Homebrew Pinball #3, Part 47

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



I tried to write some code to make use of the left orbit (under the ramp), and realized I had no good way of detecting shots through there. I had originally placed a rollover under the ramp, and a hanging gate across the exit from the back the ramp. That way, shots that hit the rollover first would count as orbit shots, and if a shot just triggered the gate, I'd know that was the end of a counter-clockwise shot from the spinner as it entered the left lane. The rollover under the ramp also doubles as a way to detect balls that, coming around from the spinner, fall under the ramp instead of going down the left lane, so I can raise the ramp temporarily to let the ball out. Which is good since that happens *a lot*. That should have all been good, but it seems it's possible to shoot under the ramp and not trigger the rollover, probably due to the width of the ramp and the ball bouncing around. So often I was just getting the gate switch, and had no way to tell which direction the ball was going, which was a problem. I also wanted to improve this area to give a cleaner feed to the left lane from the spinner, and prevent balls going under the ramp from the back so often.

Enter: the longest gate ever

Now it senses balls coming through the left orbit, using the same hanging wire as the previous gate did, and prevents balls from going under the ramp from the back, instead feeding them to the left lane. These little gottlieb L brackets for mounting gates+spinners are a life saver, they allow me to do all kinds of weird things with gates. Just need to make sure they're aligned properly

Posted Tuesday, November 16, 2021
at 09:51 AM


Tags: Blog Post, Pinball, Project, P3,


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