Tonys pinball

Tonys 3D Desktop Printed Pinball Machine A Reference Guide 2016

Tony the Pinball Wizard

Tony's Fully 3D Desktop Printed Pinball Machine

A Reference Guide 2016

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Table of contents

Tony the Pinball Wizard.............................................................................................................................2 1. PinBall Machine .....................................................................................................................................4 1.1. History ...........................................................................................................................................5 1.2. Machine layout ...........................................................................................................................12 1.3. Scoring points .............................................................................................................................22 1.4. In popular culture .......................................................................................................................25 2. Tony's PinBall Machine .......................................................................................................................26 The Beginning ....................................................................................................................................27 The Stop ............................................................................................................................................28 Tools ...................................................................................................................................................29 Tonys PinBall - Southend on sea Themed .......................................................................................30 Filaments Used ..................................................................................................................................33 PinBall Parts ......................................................................................................................................38 Electronics ..........................................................................................................................................54 Embedded Software ..........................................................................................................................73 Design - OpenSCAD .........................................................................................................................75 Quick Summary .................................................................................................................................84 Interesting Facts ......................................................................................................................................85 PinBall Infographics .................................................................................................................................91 References ...............................................................................................................................................94

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1. PinBall Machine

What Is Pinball?

Pinball is a type of arcade game, in which points are scored by a player manipulating one or more steel balls on a play field inside a glass-covered cabinet called a pinball machine. The primary objective of the game is to score as many points as possible. Many modern pinball machines include a story line where the player must complete certain objectives in a certain fashion to complete the story, usually earning high scores for different methods of completing the game. Points are earned when the ball strikes different targets on the play field. A drain is situated at the bottom of the play field, partially protected by player-controlled plastic bats called flippers. A game ends after all the balls fall into the drain. Secondary objectives are to maximize the time spent playing (by earning "extra balls" and keeping the ball in play as long as possible) and to earn bonus games (known as "replays").

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1.1. History

Pre-modern: Development of outdoor and tabletop ball games The origins of pinball are intertwined with the history of many other games. Games played outdoors by rolling balls or stones on a grass course, such as bocce or bowls, eventually evolved into various local ground billiards games played by hitting the balls with sticks and propelling them at targets, often around obstacles. Croquet, golf and paille-maille eventually derived from ground billiards variants.

The evolving and specializing outdoor games finally led to indoor versions that could be played on a table, such as billiards, or on the floor of a pub, like bowling and shuffleboard. The tabletop versions of these games became the ancestors of modern pinball.

Billard japonais, Southern Germany/Alsace ca. 1750–70. It already has a spring mechanism to propel the ball, 100 years prior to Montague Redgrave's patent.

Late 1700s: Spring launcher invented In France, during the long 1643–1715 reign of Louis XIV, billiard tables were narrowed, with wooden pins or skittles at one end of the table, and players would shoot balls with a stick or cue from the other end, in a game inspired as much by bowling as billiards. Pins took too long to reset when knocked down, so they were eventually fixed to the table, and holes in the bed of the table became the targets.

Players could ricochet balls off the pins to achieve the harder scorable holes. A standardized version of the game eventually became known as bagatelle.

Somewhere between the 1750s and 1770s, the bagatelle variant Billard japonais 'Japanese billiards' was invented (in Western Europe, despite the name), which used thin metal pins and replaced the cue at the player's end of the table with a coiled spring and a plunger. The player shot balls up the inclined playfield toward the scoring targets using this plunger, a device that remains in use in pinball to this day, and the game was also directly ancestral to pachinko.

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Bagatelle - Left hand side Orignal bagatelle and Right hand side Tony's recreated fully 3D Printed bagatelle

1869: Spring launchers become mainstream In 1869, British inventor Montague Redgrave settled in the US and manufactured bagatelle tables in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1871 Redgrave was granted US Patent #115,357 for his "Improvements in Bagatelle",[1] another name for the spring launcher that was first introduced in Billard japonais. The game also shrank in size to fit atop a bar or counter. The balls became marbles and the wickets became small metal pins. Redgrave's popularization of the spring launcher and innovations in game design are acknowledged as the birth of pinball in its modern form.

1931: Coin operation introduced By the 1930s, manufacturers were producing coin-operated versions of bagatelles, now known as "marble games" or "pin games". The table was under glass and used M. Redgrave's plunger device to propel the ball into the upper playfield.[citation needed] In 1931 David Gottlieb's Baffle Ball became the first hit of the coin-operated era. Selling for $17.50, the game dispensed five to seven balls for a penny.[citation needed] The game resonated with people wanting cheap entertainment in the Great Depression-era economy. Most drugstores and taverns in the US operated pinball machines,[citation needed] with many locations quickly recovering the cost of the game. Baffle Ball sold over 50,000 units[citation needed] and established Gottlieb as the first major manufacturer of pinball machines.

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An early pinball game without flippers, circa 1932

In 1932, Gottlieb distributor Ray Moloney found it hard to obtain more Baffle Ball units to sell. In his

frustration he founded Lion Manufacturing to produce a game of his own design, Ballyhoo, named after a popular magazine of the day. The game became a smash hit. Its larger playfield and ten pockets made it more challenging than Baffle Ball, selling 50,000 units in 7 months.[2] Moloney eventually changed the name of his company to Bally to reflect the success of this game. These early machines were relatively small, mechanically simple and designed to sit on a counter or bar top.

1933: Electrification and active bumpers introduced The 1930s saw major advances in pinball design with the introduction of electrification. A company called Pacific Amusements in Los Angeles, USA produced a game called Contact in 1933. Contact had an electrically powered solenoid to propel the ball out of a bonus hole in the middle of the playfield.

Another solenoid rang a bell to reward the player.[3] The designer of Contact, Harry Williams, would eventually form his own company, Williams Manufacturing, in 1944. Other manufacturers quickly followed suit with similar features. Electric lights soon became a standard feature of all subsequent pinball games, designed to attract players.

By the end of 1932, there were approximately 150 companies manufacturing pinball machines, most of them in Chicago. Chicago has been the center of pinball manufacturing ever since. Competition among the companies was strong, and by 1934 there were 14 companies remaining.

During WWII, all of the major manufacturers of coin-operated games turned to the manufacture of equipment for the war effort. Some companies, like Williams, bought old games from operators and refurbished them, adding new artwork with a patriotic theme. At the end of the war, a generation of Americans looked for amusement in bars and malt shops, and pinball saw another golden age.

Improvements such as the tilt mechanism and free games (known as replays) appeared.

1947: Flippers introduced Gottlieb's Humpty Dumpty, introduced in 1947, was the first game to add player-controlled flippers to keep the ball in play longer, adding a skill factor to the game.[4] The low power flippers required three pairs around the playfield to get the ball to the top.

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Triple Action was the first game to feature just two flippers at the bottom of the playfield. Unlike in modern machines, the flippers faced outwards. These more powerful flippers were facilitated by the addition of a DC power supply. These innovations were some of many by designer Steve Kordek.

The first game to feature the familiar dual-inward-facing-flipper design was Spot Bowler, made by Gottlieb in 1950.[5] The post-war era was dominated by Gottlieb. Game designer Wayne Neyens, along with artist Leroy Parker, produced games that collectors consider some of the best classic pinball machines.

1970s: Solid-state electronics and digital displays introduced The introduction of microprocessors brought pinball into the realm of electronic gaming. The electromechanical relays and scoring reels that drove games in the 1950s and 1960s were replaced in the 1970s with circuit boards and digital displays. The first solid-state pinball is believed to be Mirco Games' The Spirit of '76 (1976),[6] though the first mainstream solid-state game was Williams' Hot Tip (1977). This new technology led to a boom for Williams and Bally, who attracted more players with games featuring more complex rules, digital sound effects, and speech.

The video game boom of the 1980s signaled the end of the boom for pinball. Arcades replaced rows of pinball machines with video games like 1978's Space Invaders, 1979's Asteroids, 1980's Pac-Man, and 1981's Galaga. These earned significantly greater profits than the pinball machines of the day, while simultaneously requiring less maintenance. Bally, Williams, and Gottlieb continued to make pinball machines, while they also manufactured video games in much higher numbers. Many of the larger companies were acquired by, or merged with, other companies. Chicago Coin was purchased by the Stern family, who brought the company into the digital era as Stern Enterprises, which closed its doors in the mid-1980s. Bally exited the pinball business in 1988 and sold their assets to Williams, who subsequently used the Bally trademark from then on for about half of their pinball releases.

