Homebrew Pinball #3, Part 14

Cross posted from the original Pinside thread, this is one of many posts regarding my third homebrew pinball machine, creatively nicknamed 'P3'



Next step was adding the diverter to the shooter lane. I have a bally gate mech, but it's designed for low speed inlanes, not very flowy. So I 3d printed a much smoother gate:

This mostly works, but I had issues where very fast balls would somehow get too much horizontal force out of it and hit the top post of the slingshot instead of directing down into the inlane. So I had to take 3 iterations of straightening it and adjusting the curve to get it to a point where even the fastest ball I can manage still goes towards the inlane, while a slow ball that just drops from the end still has a good chance of getting to the inlane.
Original:
Final:
It's a fine line because it needs to be able to fit behind the right drop targets and not block the shooter lane, so it can't be too wide or too straight.

I also added a little guide on the slingshot to smooth the transition, since the ball tended to bounce back and forth before coming down to the flipper

With the diverter and the left inlane done, I now have two more shots I can test.

First, the spinner/orbit:

This works, although it's a bit clunkier than I'd like. The spinner eats up some of the energy from the ball. I'll have to do some more tests with the spinner removed to see if there's any geometry improvements I can do. My upper arch isn't optimally designed, since it has a large flat part, which gives the ball time to 'drop' at the top and not follow the other side curve smoothly. Plus, with the lanes on both sides of the playfield, the shots hit the side walls at a more oblique angle which is probably leading to a less smooth shot. Might need to get the camera in slo-mo to see for sure

Second, the under-ramp/orbit:
I was worried about this shot since the left side curve of the upper arch is tighter than the right due to the ramp and upper eject area being in the way, so the ball had a the potential to hit the wall and bounce off at a ~25 degree angle, missing the curve completely, but luckily this doesn't seem to be the case somehow. In fact, it's smooth. SUPER smooth. And ridiculously fast. I took 20 shots at it, and didn't manage to loop it even once due to the sheer speed of the ball coming down the inlane. But I'm also not very good at that type of repeating shot. Can't wait to get this flipping enough to see some better players take a crack at it.

Posted Thursday, September 17, 2020
at 03:23 PM


Tags: Blog Post, Pinball, Project, P3,


blog comments powered by Disqus