Pinball Table

Tried to start modeling the table with Affinity Designer, but soon came to the conclusion, that it is not meant for modeling stuff. Affinity Designer is a vector graphics editing software, like InkScape, meant for graphic designers and layout artists. It is a good compromise, if you want something more user friendly (and less nerdy) than Inkscape, and do not want to pay the high monthly subscription costs of Adobe Illustrator. It works especially well for my setup, where I need to work with the designs both with computer and on my iPad (as I use my iPad as a movable Wacom Cintiq), and the there exists a fully capable version on both, that sync seamesly between each other.

Started by sketching some pinball table and mechanics designs with my iPad. These included the table, paddle, and bumpers. The sketches need more work to make the electronics fit, and to figure out how they are connected to the board, but as a starting point, they have something.

Tried to get Autodesk fusion access, throught the link provided by Fab Academy. It failed, so I asked for Autodesk Education License throught the university of Oulu. That went through and I could install the software.

Started modeling the board with Autodesk Fusion. According to this link the size of pinball table is 130 cm to 72 cm, so I started modeling the board with those dimensions.

Added a gutter for ball launcher and a place for a ball feeder.

Started adding dimensions and constraints to the board. Defined variables for most of the dimensions, like outer wall width, gutter width and board dimension in all three directions (width, height, depth).

According to Stern, the size of balls in pinball machines is 27mm. Used that data to define the ball launchers chute width to 30mm.

And a paddle

Also designed a paddle using a similar process. The variables used were based on this Reddit discussion.

It is based on two circles with variable diameters(bigCircleDiameter and smallCircleDiameter), and their centers are separated by a circleDistance. Then there are two lines, that connect each circle from up and below. I played around with defining the contact points with tangent constraint, with defined distances from each other and many other ways. Most of them did not work when variables were changed, so I wasn’t really happy. If I remember correctly, the final design I settled with just made sure that they connect to the circle on the exact oppisite sides, by constraining the distance between the connection points to be equal to the circle diameter.

The it was extruded with paddleThickness.