Hackaday [Unofficial]Can you 3D Print a Pinball Machine That’s Fun to Play?
Can you 3D Print a Pinball Machine That’s Fun to Play? https://hackaday.com/2026/04/28/can-you-3d-print-a-pinball-machine-thats-fun-to-play/
#3dPrinterhacks #Games #DIYpinball #Pinballmachine
#3dPrinterhacks #Games #DIYpinball #Pinballmachine
hackaday unofficialA Great Resource For The Would-Be Pinball Machine Builder
Those of us beyond a certain age will very likely have some fond memories of many an hour spent and pocket money devoured feeding the local arcade pinball machine. At one time they seemed to be pretty much everywhere, but sadly, these days they seem to have largely fallen out of favour and are becoming more of speciality to be specifically sought out. Apart from a few random ones turning up — there's a fun Frankenstein-themed machine in the Mary Shelley Museum in Bath, England — a trip to a local amusement arcade is often pretty disappointing, with modern arcade machines just not quite scratching that itch anymore, if you ask us. So what's an old-school hacker to do, but learn how to build a machine from scratch, just the way we want it? A great resource for this is the excellent Pinball Makers site, which shows quite a few different platforms to build upon and a whole ton of resources and guides to help you along the way.
P3-ROC pinball machine controller mainboard - note the Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA
Building a working machine requires some serious skills from a wide range of areas covering woodworking, metal bashing, graphics design, electronics, game design and programming. For a newbie, there is so much to learn that it must be really daunting trying to work out where to begin! Luckily Pinball Makers has sections for each of these disciplines, and many more, with guides to the special pinball-specific construction techniques as well. Want to know how to construct a slingshot? Covered! What about an electronics platform to build upon? There are many options, some based around then Open Pinball Project (OPP) and some not so much. Now, hands up who fancies building a Hackaday-themed pinball machine (dark theme, naturally), and what would the game be? Answers down below!
Boy, have we covered pinball machines a lot over the years, here's a beautiful machine built into a coffee table form factor, that might help you sneak that out of the workshop and into the living room. If that's too big, and you 'got the look' when you wheeled your creation into the house, here's a teeny tiny PI-based virtual machine to make you feel better. Finally, if building one is not your game, and you're hankering for the real-deal, you might need some debug help with the older machines!
Thanks [Keith] for the tip!
#games #howto #construction #diypinball #electronics #pinballmachine #retro
K’nex Pinball Machine is a Playable Work of Art
It's really a wonder that we missed this one, what with all the extra time in front of a computer we've had over the last year or so. But better late than never, we always say, so behold, (a little at a time, because there's quite a lot to look at), [Tyler Bower]'s pinball machine built entirely from K'nex.
Where do we even start? This is a full-size pinball machine, as in 7′ tall, 5′ long, and 3′ wide. [Tyler] estimates that it's made from about 16,000 pieces, or around 73 pounds of plastic, much of which was obtained locally and is secondhand. Many of those pieces make up the ten drill motor-driven chain lifts in the back -- these move the ball through the machine after it goes through one of the track triggers and return it to the playfield in various delightful ways.
Speaking of ways to score, there are nine of them total, and some are harder to get to than others. They all involve some really amazing K'nex movement, and each one uses aluminum foil switches to trigger scoring through a MaKey MaKey.
Of course there's a multi-ball mode, but our favorite has to be the trap door in the playfield that gets you to the mini pinball game in the upper left, because only the best pinball games have some kind of mini game. Either that, or our favorite is the rotating arm that swings around gracefully and drops the ball on a track. Anyway, all nine elements are explored in the video after the break, which frankly we could watch on repeat. If you're hungry for more details, there's quite a bit of info in the description.
The only thing this machine is missing is a tilt switch, but as you'll see in the video, it would probably get triggered quite often. Is this somehow not cool enough for you? Here's a slightly bigger K'nex ball machine that doesn't seem to move as much, but also isn't a full freaking pinball machine complete with meta game.
Thanks for the tip, [Itay]!