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A clear walled electromechanical pinball machine created by the Pacific Pinball Museum to show what the insides of pinball machines look like.

While the video game craze of the late 1970s and early 1980s dealt a severe blow to pinball revenue, it did spark the creative talents within the industry. All companies involved tried to take advantage of the new solid state technology to improve player appeal of pinball and win back former players from video games. Some of this creativity resulted in landmark designs and features still present today. Some of these include speech, such as Williams' Gorgar; ramps for the ball to travel around, such as Williams' Space Shuttle; "multiball", used on Williams' Firepower; multi-level games like Gottlieb's Black Hole and Williams' Black Knight; and blinking chase lights, as used on Bally's Xenon. Although these novel features did not win back players as the manufacturers had hoped, they changed players' perception of pinball for coming decades.

1980s and beyond: Pinball in the digital age After the collapse of the coin-operated video game industry, pinball saw another comeback in the 1990s. Some new manufacturers entered the field such as Capcom Pinball and Alvin G. and Company, founded by Alvin Gottlieb, son of David Gottlieb. Gary Stern, the son of Williams co-founder Sam Stern, founded Data East Pinball with funding from Data East Japan.

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The games from Williams now dominated the industry, with complicated mechanical devices and more elaborate display and sound systems attracting new players to the game. Licensing popular movies and icons of the day became a staple for pinball, with Bally/Williams' The Addams Family hitting an all-time modern sales record of 20,270 machines. Two years later, Williams commemorated this benchmark with a limited edition of 1,000 Addams Family Gold pinball machines, featuring gold-colored trim and updated software with new game features. Other notable popular licenses included Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Expanding markets in Europe and Asia helped fuel the revival of interest. Pat Lawlor was a designer, working for Williams until their exit from the industry in 1999. About a year later, Lawlor returned to the industry, starting his own company.[7] working in conjunction with Stern Pinball to produce new games.

A row of pinball machines at the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The end of the 1990s saw another downturn in the industry, with Gottlieb, Capcom, and Alvin G. closing by the end of 1996. Data East's pinball division was acquired by Sega and became Sega Pinball in 1994. By 1997, there were two companies left: Sega Pinball and Williams. In 1999, Sega sold their pinball division to Gary Stern (President of Sega Pinball at the time) who called his company Stern Pinball.[8] By this time, Williams games rarely sold more than 4,000 units. In 1999, Williams attempted to revive sales with the Pinball 2000 line of games, merging a video display into the pinball playfield.

The reception was initially good with Revenge From Mars selling well over 6,000 machines, but short of the 10,000-plus production runs for releases just six years earlier. The next Pinball 2000 game, Star Wars Episode I, sold only a little over 3,500 machines. Williams exited the pinball business to focus on making gaming equipment for casinos, which was more profitable. They licensed the rights to reproduce Bally/Williams parts to Illinois Pinball and the rights to reproduce full-sized machines to The Pinball Factory. Stern Pinball remained the only manufacturer of original pinball machines until 2013, when Jersey Jack Pinball started shipping The Wizard of Oz. Most members of the design teams for Stern Pinball are former employees of Williams.

In November 2005 The Pinball Factory (TPF) in Melbourne, Australia, announced that they would be producing a new Crocodile Hunter-themed pinball machine under the Bally label. With the death of Steve Irwin, it was announced that the future of this game was uncertain.[9] In 2006 TPF announced that they would be reproducing two popular 90's era Williams machines, Medieval Madness and Cactus Canyon.[10] TPF however was unable to make good on its promises to produce new machines, and 10

in October 2010 transferred its Williams Electronics Games licenses as well as its pinball spare parts manufacturing and distribution business to Planetary Pinball Supply Inc, a California distributor of pinball replacement parts.[1] In 2006, Illinois pinball company PinBall Manufacturing Inc. produced 178 reproductions of Capcom's Big Bang Bar for the European and US markets.[11][12] In 2010, MarsaPlay in Spain manufactured a remake of Inder's original Canasta titled New Canasta,[13] [14] which was the first game to include an LCD screen in the backbox.

In 2013, Jersey Jack Pinball released The Wizard of Oz pinball machine. It is the first pinball machine manufactured in the USA with a LCD as backbox,[15] the first widebody pinball machine since 1994[16] and the first new US pinball machine not made by Stern Pinball since 2001.[17] In 2015, the new British pinball manufacturer Heighway Pinball released the racing themed pinball machine Full Throttle. The game has its LCD screen for scores, info & animations located in the playfield surface at player’s eye view.[18]

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1.2. Machine layout The key attribute of a successful pinball game is an interesting and challenging layout of scoring opportunities on the playfield. Many types of targets and features have been developed over the years.

Playfield The playfield is a planar surface inclined upward from three to seven degrees (current convention is six and a half degrees), away from the player, and includes multiple targets and scoring objectives. Some operators intentionally extend (to raise) threaded levelers on the rear legs and/or shorten or remove the levelers on the front legs to create additional incline in the playfield, making the ball move faster and harder to play. It is important that the playfield be level left-to-right; a quick visual test compares the top of the back cabinet against a brick or block wall behind it, or to roll a marble down the center of the playfield glass. If it clearly rolls off to one side, a player may be inclined to stuff folded paper beneath the legs on the lower side to level the playfield. Additionally, leg levelers that are all extended fully make the game easier to nudge; when collapsed low, the entire game is more stable, and nudging becomes harder.

The ball is put into play by use of the plunger, a spring-loaded rod that strikes the ball as it rests in an entry lane, or as in some newer games, by a button that signals the game logic to fire a solenoid that strikes the ball. With both devices the result is the same: The ball is propelled upwards onto the playfield. Once a ball is in play, it tends to move downward towards the player, although the ball can move in any direction, sometimes unpredictably, due to contact with objects on the playfield or by the player's own actions. To return the ball to the upper part of the playfield, the player makes use of one or more flippers. Manipulation of the ball may also be accomplished by nudging (physically pushing the cabinet). However, excessive nudging is generally penalized by the loss of the current player's turn (known as tilting) or ending of the entire game when the nudging is particularly violent (known as slam tilting). This penalty was instituted because nudging the machine too much may damage it. Many games also have a slam tilt in the bottom of the lower cabinet to end the game if the cabinet is raised and dropped to the floor in an attempt to falsely trigger the coin counting switch.

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The playfield of the High Speed pinball machine Plunger The plunger is a spring-loaded rod with a small handle, used to propel the ball into the playfield. The player can control the amount of force used for launching by pulling the plunger a certain distance (thus changing the spring compression). This is often used for a "skill shot," in which a player attempts to launch a ball so that it exactly hits a specified target. Once the ball is in motion in the main area of the playfield, the plunger is not used again until another ball must be brought onto the playfield. In modern machines, an electronically controlled launcher is sometimes substituted for the plunger. The button that replaces the plunger may be modified to look like the trigger of a gun.

Flippers The flippers are one or more small mechanically or electromechanically controlled levers, roughly 3 to 7 cm in length, used for redirecting the ball up the playfield. They are the main control that the player has over the ball. Careful timing and positional control allows the player to intentionally direct the ball in a range of directions with various levels of velocity. With the flippers, the player attempts to move the ball to hit various types of scoring targets, and to keep the ball from disappearing off the bottom of the playfield. The very first pinball games appeared in the early 1930s and did not have flippers; after launch the ball simply proceeded down the playfield, directed by static nails (or "pins") to one of several 13

scoring areas. (These pins gave the game its name.) In 1947, the first mechanical flippers appeared on Gottlieb's Humpty Dumpty[26] and by the early 1950s, the familiar two-flipper configuration, with the flippers at the bottom of the playfield above the center drain, had become standard. Some machines also added a third or fourth flipper midway up the playfield.

Flippers are used by the player to redirect the ball The new flipper ushered in the "golden age" of pinball, where the fierce competition between the various pinball manufacturers led to constant innovation in the field. Various types of stationary and moving targets were added, spinning scoring reels replaced games featuring static scores lit from behind.

