3rd flipper hooked up

Another quick video.  Even though I have no ramp to get up to the upper playfield, still wanted to see how the shot would flow, and it's working just like I envisioned it.  The goal is to keep the ball looping around, but there's a chance you can miss-flip and send it down the left waterfall ramp (coming soon).  I couldn't seem to drain it, but perhaps it's because I could easily anticipate when the ball was coming around.  I think once I get a wall put up, it'll be harder to react.  It's amazing that a piece of cardboard hot glued to a playfield can not only hold up, but actually flow fairly well.  When it gets switched to metal, it may end up being too fast (I may have to dial the flipper back).

Flipping again

After shorting out the first board, and making a small modification to prevent the large coils from pulling too much amps, I've got everything but the upper right flipper hooked up.  A quick video showing everything working

Mechs

No not that kind.  Mechanisms son!
So I know once ALL my solenoids are firing again, one crucial missing part besides the left return ramp coming off the upper playfield is the route by which the ball gets up there in the first place.  I've really been struggling with this part.  One design I had a guy carrying the ball up the wall, another design I simply had a hidden magnet dragging the ball along the back wall.  At one point I said eff it and just install a VUK.  VUK's are for pussies that like to play it safe.  Plus that doesn't really fit the theme, and certainly not the song that will be playing.  So it's an 18th floor balcony, how do you get up to the 18th floor?  An elevator of course, so why don't I just install an elevator?  Now before you say "Oh nice, stealing Ben Heck's hellevator idea", I did think about an elevator early on but had no idea how to accomplish such a thing.  Also unlike Ben who decided to basically use a rack and pinion system made out of acrylic, I planned on having the elevator supported by a couple screws through a slot in the back wall, and driven up by a threaded rod underneath (driven by a low RPM motor with the matching thread).  Similiar concept, but design-wise plenty different.  Also (and I'm not sure how AMH is designed from what I could see while playing it at pinball show), I plan on making the elevator hidden, and playable over on the back orbit shot.  When you make enough orbit shots in a row, the elevator starts climbing, and the ball should clunk against it until it rises up enough to enter inside, and bring it up.  I have an idea to tilt the bottom platform away from the entrance (so the ball stays inside), and then a way to actuate it to tilt back towards the playfield to release.  Once it hits the top, it'll hit a switch, deactivate the motor.  I may need a solenoid afterall to engage/disengage the motor so that it can fall by gravity alone.

I'm probably going to build a separate mech offline so that in case it doesn't work out, I'm not killing all the work I already did.  It's extra work, but in the end it'll save time.

 

wireform ramp fixture concept

So I thought about this a lot. Wireforms can appear daunting.  Wires moving in various directions in space, but if you think about them 2-dimensionally (one plane at at time), it's not so bad.  Now that's not to say wireform ramps can't move in 2 axis at the same time, but for the sake of simplicity (especially fabbing your own), it's easiest if we stick to this method.  So I started breaking this down in the same way I would model up the wireform in solidworks.  You draw a path on a plane, you create the shape that you're going to extrude along that path, then when you change direction, you typically change the plane you're drawing the path onto.

There's no reason that a "plane" can't be represented by a piece of plywood.  So at first I thought "Sure, 2 pieces of wood, 2 planes.  I can join these two together and simply route out my path.  Then I thought about the actual routing, not so much fun.  Routers are big and heavy, and not easy to keep straight.  If you have a dremel with a router-like attachment, maybe not so bad, but still wavy cuts.  So then I thought why not split up the separation, and the actual groove into separate pieces?  yes, that's it!  Get 1/2" plywood, then I can cut out the path thicknesses out of 1/4" plywood, glue them to the base piece (print out the path on paper as a template), and you've got a nearly perfect fixture to bend your wireforms against.  It would look something like this:

 

This also eliminates the need to own a router.  A $20 harbor freight jigsaw can easily create this fixture, keeping the cost of tools down to a minimum.

FETS happen

So I was all wired up this past friday night, and because of my goof I shorted 5 of the 8 FETS (I think), so I've ordered up some replacements.  I moved the board down to the back of the playfield, thinking that typically the playfield is going to be tilted up (which means the back will be the lowest point).  Even with 6 of 8 solenoids wired up, you can see that now that I've got some wire management, it's still very clean underneath (it will fill up later once switches and lighting is installed).


I've written on the playfield which connection is which with abbreviations.  I should probably label each faston as well so I'm not guessing what goes where if I need to unplug the board.

While the extra channels were working, I got to see how one of the slings and the ball trough worked.  The sling is certainly overpowering (it launched the ball nearly all the way up the playfield), and the ball trough solenoid kicked the ball so hard it almost bounced back into the trough.  The slings can be turned down later with code, and the ball trough can be softened by adding a gate to slow the ball down a bit.

Butane solder, first attempt

Ok, so I got the butane torch out, brushed on some flux (which held the support rod nicely in place with the stickiness).  I used a 1/2" piece of wood to space them out, taped it down so it wouldn't move, and went ahead and joined two bars.  I'll admit it held pretty nice, until I tried bending one side into place, then one side snapped.  Now I'm not completely surprised for multiple reasons.  1. I only had 2 bars fairly far apart, not exactly distributing force, 2. I'm not sure I cleaned the surface good before I started.  3. I didn't create any sort of recess where the support bar could really get good surface contact.  I might also experiment with doing a zig-zag pattern and solder in multiple locations, sort of like what you see on wire rack shelving.

I think if I took my time and did it properly, brass could potentially work.  Just as a backup I looked at what it would cost me to do in metal.  Not only are the rods the same price (and would be far harder to form), but I'd end up spending at minimum $100 for an arc welder, and that's not including all the safety gear that goes along with it.

Went ahead and did a rough 3d model of the updated wireform ramp, looks a lot cleaner.  I need to verify what my actual height of my upper playfield is (ball gets pretty close to the flipper coil), as well as position (how far back) so I can accurately create a 2d view of the side and top.  I figure I can form that turn in one axis (fixture), then make the dip bends in another fixture.  I'm thinking if I use some leftover 1/2" plywood and cut the shape (maybe cut a groove in the edge to keep it centered) then I can hammer the rod into shape, and each side should come out roughly the same shape.

wireform brass ramp

Nothing terribly exciting.  I formed a couple pieces of rod for the left waterfall ramp by hand.  3 feet is definitely not long enough once you start bending it.  I was going to order 6 foot, but shipping almost doubled.  Anyway, it was a good test to see how well the ball rolls down from a 3 inch height.