Upgrade/Project Help

[mechatronics]

Hi, I am a college student in Minnesota. Two friends and I are making a pinball machine for our senior project. We need to involve Electrical and Pnuematic parts into our machine. We have our basic layout of what we are going to do. We are just looking for any advice from problems we may run into the average person would not expect, Where we can purchase used parts. Basically anything. We need flippers and bumpers. We are unsure of what kind of bumpers we should use. Also how to rack up points.
We have all our pnuematic components along with all of our inductive sensors. We have access to our own solenoids, sensors, push buttons, display units, PLCS, Power supplies.
Any advice is appreciated

 

[faralos]

You can try this site i am unsure though if they sell used parts

http://www.betson.com/
or try ebay for used cheap parts or even craigs list
and what? no pics? for shame!!
we would love to see how it's all coming together

 

[sleepy]

I'm no expert, but rack up points?
I would guess reading the inductive sensors and any physical switches for a pulse and grouping them to interface through a control circuit and the game software.
It would be the software that sets the sensors and switches to score a specific value of points.

If you are not programming your own software, you might look into the PinMame P-ROC program which allows customization of existing ROMs, and though I am not sure about this, you might be able to do something with the WPC Test Fixture ROMs and P-Roc. The Test Fixture ROMs are for analyzing and/or prototyping the Williams WPC system, the DMD (scoreboard), or you can use LED Segment Displays and *A BIG MAYBE* the earlier Williams test ROMs for 1980's LED score displays, but someone on the team will need to be able to work with computer code, hex values and linking ROM data I/O to the physical sensors, switches, etc., unless the P-ROC is a simplified tool. I've never used it myself so I don't know. You might want to download and take a look at the scripts for a Visual Pinball VPinMame pinball table. The scripts for these recreations requires linking code for the emulation and virtual Objects, switches, etc. to communicate with the ROM.

The Test ROMs for Williams LED and DMD systems are available for download at www.planetarypinball.com Please see "Test Fixtures"

http://www.planetarypinball.com/mm5/Williams/tech/roms.html