Multiplayer scores were added soon after, and then bells and other noise-makers, all of which began to make pinball less a game and more of an experience. The flippers have loaned pinball its common name in many languages, where the game is known mainly as "flipper".

Bumpers Bumpers are round knobs that, when hit, will actively push the ball away. There is also an earlier variety of bumper (known as a dead bumper or passive bumper) that doesn't propel the ball away; most bumpers on machines built since the 1960s are active bumpers, variously called "pop bumpers," "thumper bumpers," "jet bumpers," or "turbo bumpers." Most recent games include a set of pop bumpers, usually three, sometimes more or fewer depending on the designer's goals. Bumpers predate flippers, and active bumpers added a great deal of spice to older games.

Pop bumpers are operated by a switch connected to a ring surrounding the bottom circumference of the bumper that is suspended several millimeters above the playfield surface. When the ball rolls over this ring and forces one side of it down, a switch is closed that activates the bumper's solenoid. This pulls down a tapered ring surrounding the central post of the bumper that pushes downward and outward on the ball, propelling it away.

Kickers and slingshots Kickers and slingshots are rubber pads which propel the ball away upon impact, like bumpers, but are usually a horizontal side of a wall. Every recent pinball machine includes slingshots to the upper left and upper right of the lowest set of flippers; older games used more experimental arrangements. They operate similarly to pop bumpers, with a switch on each side of a solenoid-operated lever arm in a typical arrangement. The switches are closed by ball contact with the rubber on the face of the kicker and this activates the solenoid.

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Slingshots have rubber pads which detect the ball's impact and automatically push it away at speed Early pinball machines typically had full solenoid current passing through trigger switches for all types of solenoids, from kickers to pop bumpers to the flippers themselves. This caused arcing across switch contacts and rapid contact fouling and failure. As electronics were gradually implemented in pinball design, solenoids began to be switched by power transistors under software control to lower switch voltage and current, vastly extend switch service lifetime, and add flexibility to game design.

As an example, some later machines had flippers that could be operated independently of the flipper button by the machine's software. The upper-left flipper during "Thing Flips" on The Addams Family pinball machine triggers automatically a brief moment after the ball passes an optical sensor just above the flipper.

The smaller, lower-powered solenoids were first to be transistorized, followed later by the higher-current solenoids as the price, performance, and reliability of power transistors improved over the years.

Targets • Stationary Targets: These are static targets that simply record when a ball strikes them. These are generally the simplest playfield elements. They are also known as spot targets or standup targets.

• Bullseye Targets: These are static targets that have two concentric elements, similar to a stationary target. Hitting the outer ring usually scores lower than hitting the center bull's eye. They are found mostly on older electro-mechanical games.

• Drop targets: These are targets that drop below the playfield when hit. Eliminating an entire row in this manner may lead to any of various features. Once an entire bank of drop targets is hit, the bank may reset or pop back up. Alternatively, the drop targets can be placed in front of other targets, requiring the drop target to be knocked down before the targets behind can be hit, or the drop target may only pop up at specific times to deny the player the ability to shoot the ball into whatever is behind it. If used in the latter way, the target is usually blocking a lane or ramp.

• Kicking Target: Used rarely, these targets look like stationary targets, but when hit they kick the ball away in the opposite direction much like a slingshot or bumper.

• Vari-Target: These targets reward a different amount of points depending on how hard the target was hit. It is a metal arm that pivots under the playfield. When a ball hits it, it ratchets back sometimes, resetting immediately or resetting only after it is hit all the way back. A large sum of points is usually rewarded when the target is hit back all the way with one strike of the ball.

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Stationary targets detect the ball's impact and typically increment the player's score

Holes and saucers • Holes: The player directs the ball into a hole. On modern games, there are both vertical and horizontal holes (also called scoops), and the game may include mechanisms to move the ball between them. On some older games, a "gobble hole" is sometimes included, usually awarding a large bonus or a game feature, but not giving the ball back.

• Saucers: A shallow hole with a kicker inside. The ball remains visible on the playfield and is kicked out either straight up (usually into a duct or rail chute) or sideways back onto the playfield.

Originally holes and saucers worked by using tubes behind the playing field, with a pin at the top to hold the ball for later drops. Another version of the tube uses two spinning wheels to transfer the ball from hole to hole. Newer versions use an electronic track with a carriage or an electromagnet to pull the ball between holes.

Spinners and rollovers • Spinners: A ball can push through a flat surface that is hinged in the middle, causing it to spin; each rotation adds points.

• Rollovers: These are targets activated when a ball rolls over them. Often a series of rollover targets are placed side-by-side and with dividers between them forming "lanes"; the player must guide the ball to particular lanes (or to all lanes) in order to complete an objective. Such lanes are frequently placed at the bottom sides of the playfield: "inlanes" feed the ball back to the flippers, "outlanes" cause the ball to immediately drain. On many machines, outlanes can have extra balls or "specials" lit to act in the same role as the older gobble holes.

• Whirlwind Spinner(s): Used in some games, a whirlwind spinner is a rapidly rotating (often rubberized) disk on the playfield that momentarily "grabs" the ball and throws it in a random direction.

Some games couple a whirlwind spinner with a magnet placed in the center, although DataEast seems to be the only manufacturer to do so. Bally's "Fireball" and Chicago Coin's "Casino" were popular games with a whirlwind spinner.

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Rollovers detect when the ball passes over them

Switches, gates, and stoppers • Switch: A switch is an area that is blocked off after the ball passes through it once. An example of this is the initial firing lane: as a ball passes through the firing lane, it hits a switch and cannot reenter that chute. • Gate: This is a block that will allow balls to come through one way but will block the ball if it is going the other way. • Stopper: Also called a magic post, this is a small pole most often found centered between and just below the lowest set of flippers and also rarely next to the outlanes. When activated (typically by hitting a specific target or targets), the pole ascends from inside the machine, blocking the area between the flippers for a limited time, making it more difficult to drain and lose the ball. After time expires, it returns to its resting place just below the playfield.

Ramps Ramps are inclined planes with a gentle enough slope that the ball may travel along it. The player attempts to direct the ball with enough force to make it to the top of the ramp and down the other side.

If the player succeeds, a "ramp shot" has been made. Ramps frequently end in such a way that the ball goes to a flipper so one can make several ramp shots in a row. Often, the number of ramp shots scored in a game is tallied, and reaching certain numbers may lead to various game features. At other times, the ramps will go to smaller "mini-playfields" (small playfields, usually raised above the main game surface, with special goals or scoring).

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A wire ramp along which the ball can travel

Toys, magnets and captive balls • Toys: Toys are various items on, above, or beneath the playfield (items beneath the playfield visible through windows) or attached to the cabinet (usually to the backbox). Usually, each toy is unique to the machine it was made for, and reflects the theme of the game. They may be visual only, and have no effect on game play; they may be alternate ways of performing common game functions (for example, instead of using a drop hole to hold the ball, a hand or claw might reach out, grab the ball, and capture it that way); or they may be an integral part of the game rules and play (for instance, having a smaller playfield over the main playfield that can be tilted right and left by the player, using the flipper buttons). • Electromagnets: Some machines feature electrically operated magnets below the playfield to affect the ball's speed and/or trajectory according to the current state of game play. This may be done to make the ball's movement unpredictable, to temporarily halt the ball (as a ball saver, for example), or to otherwise control the ball by non-mechanical means. Electromagnets may also be used in aboveplayfield elements (often as part of the playfield toys) to grab the ball and move it elsewhere (onto a mini-playfield, for example). The Williams machine The Twilight Zone featured a mini-playfield that used electromagnets controlled by the flipper buttons, allowing the player to flip the ball on the mini-playfield, essentially working as invisible flippers. Contrary to somewhat popular myth, there are no professionally produced pinball machines known to contain magnets under the playfield intended to clandestinely make game play harder or increase ball losses.[27] • Captive balls: Sometimes a ball is allowed to move around only within a confined area. A typical application of this is having a short lane on the playfield with a narrow opening, inside which a captive ball is held. The player can strike this captive ball with the ball in play, pushing it along the lane to activate a rollover switch or target. In games such as Theatre of Magic, captive balls sometimes have what's called a "Newton Ball," which is a stationary ball adjacent to a free ball in a small lane. The ball being played strikes the Newton ball which, in turn, transfers its momentum to the adjacent ball, which causes it to move.

