Design Example: Pinball Game¶
This abstracted example is a starting template for developing a laser-cut pinball game. It demonstrates an approach to cabinet and playfield construction, a purely mechanical flipper assembly, a solenoid-driven pop bumper, and incorporation of a commercial plunger. The lane structure is notional and not fully detailed; a final design would need to attach the lane and bumper elements to the playfield.
The small 12V solenoids we have available are not nearly as powerful as commercial pop bumper actuators, so the template includes bumpers which act as configurable obstacles rather than delivering impulse to the ball. This makes a possible a digitally-controlled gravity-powered game where the primary mechanic is the descent of the ball through obstacles, powered again to the top by the mechanical flipper impulse delivering human finger work.
Not included in this model: optical playfield ball sensors; the LED matrix display; digital LED lighting; controller and power placement; start button; coin collector.
The SolidWorks model files may be found in the FlatPackExamples/Pinball folder, or may be downloaded as a single file as Pinball.zip.