Engineering Applications

Pinball Machine

The pinball machine is the year-round project for the Engineering Applications class, which is the end of the Engineering Pathway at Drew. The project combines elements from both Foundations of Engineering and Engineering Concepts, to create a both fun and challenging project.

Engineering Design Notebook
This is where I document all of my processes during engineering components for the pinball machine. It contains the entire process and many iterations of designs we utilized.

Launcher

The launcher is a key component of the pinball board, which launches the ball into the playing field. It had to be strong enough to consistently launch the ball to the top of the board(minus a few inches because of a curve we added), but also be small enough to maintain a large playable area.

These were the restraints for the launcher. They gave us the opportunity to be creative, however every group naturally settled on the same design, which was springs on a dowel with a large piece at the end to hit the ball, and a handle that was either made of wood or 3D printed.

Prototype

This was our prototype design. It was much longer than necessary, but it was strong enough to launch to the top every time. We realized after testing that we could shorten the dowel by about half, to make the launcher as small and powerful as possible.

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Final - Iteration 1

This was our launcher after we cut the dowel some, painted it, and also added stronger springs.

Final - Iteration 2

We found a large problem with our dowel however, which was that it was flimsy. When putting our board away, we hit something and the dowel broke off. We decided to use a metal bolt instead of a dowel, and we also added a metal insert into the beach ball to increase durability, and increase the weight to make it more stable inside the board.

Scoreboard

The scoreboard is the main electrical component on the machine. It is an LCD screen that displays the ball count, score, and once you lose the game shows your final score and restarts shortly after

Constraints

The constraints for the scoreboard also allowed for a large degree of freedom in creating, with the main requirements being that it functioned properly.

Prototype

This was our prototype of the scoreboard. The scoreboard goes in behind the sun, and would be installed into the back of the board using screws. We also planned to have spacers so that we could run LED's behind the scoreboard.

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Demonstration

We were the first people to ever complete a component before the deadline, and this was our demonstration to the class.

Installation

We decided to add a cloud because the sun was too small, but we also liked the way it looked. This was very seamless as well, and there was no way to tell these were 2 individual pieces.

Component Plan

We decided to implement 4 flippers and 3 bumpers, along with 8 neopixels and 4 targets.

Prototype Game Plan

We decided on this game board, with a very open middle for the ball to freely travel in. We made minor changes for the final, however.

Final Game Plan

In the final, we switched which of the top flippers was closer to the bottom, and expanded out the ball guides(not shown).

Lighting Plan and Scoring System - Timothy and Penny

Lighting and Scoring Plan

Most of our lights will just be ambient, however we added a very robust scoring plan, with some objects not giving points until it is hit a certain amount of times(for example, the bumpers need to be hit 3 times to give 10 points, considering how easy it is to chain together multiple bumper hits at once).

Onshape

Onshape is the digital fabrication software that we use to design most of the pieces in our pinball machine.

Launcher Handle

This is our launcher handle, which we 3D printed, painted, and drilled a hole in.

Unique Mechanical Component

This is our unique mechanical component, which will bring the balls onto a higher track above the main course for extra points

Solenoid Mount

This was the design we used for our solenoid mounts, with holes to both screw the solenoid into the board and also screw the solenoid into the mount itself.

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I liked the scoreboard of this pinball machine, as there were animations on it when the points went up, and the scoring system was intuitive to understand. This machine

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This video demonstrates the rotating element being the soccer ball.

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This video shows the unique component, being rubber band like features that shoot the ball in the opposite direction after being hit.

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This shows the overall ball layout and ball guides, with the ball generally funneling into the middle of the board to interact with things, and the top track that we will add if the time prohibits. This also shows the lights, which we have already added with our scoreboard and switches

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This video shows the bumpers, and lots of the machines we saw had a collection of them in an area, so they would continue to hit each other a lot.

This is a photo of the flippers and ball return on the Avengers pinball machine. We liked the simplistic design of the launchers, and the graphic where the balls are returned.

There were many targets on this pinball machine, and the scoreboard kept track of them on the backend, and displayed them once the player ran out of balls.

This is the rules board, and for our machine we will engrave our points and rules into a piece of wood and mount it to the board.

This is the scoreboard, and even though ours won't be as intricate, I still liked that everything needed was on the display at once

The launcher was very powerful, for our final we want to make it out of metal and heavier to add power

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