Common features There are other idiosyncratic features on many pinball playfields. Pinball games have become increasingly complex and multiple play modes, multi-level playfields, and even progression through a rudimentary "plot" have become common features on recent games. Pinball scoring objectives can be quite complex and require a series of targets to be hit in a particular order. Recent pinball games are distinguished by increasingly complex rule sets that require a measure of strategy and planning by the 18

player for maximum scoring. Players seeking highest scores would be well-advised to study the placard (usually found in the lower-left corner of the playfield) to learn each game's specific patterns required for these advanced features and scoring.

Common features in modern pinball games include the following: • Ball lock: Each time a ball goes into a specific hole or target, it is locked, and a new ball appears at the plunger. When the player has locked the required number of balls (often three), the multiball feature starts. On some games, the balls are physically locked in place by solenoid-actuated gates, but many newer machines use virtual ball locks instead, in which the game merely keeps count of the number of locked balls and then auto-launches them from the main ball trough when it is time for them to be released.

• Multiball: This occurs when there is more than one ball in play at a time and usually includes some kind of jackpot scoring. Multiball ends when all but one ball is lost down the bottom of the playfield, and then regular play resumes.

• Jackpot: Some targets on the playfield increase the scoring value of something else, which could be as simple as hitting a ramp, or a complicated sequence of targets. Upon their inception, the jackpot was the main goal of most pinball machines in the 1980s. Jackpots would often range from one to four million (back when this was a significant addition to the score), and their value would accrue between games until it was scored. Scoring it was usually a complicated task. Modern games often dilute the meaning of "jackpot". Modern games give off several jackpots in each multiball mode, which is usually quite easy to attain, and the value of today's jackpots is far less significant. Many jackpots awarded during special modes often do not increase at all, but are instead simply fixed-value bonuses.

• End-of-ball bonus: After each ball is played, the player scores bonus points depending on how many times certain features have been activated or the amounts of items that the player may obtain.

Some games award a seemingly arbitrary amount of points that depend on the number of times any switch has been hit. Virtually all games have the ability to assign a multiplier to the bonus. Most games cap the bonus multiplier at 5x or 10x, although more modern games apparently have no limit.

• Extra ball: If a player has earned this, when they lose a ball they get another one to play immediately afterward and the machine does not count the lost ball towards the limit of balls for that game. For example, if the player were on ball two and they earn an extra ball, the next ball will still be counted as ball two instead of the third ball. When a machine says "SHOOT AGAIN" on the scoreboard, it signifies that an extra ball will shoot. In a multiplayer game, the player who just lost the ball is the same one to shoot again.

• Kickback: When a ball goes into one of the outlanes the ball instead of draining goes into a kicker that will launch the ball back into play. Their use is limited and has to be earned to be used.

• Various timed rounds (modes): For example, if the player hit a specific target three times within the next 20 seconds, they might score several tens of millions of points for it. There are many and various time-related features in pinball. Progression through each mode is frequently accompanied by DMD animations and sound.

• Stackability: To stack means that the player can run one play mode while another mode is in progress. This strategy usually yields higher scores. A noted example of this is Williams' Bram Stoker's Dracula, with its Multi-Multiball feature.

• Wizard Mode: This is a special scoring mode, which is reached after meeting certain prerequisites to access this mode (e.g., finishing all modes). This is the pinball equivalent of the final boss fight in video games. Classic examples of this include Williams' Black Knight 2000 (The King's Ransom) and Midway's Twilight Zone (Lost in the Zone). Named after The Who's song "Pinball Wizard". Wizard modes come in two varieties: goal-oriented types where the player receives a huge amount of points after completing a specific task, or multiball modes with 4–6 balls in play, and virtually every feature active. Some games offer both and award the latter as a condition for completing the former.

• Ball Saver: Many modern games include a feature that prevents a player from being disappointed if a ball sent into play quickly drains before substantial points have been added. This player will 19

immediately be given another (free) ball to compensate. Electromechanical games made during the 1970s had a similar Ball Index switch system that returned a drained ball if no points were made. • Slam Tilt: There are special tilt switches placed on the underside of the playfield, on the coin door, and (on electromechanical games) in the lower cabinet and upper cabinet, designed to prevent cheating. If a player lifts and drops, pounds, or kicks the machine and activates any slam tilt, the entire game ends immediately for all players and may go into a reset/reboot mode. These are also used on video games. A similar Incline Tilt prevents a player from lifting the front of the cabinet to tip the ball back up the playfield by ending his turn.

Unique features In the 1990s, game designers often put hidden, recurring images or references in their games, which became known as Easter eggs.[28] For example, Williams' designers hid cows in the video displays of the games, and Pat Lawlor would place a red button in the artwork of games he developed. The methods used to find the hidden items usually involved pressing the flipper buttons in a certain order or during specific events.

Designers also included hidden messages or in-jokes; one example of this is the phrase "DOHO" sometimes seen quickly displayed on the dot matrix displays, a reference to Dorris Ho, the wife of thenWilliams display artist Scott "Matrix" Slomiany. DOHO was popularly thought to be an acronym for Documented Occurrence of a Hidden Object until its true meaning was revealed in a PinGame Journal article on the subject.[29] The game Star Trek:The Next Generation went so far as to embed a hidden Breakout-like game, available only after a complex sequence of events had been accomplished during the game.[30]

Backglass The backglass is a vertical graphic panel mounted on the front of the backbox, which is the upright box at the top back of the machine. The backglass contains the name of the machine, eye-catching graphics, (usually) the score displays (lights, mechanical wheels, digital displays, or a dot matrix display depending on the era), and sometimes a mechanical device tied to game play, for example, elevator doors that opened on an image or a woman swatting a cat with a broom such as on Williams' 1989 "Bad Cats". For older games, the backglass image is screen printed in layers on the reverse side of a piece of glass; in more recent games, the image is imprinted into a translucent piece of plastic-like material called a translite which is mounted behind a piece of glass and which is easily removable. The earliest games did not have backglasses or backboxes and were little more than playfields in boxes. Games are generally built around a particular theme, such as a sport or character and the backglass art reflects this theme to attract the attention of players. Recent machines are typically "tied-in" to other enterprises such as a popular film series, toy, or brand name. The entire machine is designed to be as eye-catching as possible to attract players and their money; every possible space is filled with colorful graphics, blinking lights, and themed objects, and the backglass is usually the first artwork the players see from a distance. Since the artistic value of the backglass may be quite impressive, it is not uncommon for enthusiasts to use a deep frame around a backglass (lighted from behind) and hang it as art after the remainder of the game is discarded.

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The backglass from Jungle Lord, a 1981 pinball game

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1.3. Scoring points Contact with or manipulation of scoring elements (such as targets or ramps) scores points for the player. Electrical switches embedded in the scoring elements detect contact and relay this information to the scoring mechanism. Older pinball machines used an electromechanical system for scoring wherein a pulse from a switch would cause a complex mechanism composed of relays to ratchet up the score. In later games these tasks have been taken over by semiconductor chips and displays are made on electronic segmented or dot-matrix displays (DMD). The first DMD on a pinball machine was used by Checkpoint and features also video mode minigames.[31][32][33][34] MarsaPlay in Spain manufactured a remake of Inder's original Canasta titled New Canasta, with an LCD screen in the backbox in 2010.

[35][36] The Wizard of Oz is the first US pinball machine that used a LCD in the back box. It is not only used for scoring and mini-games but also to display full color videos.[15] Other display innovations on pinball machines include pinball video game hybrids like Baby Pac-Man in 1982[37] and Granny and the Gators in 1984[38] and the use of a small color video monitor for scoring and minigames in the backbox of the pinball machine Dakar from manufacturer Mr. Game in 1988[39] and CGA color monitors in Pinball 2000 in 1999 that utilizes a Pepper's Ghost technique to reflect the monitor in the head of the as well as modifications by the use of ColorDMD[40] that is used to replace the standard mono color DMDs.

Dot Matrix Display Pinball scoring can be peculiar and varies greatly from machine to machine. During the 1930s and the 1940s, lights mounted behind the painted backglasses were used for scoring purposes, making the scoring somewhat arbitrary. (Frequently the lights represented scores in the hundreds of thousands.)

