them easily installed (slid in from the side). A plastic trough could be designed where it's all one piece.. just mount the switches to brackets with holes molded in. If Stern tooled it in China (1/4 the price of US tooling), and then had the parts sent to a shop that does assembly, they could come in with switches premounted, pre-wired to a connectorized harness, and drop it right in.

Has anyone taken a Williams/Bally, etc, ball trough apart, and unfolded the metal back to a flat piece? Maybe use that as a template for a utopia open-source trough?

Essentially everything pre Pin2k is expired. Only patents of course, copyright is eternal, all hail The Mouse!

Guys i already drew a WPC trough over on Pinballmakers.com in Solidworks. Solidworks can generate the flats automatically.

If you need them i can send flats to whoever needs them.

Aurich, I do design engineering for a firm that manufactures sheet metal, welded wire, injection molded parts, vac formings fabricated wood panels, and does assembly. Occasionally I'll make some pinball related thing, IE Balllly targets.

I have no desire to become a pinball manufacturer. But i like watching you guys come up with creative stuff...

I know for SS parts laser cut in Aus prices drop by 1/3 when ordering say 100 off instead of 10-25, as there starts to be savings in sheet loading and unloading, job prep and minimum charges.

I have the wpc trough quoted at 10,25 and 50 pieces. Quoted 2 ways, with a tool to create the de-boss and without the de-boss and a piece of 3/16 Steel welded in place to "create" the de-boss.

I should have a price tomorrow. I'll try and get a real price not a "This is a favor to Bob " price.

De-boss.png

There seems to be a lot of similar thinking around. I also has drafts of a trough with an Archimedes screw. It would have the ball on top of a small diameter auger, and a fitting hole for the ball. The biggest issue I could see is that the playfield needed a big slotted hole where the ball and the auger passes from below to above the playfield.
Another approach I am playing with is using a stern alike trough, but replacing the coil with a ball lift made with a circular dish with one ball hole. A geared DC motor or step motor is then used to gracefully lift the ball in the shooter lane.

That screw would be cool in place of a vuk, especially if it went well above the playfield to a ramp/return (up through a clear tube), in fact I may have to do that and may have the perfecr spot for it on my casino game, now I just need a 3d printer

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:96462/#files

I can help print something if you decide what you're looking for dimension-wise.

Dan

That was part of my experimentation with the larger archimedes one. Once you ramped up the speed, the balls were not happy just sitting at the bottom, sometimes they went up and over.

The dual auger can be run pretty dang fast. A very similar design is used in high speed paintball loaders.

if this was at the start of a mode vs a frequently hit vuk, where there is an animation or instructions going on, etc running, then the time it might take would not be that much of an issue. In my potential use case, the vuk in question is only hit after other things are done, so it would not be frequently hit, so I think it would work well. Of course, just started thinking about this today, so I'm sure there are 17 more things about it I need to think through.

Wow been awhile since I was in that hobby... is the Dye Rotor still the top tier hopper? They didn't even exist when I exited paintball but when I saw how they worked I thought they were super cool. The Halo was the king when I bowed out but I had an Evo 3 with Z-board and I wasn't able to outshoot it.

Funny enough paintball was my first exposure to optos; My 05 Angel Speed had oh-so-amazing visible beam anti-chop eyes (AKA: red glowing IR opto pair lol) and akin to pinball it was used to detect the presence of a ball to allow a solenoid (valve) to fire...

I actually know nothing about paintball as a hobby/sport. All I learned about their loaders was from mining their patent data.

The loader that the auger design went into was a crash and burn though. The design wasn't the only issue (production delays and such) but the last few balls would popcorn and not actually feed very well. Paintball loaders normally have the last few balls present a feeding issue because they act completely different from paintballs with a layer or two of more paintballs sitting on top of them. I have designed and made a smaller loader and had my own solution to the popcorning issue.

Pinballs would not have this issue because of their weight, but just something to chew on as my two biggest hobbies have merged for the first time.

There are some fun patents there

AFAIK there were (are?) no successful screw drive loaders

Ah there we go haha.

one of the most successful auger designs has to be the one used in cement trucks. Which when I first saw it, I thought it was really clever, especially how they leverage turning it both ways for different purposes.

Mine still has a pretty high chance of failure. I just don't post all the failures, a lot of them I keep to myself.

Fail fast, fail often. Don't be scared.

I use a trim router for almost all my cuts when making the playfields by hand. Sorry off topic now. Just answering an earlier question

My most recent game build uses a custom built trough where I am reducing moving parts and eliminates any damage from balls dropping in by having it roll down a curved surface smoothly. Also no shooter lane so it expands what I am able to fit. Full metal build . A few issues still to work out but close to fully operational.