So.. I've been told this by Mr Popadiuk.. Ben Heck repeats it because I'm pretty sure Dennis Nordman says the same thing (both taught by legends that built pinball before they did). So I didn't take this advice, though I had my reason. It felt like cardboard just wasn't stiff enough, and I was losing power when the ball used it's energy flexing the cardboard (hence why the ball wasn't getting through the loop everytime). Well, after painfully building it in metal with walls on both sides, it worked only marginally better. I'm realizing that a 4" diameter is just too large for the ball speed, plus the exit isn't nearly tight enough so the exit can sometimes aim well at the VUK, other times not so much. So, I've re-made the loop (YET AGAIN) out of cardboard (YET AGAIN), but this time going with a much tighter 3" diameter loop. I've made the entrance nice and wide (easy to aim) with a chamfer to direct the ball into the path, and then the exit is nice and tight (just slight clearance) to make sure the ball goes to the same path everytime. It seems to be working a lot better just from tossing the ball into it, but to really stiffen it up I've gone ahead and brushed on elmer's wood glue all over it. My thinking is that I'll be mimicking the same process as Papier-mâché (which creates a nice hard surface when applied to soft newspaper).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papier-m%C3%A2ch%C3%A9
Ideally I wanted to use epoxy (and maybe my final ramp will), but this is a good test (plus epoxy resin isn't cheap). We'll see how it looks in the morning after it's cured.
TOO big of a loop :-(
Wet ramp:
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