Then later, during the 1950s and 1960s when the scoring mechanism was limited to mechanical wheels, high scores were frequently only in the hundreds or thousands. (Although, in an effort to keep with the traditional high scores attained with the painted backglass games, the first pinball machines to use mechanical wheels for scoring, such as Army Navy, allowed the score to reach into the millions by adding a number of permanent zeros to the end of the score.) The average score changed again in the 1970s with the advent of electronic displays. Average scores soon began to commonly increase back into tens or hundreds of thousands. Since then, there has been a trend of scoring inflation, with modern machines often requiring scores of over a billion points to win a free game. At the peak of this trend, two machines, Johnny Mnemonic and Attack from Mars, have been played into the trillions. Another recent curiosity is the 1997 Bally game NBA Fastbreak which, true to its theme, awards points in terms of a real basketball score: Each successful shot can give from one to three points. Getting a hundred points by the end of a game is considered respectable, which makes it one of the lowest scoring pinball machines of all time. The inflated scores are the source of one of the Spanish-language names of pinball machines, mรกquina del millรณn ("million machine").

Special scores 22

• High score lists: If a player attains one of the highest scores ever (or the highest score on a given day), they are invited to add their initials to a displayed list of high-scorers on that particular machine.

"Bragging rights" associated with being on the high-score list are a powerful incentive for experienced players to master a new machine.

• • Pinball designers also entice players with the chance to win an extra game or replay. Ways to get a replay might include the following: • • Replay Score: An extra game is rewarded if the player exceeds a specified score. Some machines allow the operator to set this score to increase with each consecutive game in which the replay score is achieved, in order to prevent a skilled player from gaining virtually unlimited play on one credit by simply achieving the same replay score in every game.

• Special: A mechanism to get an extra game during play is usually called a "special." Typically, some hard-to-reach feature of the game will light the outlanes (the areas to the extreme left and right of the flippers) for special. Since the outlanes always lose the ball, having "special" there makes it worth shooting for them (and is usually the only time, if this is the case).

• Match: At the end of the game, if the last two digits of the player's score match a random digit followed by zero, an extra game is rewarded. As pinball scores on modern machines nearly always end in zero, the chances of this happening appear to be 1 in 10, but the operator can alter this probability – the default is usually 7% in all modern Williams and Bally games for example. Other non-numeric methods are sometimes used to award a match. In earlier machines, before a phenomenon often referred to as score inflation, had happened (causing almost all scores to end in 0) and scores could end in any integer, the match function was often a random integer from 0 to 9 that had to match the last digit in the score.

• High Score: Most machines award 1–3 bonus games if a player gets on the high score list.

Typically, one or two credits are awarded for a 1st–4th place listing, and three for the Grand Champion.

When an extra game is won, the machine typically makes a single loud bang, most often with a solenoid that strikes a piece of metal, or the side of the cabinet, with a rod, known as a knocker, or less commonly with loudspeakers. "Knocking" is the act of winning an extra game when the knocker makes the loud and distinctive noise.

Playing techniques The primary skill of pinball involves application of the proper timing and technique to the operation of the flippers, nudging the playfield when appropriate without tilting, and choosing targets for scores or features. A skilled player can quickly "learn the angles" and gain a high level of control of ball motion, even on a machine they have never played. Skilled players can often play on a machine for long periods of time on a single coin. By earning extra balls, a single game can be stretched out for a long period, and if the player is playing well he or she can earn replays known as "specials."

A placard is usually placed in a lower corner of the playfield. It may simply show pricing information, but should also show critical details about special scoring techniques. This information is vital to achieving higher scores; it typically describes a series of events that must take place (e.g., shoot right ramp and left drop targets to light 'extra ball' rollover). Learning these details makes the game more fun and challenging. With practice — and a machine in good operating condition — a player can often achieve specific targets and higher scores and trigger exciting events.

Nudging Skillful players can influence the movement of the ball by nudging or bumping the pinball machine, a technique known as "nudging." There are tilt mechanisms which guard against excessive manipulation of this sort. The mechanisms generally include: 23

• a grounded plumb bob centered in an electrified metal ring – when the machine is jostled or shaken too far or too hard, the bob contacts the ring, completing a circuit. The bob is usually cone-shaped allowing the operator to slide it vertically, controlling the sensitivity; • an electrified ball on a slight ramp with a grounded post at the top of the ramp – when the front of the machine is lifted (literally, tilted) too high, the ball rolls to the top of the ramp and completes the circuit; and • an impact sensor – usually located on the coin door, the playfield and/or the cabinet itself.

When any of these sensors is activated, the game registers a "tilt" and locks out, disabling solenoids for the flippers and other playfield systems so that the ball can do nothing other than roll down the playfield directly to the drain. A tilt will usually result in loss of bonus points earned by the player during that ball.

Older games would immediately end the ball in play on a tilt. Modern games give tilt warnings before sacrificing the ball in play. The number of tilt warnings can be adjusted by the operator of the machine.

Until recently most games also had a "slam tilt" switch which guarded against kicking or slamming the coin mechanism, or for overly aggressive behavior with the machine, which could give a false indication that a coin had been inserted, thereby giving a free game or credit. This feature was recently taken out by default in new Stern S.A.M System games,[citation needed] but can be added as an option. A slam tilt will typically end the current game for all players.

Trapping Skilled players can also hold a ball in place with the flipper, giving them more control over where they want to place the ball when they shoot it forward. This is known as trapping. This technique involves catching the ball in the corner between the base of the flipper and the wall to its side, just as the ball falls towards the flipper; the flipper is then released, which allows the ball to roll slowly downward against the flipper. The player then chooses the moment to hit the flipper again, timing the shot as the ball slides slowly against the flipper. Multi-ball games, in particular, reward trapping techniques. Usually this is done by trapping one or more balls out of play with one flipper, then using the other flipper to score points with the remaining ball or balls.

Once a player has successfully trapped a ball, they may then attempt to "juggle" the ball to the other flipper. This is done by tapping the flipper button quickly enough so that the trapped ball is knocked back at an angle of less than 90 degrees into the bottom of the nearest slingshot. The ball will then often bounce across the playfield to the other flipper, where the ball may then be hit (or trapped) by the opposite flipper.

Occasionally a pinball machine will have a pin or post placed directly between the two bottom flippers.

When this feature is present, the advanced player may then attempt to perform a "chill maneuver" when the ball is heading directly toward the pin by opting not to hit a flipper. If successful, this will cause the ball to bounce up and back into play. A related move, the "dead flipper pass," is performed by not flipping when a ball is heading toward a flipper. If done properly, the ball will bounce off the "dead" flipper, across to the other flipper, where it may be trapped and controlled.

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1.4. In popular culture Pinball games have frequently been featured in popular culture, often as a symbol of rebellion or toughness. Perhaps the most famous instance is the rock opera album Tommy (1969) by The Who, which centers on the title character, a "deaf, dumb, and blind kid", who becomes a "Pinball Wizard" and who later uses pinball as a symbol and tool for his messianic mission. (The album was subsequently made into a movie and stage musical.) Wizard has since moved into popular usage as a term for an expert pinball player. Things came full circle in 1975 when Bally created the Wizard! pinball game featuring Ann-Margret and The Who's Roger Daltrey on the backglass.[53] In the movie version, Tommy plays a Gottlieb Kings and Queens machine,[54] while The Champ plays a Gottlieb Buckaroo machine.

[55] In 1976, Bally released Capt.Fantastic, which had an image of Elton John on the backglass, playing pinball in a similar costume as used in the movie Tommy. Data East produced The Who's Tommy Pinball Wizard in 1994, based on the rock musical The Who's Tommy. This game is notable in its use of The Who's iconic songs, including "Pinball Wizard", sung by original Broadway cast members.

In the late 1970s the children's television series Sesame Street began airing a series of short animated segments, called the "Pinball Number Count". Each segment was different, and involved the ball rolling in different themed areas of a pinball machine depending on which number (from 1-12) was being featured. The animations were directed by Jeff Hale and featured music by Walt Kraemer and vocal work by the Pointer Sisters.

In Pinball, 1973, a novel by Haruki Murakami, the protagonist is obsessed with pinball. One of the plot lines follows his attempts to find a pinball machine he used to play.

