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Learn to Teach , Teach to Learn / Xavier's Pinball Machine
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Xavier's Pinball Machine

Page history last edited by Learn 2 Teach Development Trail 11 years, 1 month ago

-Imagine-

Goal: Learn how to use servo motors in a fun way using the fab lab.

Project: build a pinball machine that uses Servo motors to control the flippers.

The servo motors will be controlled by little buttons.

-Explore-

I've only ever played pinball on the computer and never really had any experience with an actual pinball machine so I decided that if I'm not going to use one in real life, I should build one!

For research I looked at different pinball machines, flippers and bumpers on the internet.

I talked to Ed who showed me a video example of a Mario game that used the same buttons buttons to make mario jump over different objects and enemies.

Collin told me about the two different pinball machine scoring styles; the old school one which was basically keep track of how long you could hit the ball around before it hit the danger zone, and the much newer score system that kept track of how many points you got from hitting bumpers.

-Design-

xavierpinballsketchBETTER

After allot of thinking, I decided to make the whole thing out of acrylic and I also decided that I was going to go with the old school playing style with no score. I needed to figure out how tall the whole machine was going to be so I measured the height of the Arduino, and the servo motor and figured out where I was going to place everything.

20130223_11565920130223_115518

I made two very similar looking flippers for testing. The sheer difference between these two are: the black one has little teeth that will not strip the servo motor and fit tightly as opposed to the gray one.

XavierDesignToo

I went back to the placement of things and the board size. I realized that there must be a thick but sturdy material that has to have holes were the servo and the flippers mount (if not then the flipper won't attach to the servo correctly and have optimal mobility!!!). I've decided to stack pieces of acryllic for bumpers and stack some flipper in order to make it so that there are no problems that rise when the flipper hits the ball. I also thought about the ball. Should it be metal or rubber?

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