In 1975–76 there was a brief TV game show based on pinball called The Magnificent Marble Machine.

Tilt is a 1979 drama film starring Brooke Shields as the protagonist, Tilt, a young pinball wizard.

Nickelodeon used the pinball as their logo in the early 1980s. The words "Nickelodeon" were in rainbow colors against a huge pinball. This logo was used until 1984, when the orange splat logo took place.

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2. Tony's PinBall Machine I am a retired software engineer who started work as an apprentice electronic engineer working on hardware and then moved on to software as computers and microprocessors became available, working mainly on avionic electronic equipment. I have also done model engineering as a hobby and also do DIY. All these activities as well as some artwork are fully used in creating a pinball machine.

The idea The current machine was inspired by the desire for a seaside related item, with a seaside theme for the 3D FilaPrint stand at TCT 2016 at the NEC. The machine follows a fairly traditional 1960’ /1970’s layout including the traditional score drum wheels but with the addition of a ramp, some ornaments and sound.

In action at the NEC TCT 2016

All lit up!

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The Beginning This is my second attempt at building a pinball machine. The first was many years ago, as an apprentice electronic engineer but the project was never finished due to the lack of facilities to produce the many parts required.

The current machine was inspired by the desire for a sea side related item, with a sea side theme for the 3D FilaPrint stand at TCT 2016 at the NEC. The machine follows a fairly traditional 1960’ /1970’s layout including the traditional score drum wheels but with the addition of a ramp, some ornaments and sound.

It was decided that the machine should be full size and fully 3D printed. Many pinball parts are suited to 3D Desktop printing but this one includes a fully printed case and playtable. There are a total of 170 different part designs with a total part count of 520. 3D printing provides a very quick way of producing something from design to the actual physical part. The project was printed partly on my home design printer and on many of the 3D Filaprint’s printers. My homemade printer has a larger than normal 400mm x 300mm bed which made all of the required large parts possible. The largest part being 380 x 280mm. All parts were printed on glass, most were designed and printed face down to produce a flat smooth surface, especially important for the playing table. The glass was applied with LeapFrog Maxx 3D spray as it was imperative that there was absolutely no "lifting" when printing ther large parts for the control cabinet (AKA medicine cabinet).

All of the 170 parts were designed using Openscad. The designs took a total of 200 hours on Openscad. Other softwares used were Cura, Slic3r and Pronterface with a custom version of Marlin embedded in the 3D printer. The pinball machine uses 3 Arduino processors with software written in C, on the Arduino interface. Multiple processors were required to provide the large number of interface ports required.

The total printing time for all the parts was 1200 hours and the project used just over 8 kilometres of filament, supplied by 3D FilaPrint. The majority of the filament was however used in the case and playfield. A more realistic approach might be to use conventional construction methods for these, but the printed cases are however amazingly strong and light. The pinball uses mainly PLA, with some special materials where strength, flexibility or special finish are required. Some parts are printed on top of a single layer overlay to add some graphical design features.

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The Stop While working on the concept of the Pinball how it will look and work, Tony created the mock up version of the playfield with wood and was testing the solenoids for the bumpers, follwoing one of the many tests one of the bumpers solenoids "stuck on" and heated to the point where it caught fire while away at lunch, which resulted in a total meltdown of all plastics and electronics.

To make sure this problem doesn't occur in the future tony introduced the safety feature in the 3D printed pinball machine if the bumper or any solenoid get stuck more than 5 sec. it will shut down the whole power supply so it won't heat up and catch fire. and if the pinball is not in use for 45Sec. it will turn off the main power source and go on demo mode until you insert the coin and start playing.

Tony's pinball has a modular approach when created. if any module stop working it can easily swap out with working one or replace with a total different version of the item.

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Tools

Tools used for the project Software - OpenSCAD - Cura - Slic3r - PronterFace - Simplify3D - Makerbot Hardware - Arduino - Solenoids - Sensors - Voltage Sensors - Tony's DIY 3D Printer ( A3 size Bed for this Project)

What Filaments were used?

More than 85 different filaments used, see the full list of materials here

How many parts to create the Pinball Machine?

It took 550+ parts to make this pinball and used 181 Unique Parts designed in OpenScad. and there is still room to add-on more.

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Tonys PinBall - Southend on sea Themed

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Playfield

The playfield is a planar surface inclined upward from three degrees away from the player and includes multiple targets and scoring objectives.

Top Ramp - Bowling Ally

Represents the bowling alley in Southend on Sea. Essex. England.

Top Front Panel - ArtWork

Southend themed; Silhouette of the famous Southend Pier and the Plane to represent Southend airport.

Top

Score Board

Score Reel, Inspired by Original score board instead of LED or Nexie tube style.

Top Kick-outs - Saucers

A shallow hole with a kicker inside. The ball remains visible on the playfield and is kicked out either straight up (usually into a duct or rail chute) or sideways back onto the playfield.

Top Ghost

Keeping the theme consistent, ghost legends of Southend on Sea.

Top Bumper

Bumpers are round constricting central pillars that, when hit, will actively push the ball away.

Top Targets

These are static targets that simply record when a ball strikes them. They are also known as spot targets or stand-up targets. which activate different sounds and award points.

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Top Flippers

The flippers are one or more small mechanically or electromechanically controlled levers, roughly 3cm to 7cm in length, used for redirecting the ball up the playfield.

Top Kickers and Sling-Shot

Kickers and slingshots are rubber pads which propel the ball away upon impact, like bumpers, but are usually a horizontal side of a wall.

Top Insert Coin

Coin operated to give and authentic 50's touch.

Top Plunger

The plunger is a spring-loaded rod with a small Knob at the end, use to propel the ball into the playfield.

Top

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Filaments Used

- Silver - White - Neon - Brown - Almond - Mocha - Green - Hunter green - Yellow - Black

PcPlus - White - Black

PolyMax - Yellow - Blue - Black

PolyFlex - Yellow - White

- Conductive - HT Coffee - Magnetic Iron - Stainless Steel

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- Botfeeder

PLA

- Transparent Red - Thermo Green - Yellow - X-Mas Green - Chocolate Brown - Grey - Natural - Orange - Florescent Yellow - UV White to Blue - UV White to Purple - Glow in the Dark Green - Blue Green to yellow Green Thermo - Translucent Orange - Florescent Blue - Glow Green - White - Blue - Wood Colour - Red - Yellow - Florescent Red - Nylon ( Glow in the Dark) - Translucent Orange - Copper - ABS Red

BioFila Linen

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- Silver - Blue - Red - White

- Red Pla - Black Pla - White to Blue Thermo - Glow in Dark Blue - PLA Glow in the Dark Green - Transparent - Yellow - Orange - Red - Pearl White - Apple Green - Iron Grey - Dark Blue

T-Glass - Green - Blue - Red

Polyolefin - White

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Fillamentum - Filaflex 98a - Grey - FilaFlex - Signal Yellow - Filaflex - Signal Red

- FiberFlex Black 40D

BrassFill

- PLA Elixir Blend Natural

- Ancient Bronze

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- Classic Copper

HD-Glassâ„¢

- Transparent - Pastel Purple - Red - Green - Clear

- Yellow - Black

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PinBall Parts This pinball is designed on a Southend-on-Sea theme. Every part on machine tells the tale of something related to Southend-on-Sea.

• Playfield

Based on the southend features, Pier, Ghosts, Airport (sound activated) targets with Rainbow targets and Bowling Alley with beach and beach balls.

Plunger

A complete 3D Printed plunger with spring, retraction arm and release and hit the ball action.

Flippers 38

3D Printed Flippers powered by powerful solenoid

Bumpers

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Seashell covered with lights inside which give a lovely effect in low lights or in when in the dark.

Kickers and SlingShot

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Nice piece of slingshot to boost the power after flipper action.

Targets

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Rainbow effect when you hit all the targets within the same game.

Saucers

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A powerful kick-out which activates the ghost feature

Ramps

Southend theme bowling alley and pier ramp

BackGlass (nicknamed the medicine cabinet)

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Pier silhouette with airplane Southend on Sea

Scoring

Who doesn't want to score a high score? Numbers and drums 3D printed also.

Other Features

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The Ghost that wanders around the sea shores of Southend-on-Sea, activated when landing in a kickout (see above).

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Bowling Alley, Southend Pier inspired ramp and the lovely seagulls.

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Work in progress and printer working hard. Tony designed and made the 3D printer. The Build area is A3 size to manage big pieces of the playfield printed nice and smooth.

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Ramps made from wood coloured PLA, which was curved using the warm water method. The Bowling Alley flooring printed using BioFila Linen, wonderfully smooth finish.

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Playfield Parts

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Ramps Design

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Night view.

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Electronics

- The Wire-mare solenoids

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stepper motors

5

stepper drivers

5

ttl integrated circuit

45

transistors

22

opto slotted switch

20

resistors

80

relay

1

LED

70

circuit breadboards

18

rc servo

1

cable

100m

MosFETS

16

arduino mega

2

arduino duo

1

ada fx sound card

2

loudspeakers

4

Lets Have a look what makes this pinball tick.

Some of the Concept designs

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Overview of the playfield

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Bumpers

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PC-PLUS by Polymaker All the transparent parts of the bumper were made with this material because of its high impact strength and durability.

Conductive PLA by Proto-pasta All the black parts of the bumper were made with this material which made up the contact for the bumper, when hit by the pinball activated the solenoids underneath. The wires were printed into the conductive PLA during the actual printing process.

Fluorescent PLA by Reprapper Tech Any filament would have done for these parts, just choose this as it looked nice!

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Christmas Green PLA by Reprapper Tech One of my most favourite filaments to print with!

Flippers

Slingshot

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Targets

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Ball return

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Control Box and Score Board

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Sound/Music FX Control

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Motherboard's and Voltage Sensors

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Solenoids

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A solenoid (from the French solĂŠnoĂŻde, derived in turn from the Greek solen "pipe, channel" + combining form of Greek eidos "form, shape"[1]) is a coil wound into a tightly packed helix.

Stepper Motor

A stepper motor or step motor or stepping motor is a brushless DC electric motor that divides a full rotation into a number of equal steps. The motor's position can then be commanded to move and hold at one of these steps without any feedback sensor (an open-loop controller), as long as the motor is carefully sized to the application in respect to torque and speed.

stepper drivers

Stepper motor performance is strongly dependent on the driver circuit. Torque curves may be extended to greater speeds if the stator poles can be reversed more quickly, the limiting factor being the winding inductance. To overcome the inductance and switch the windings quickly, one must increase the drive voltage. This leads further to the necessity of limiting the current that these high voltages may otherwise induce.

TTL IC's

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Transistor–transistor logic (TTL) is a class of digital circuits built from bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) and resistors. It is called transistor–transistor logic because transistors perform both the logic function (e.g., AND) and the amplifying function (compare with resistor–transistor logic (RTL) and diode– transistor logic (DTL)).

Transistor

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electronic signals and electrical power. It is composed of semiconductor material usually with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Today, some transistors are packaged individually, but many more are found embedded in integrated circuits.

Slotted optical switch

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The slotted optical switch, sometimes known as opto switch or optical switch but not to be confused with the optical component, is a device comprising a photoemitter (e.g. LED) and a photodetector (e.g. photodiode) mounted in a single package so that the photoemitter normally illuminates the photodetector, but an opaque object can be inserted in a slot between them so as to break the beam.

Associated circuitry is provided which changes state when the beam is interrupted. For example, the carriage of a computer printer may be fitted with a projection which interrupts the beam of a slotted switch when it reaches the end of its travel, causing circuitry to react appropriately. Another application of the slotted switch is in the type of computer mouse with a rotating ball. The ball measures distances moved by rotating orthogonal shafts which drive optical chopper wheels turning in the slots of slotted switches.[1]

Resistor

A resistor is a passive two-terminal electrical component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element. In electronic circuits, resistors are used to reduce current flow, adjust signal levels, to divide voltages, bias active elements, and terminate transmission lines, among other uses. Highpower resistors that can dissipate many watts of electrical power as heat may be used as part of motor controls, in power distribution systems, or as test loads for generators. Fixed resistors have resistances that only change slightly with temperature, time or operating voltage. Variable resistors can be used to adjust circuit elements (such as a volume control or a lamp dimmer), or as sensing devices for heat, light, humidity, force, or chemical activity.

Relay

A relay is an electrically operated switch. Many relays use an electromagnet to mechanically operate a switch, but other operating principles are also used, such as solid-state relays. Relays are used where it is necessary to control a circuit by a separate low-power signal, or where several circuits must be controlled by one signal. The first relays were used in long

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distance telegraph circuits as amplifiers: they repeated the signal coming in from one circuit and re-transmitted it on another circuit. Relays were used extensively in telephone exchanges and early computers to perform logical operations.

LED

A light-emitting diode (LED) is a two-lead semiconductor light source. It is a p–n junction diode, which emits light when activated.[4] When a suitable voltage is applied to the leads, electrons are able to recombine with electron holes within the device, releasing energy in the form of photons. This effect is called electroluminescence, and the color of the light (corresponding to the energy of the photon) is determined by the energy band gap of the semiconductor.

Circuit breadboards

A breadboard is a construction base for prototyping of electronics. Originally it was literally a bread board, a polished piece of wood used for slicing bread. In the 1970s the solderless breadboard (AKA plugboard, a terminal array board) became available and nowadays the term "breadboard" is commonly used to refer to these. "Breadboard" is also a synonym for "prototype".

RC servo

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Servos (also RC servos) are small, cheap, mass-produced servomotors or other actuators used for radio control and smallscale robotics

Cable

An electrical cable is made of two or more wires running side by side and bonded, twisted, or braided together to form a single assembly, the ends of which can be connected to two devices, enabling the transfer of electrical signals from one device to the other. Cables are used for a wide range of purposes, and each must be tailored for that purpose. Cables are used extensively in electronic devices for power and signal circuits. Long-distance communication takes place over undersea cables. Power cables are used for bulk transmission of alternating and direct current power, especially using highvoltage cable. Electrical cables are extensively used in building wiring for lighting, power and control circuits permanently installed in buildings. Since all the circuit conductors required can be installed in a cable at one time, installation labor is saved compared to certain other wiring methods.

Arduino MEGA and DUO

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Arduino (sold as Genuino outside of the U.S. and U.K due to a trademark dispute) is a hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures computer hardware, open-source software, and microcontrollerbased kits for building digital devices and interactive objects that can sense and control physical devices.[1] The project is based on microcontroller board designs, produced by several vendors, using various microcontrollers. These systems provide sets of digital and analog input/output (I/O) pins that can interface to various expansion boards (termed shields) and other circuits. The boards feature serial communication interfaces, including Universal Serial Bus (USB) on some models, for loading programs from personal computers. For programming the microcontrollers, the Arduino project provides an integrated development environment (IDE) based on a programming language named Processing, which also supports the languages C and C++.

Ada fx sound card

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Lets You Add Sound/MP3 to your Projects

Loudspeakers

A loudspeaker (or loud-speaker or speaker) is an electroacoustic transducer;[1] which converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound.[2] The first primitive loudspeakers were invented during the development of telephone systems in the late 1800s, but electronic amplification by vacuum tube beginning around 1912 made loudspeakers truly practical. By the 1920s they were used in radios, phonographs, public address systems and theatre sound systems for talking motion pictures. Two sets of speakers were used to isolate certain sounds ie in-game and game music.

MOSFET

MOSFET (metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor, pronounced MAWS-feht ) is a special type of field-effect transistor ( FET ) that works by electronically varying the width of a channel along which charge carriers ( electron s or hole s) flow. The wider the channel, the better the device conducts.

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Embedded Software

Tony used C/C++ on arduino to create the whole software from scratch for the pinball.

Here is a small code snippets

sample code for inserting a coin case 11: //coin mydelay(250); release_sounds(); pinball_idle = 0; ball_count = 3; update_ball_display(); do_sound(fx27_cash_reg); reset_score_reels(); score = 0; all_targets_off(); start_LED_on(); clear_target_count(); power_control(1); mydelay(1500); do_shooter(); do_sound(fx22_start_music); mydelay(1000); release_sounds(); end_of_game = 0; bumper_hit_count = 0; digitalWrite(music_table[music_index] , LOW);

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music_index=music_index+1; if ( music_index >3) music_index =1; ball_count_flag=1; break;

hitting the middle left target case 12: // middle left target TARGET_EVENT_COUNT[middle_left_target ] = TARGET_EVENT_COUNT[middle_left_target ]+1; do-sound(37); if ( TARGET_EVENT_COUNT[middle_left_target] ==1){ Set_LED_STATUS ( middle_left_target_a); score=score+100; } if ( TARGET_EVENT_COUNT[middle_left_target ] >=2){ Set_LED_STATUS ( middle_left_target_b); score=score+200; } break;

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Design - OpenSCAD

Pinball Design from start till finish.

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Playfield

Pinball

Side Panels

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Template Playfield - RIP

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Flipper Exploded View and All installed as a module

Bumper Exploded View and Sliced View 79

Pinball Legs

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Tony's A3 Size 300x400 DIY 3D Printer (Made by Tony for this Project)

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Score Board and Control Box

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Pinball Frame 83

Quick Summary

3D Desktop Printed Tony's Pinball

• 200+ CAD Design Hours - not including "spare time" spent ie whilst sitting in car waiting for wife, during lunchbreaks!

• 1200+ Hours 3D Printing - does not include failed prints etc.

• 8.5 Kilometres of Filament - does not included failed prints.

• 85 Filament Types - this takes into consideration filament diameters and different colours of a single filament type.

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Interesting Facts

1. Pinball Was Illegal Pinball was banned from the early 1940s to the mid-1970s in most of America's big cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, where the game was born and where virtually all of its manufacturers have historically been located. The stated reason for the bans: Pinball was a game of chance, not skill, and so it was a form of gambling. To be fair, pinball really did involve a lot less skill in the early years of the game, largely because the flipper wasn't invented until 1947, five years after most of the bans were implemented.

Up until then, players would bump and tilt the machines in order to sway the ball's gravity. Many lawmakers also believed pinball to be a mafia-run racket and a timeand dime-waster for impressionable youth. (The machines robbed the "pockets of schoolchildren in the form of nickels and dimes given them as lunch money," New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia wrote in a Supreme Court affidavit.)

In New York, the pinball ban was executed in a particularly dramatic fashion. Just weeks after Pearl Harbor was attacked, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia issued an ultimatum to the city's police force stating that their top priority would be to round up pinball machines and arrest their owners. La Guardia proceeded to spearhead massive Prohibition-style raids in which thousands of machines were rounded up in a matter of days, before being dramatically smashed with sledgehammers by the mayor and police commissioner. The machines were then dumped into the city's rivers.

2. NYPD Held Prohibition-Style Raids on Pinball In New York, the pinball ban was executed in a particularly dramatic fashion. Just weeks after Pearl Harbor was attacked, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia issued an ultimatum to the city's police force stating that their top priority would be to round up pinball machines and arrest their owners. La Guardia proceeded to spearhead massive Prohibition-style raids in which thousands of machines were rounded up in a matter of days, before being dramatically smashed with sledgehammers by the mayor and police commissioner. The machines were then dumped into the city's rivers.

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3. Pinball Went Into Hiding Although pinball was illegal in New York, it did not disappear entirely — it just moved behind curtains to seedy pornography shops, in places like Harlem and Greenwich Village. And the police were still raiding illegal pinball operators through the 1970s.

During World War II, much of America's manufacturing infrastructure switched over to the war effort. The pinball industry, which was a major user of copper wiring, was no exception. During the war, few new games were made. Instead, pinball suppliers began selling so-called conversion kits, which would allow pinball operators to transform a machine's artwork to a fresh theme. These conversion themes often took the form of wartime motifs, such as the patriotic "Victory in the Pacific."

4. Pinball Production Changed During the War During World War II, much of America's manufacturing infrastructure switched over to the war effort. The pinball industry, which was a major user of copper wiring, was no exception. During the war, few new games were made. Instead, pinball suppliers began selling so-called conversion kits, which would allow pinball operators to transform a machine's artwork to a fresh theme. These conversion themes often took the form of wartime motifs, such as the patriotic "Victory in the Pacific."

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5. Pinball Is a Symbol of Rebellion in Hollywood Because pinball was illegal for so long, it became a symbol of youth and rebellion. If you watch a movie or TV show that was either produced or takes place during this period, virtually any time pinball makes an appearance, it is for the purpose of portraying to the audience that a particular character is a rebel. For example, the Fonz is regularly seen playing pinball in "Happy Days" episodes. And when "Tommy," The Who's pinball-wizard-themed rock opera album came out in 1972, pinball was still banned in much of the country. The album's use of pinball is largely misunderstood by today's audiences, who may view the deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard as quirky. In all likelihood, The Who was using the game to portray the titular character as anti-authoritarian. Filmmaker Richard Linklater makes use of this symbol in a significant number of his movies, with rebellious or outcast characters seen playing or talking about pinball in virtually every one. And in The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob once proclaimed, "Television has ruined more young minds than pinball and syphilis combined."

6. It Took a Babe Ruth-Like Move to Legalize Pinball in NYC In 1976, the New York City pinball ban was overturned.

The coin-operated amusement lobby (which represented the pinball industry) eventually succeeded in earning a City Council hearing to re-examine the long-standing ban. Their strategy: prove that pinball was a game of skill, not chance, and thus should be legal. To do this, they decided to call in the best player they could find in order to demonstrate his pinball wizardry — a 26-year-old magazine editor named Roger Sharpe. Fearful that this hearing might be their only shot at overturning the ban, the industry brought in two machines, one to serve as a backup in case any problems arose with the primary machine. Suspicious that the pinballers had rigged the primary machine, one particularly antagonistic councilman told them that he wanted them to use the backup. This presented a problem: While Sharpe was intimately familiar with the first-choice game, he had never played the backup. As he played the game, surrounded by a huddle of journalists, cameras and councilmen, he did little to impress City Council's anti-pinball coalition. So he made a final Hail Mary move that, to this day, he compares to Babe Ruth's famous called shot in center field. He pulled back the plunger to launch a new ball, pointed at the middle lane at the top of the playing field, and boldly stated that, based only on his skill, he would get the ball to land through that middle lane. He let go of the plunger and it did what he said. Almost on the spot, the City Council voted to overturn the ban.

I recently asked Sharpe what he thought would have happened if he had missed the shot. After thinking about it for a few hours, he got back to me: "I'm not sure pinball would be legal today."

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7. Pinball Has a Surprise Best-Seller The best-selling pinball machine of all time is still "The Addams Family," which came out in 1991.

8. Pinball Is Still Illegal in Some Places Just a few years ago, Nashville, Tenn. overturned its ban on children under 18 playing, or even standing within 10 feet of, a pinball machine. And, to this day, it is illegal to play pinball on Sundays in Ocean City, N.J.

9. Hugh Hefner Is a Huge Pinball Fanatic He collects pinball machines and has cooperated with pinball companies for at least three Playboy-themed pinball machines over the years. A former editor at Playboy told me that the magazine's editorial offices had a Fireball pinball machine in the '70s.

The best-selling pinball machine of all time is still "The Addams Family," which came out in 1991.

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10. There Was a Pinball-Video Game Hybrid In 1999, Williams Pinball was the largest pinball company in the world. But it was also part of a larger, publicly traded company that demanded higher profits than the games were producing. And so the bosses gave the pinball division one last chance to save the company — and its jobs. It was to create a new game that would bridge the gap between pinball and video games. The result was Pinball 2000, and it was a strange hybrid of the two types of games. Instead of relying on physical targets, the system projected holographic characters on the screen that would interact with the flying ball. The new game was considered a modest success, and two Pinball 2000 games were produced. But it wasn't enough for Williams' parent company, which nonetheless pulled the plug on the entire pinball division.

And it does it in the U.S. Every new pinball machine comes from a single Stern Pinball factory in the Chicago suburbs, where factory workers assemble several thousand parts, largely by hand.

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11. Just One Company Still Makes Pinball Machines And it does it in the U.S. Every new pinball machine comes from a single Stern Pinball factory in the Chicago suburbs, where factory workers assemble several thousand parts, largely by hand.

12. The current World Pinball Champion at time of this publication.

Keith Elwin

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PinBall Infographics

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