DMD Day Custom Pinball Machine

My dad and I had been learning the inner workings of pinball machines for several years. A couple of years ago we decided to build one from scratch. I was in charge of 3D printing all of the pieces that are now on the playfield. There are at least 16 vital pieces on that machine that I designed and 3D-printed. One of my favorite things to CAD was the entire playfield because I got to use all the individual parts I previously made and put them together to create a clear image of what the pinball machine would look like when it’s complete. This image also helped us to determine where to drill the holes for parts that need to be attached to the machine.

I also designed a mechanism for a solenoid that would allow the rod to stay in the up position without continuously drawing power from the solenoid. My solution was based off the clicking mechanism inside a pen.  I figured out how to create this part by CAD-ing and printing numerous designs until I finally created a successful working prototype.

Ringer

This is a 1970 Ringer horseshoe throwing machine. It had been left in a shed about 30 years and, based off the damage, probably endured multiple floods. The bottom was worn out and the relays were super rusty. I had to replace every single relay on the bottom board, unsoldering the wires and move them over to a new base and soldering them back in place.

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  Rusted out stepper motor
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  Example of a rusty relay that need replacing
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  Front view
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  How we found it buried in a shed along with countless other machines
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  The bottom panel completely replaced and cleaned out
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  The entire circuitry from the back side

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3D printer projects

These are a bunch of various projects I’ve 3D printed over the years. Captions on each picture for information.

1910’s telephone

This is an old 1910’s telephone that has been partially gutted to work on a modern day landline using a “modern” 1990’s phone and some pinball parts. More details in the video.

Useless Box

This is one of my first projects dating back to my middle school days. It’s relatively simple but it’s always fun to mess around with from time to time. This box was designed to unsuspectingly just turn itself off.

Honorable Mentions

A couple of other things I’ve worked on that deserve a shout out.

Robot Competition

I created this robot for my “ME 2110: Creative Decisions& Dsgn” class. This class gave us a list of tasks that we were suppose to design our robot to accomplish. There was also a competition to see whose robot performed the best. The rules are posted below, along with the scoring table, but I will try to summarize them briefly. The most important things about them are to get the model rocket to be the highest on the field, score ping pong balls into the center minivan, we had a limited choice of power sources and actuators, and our robot had to start by fitting in a 12″x18″x24″ box and could expand as needed when the round started.

The theme of the competition was Toy Story, so we decided to make our robot out of toys. Legos were used for the cage at the top holding the ping pong balls, the treads driving the robot, and the decorations all around.

Out of 60 teams, we placed third in the design review, which was judged by many professionals and experts from the industry. In the competition itself, our robot made it all the way to the semi-finals.

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Battleship

I created this in my “CS 2110: Computer Organiz&Program” class. This was programmed using C and played on a Gameboy emulator. I later put it onto an Everdrive cartridge and actually played my own game on my Game Boy Advance SP. The AI that plays against the player has at least a 40% win rate, and even though battleship can be luck, this AI makes strategic guesses where there is more open space and more likely to be a ship.

Guitar Hero Bot

This was a very freeform project for my “ME 4405: Mechatronics” class. I thought of the idea of a robot to play guitar hero. The project ran using an MSP432 as the microcontroller and photoresistors to read the change in light from lighter and darker pixel colors. Servos were used to press the buttons and a DC motor for hitting the strum bar. The motor turned out to be too weak to be able to trigger the strum bar, so my group ended up with manual strumming.

Capstone Project

For my final semester as an undergrad at Georgia Tech, I took a capstone class that uses all the skills I’ve learned during my time at Tech, to work on a final project. For my project, I worked closely with Ryobi, who make power tools, to work on their hedge trimmer. I can’t go into too much detail on what we did for the project, but I can say that our goal was to make the blade detachable from the main unit to allow savings in shipping costs, and that Ryobi was very happy with our end product. Our design did so well that my team won the best Mechanical Engineering project out of all of the other Mechanical Engineering projects.

3D Printing in color

This was my senior capstone project that I worked on in a group of three. We came up with the task of making a device that allowed 3D printers to print in a variety of colors.

These are a couple of our solutions shown along with our final presentation. Our results are posted below, and click here for more pictures and information.

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Marble Sorter

In my “Principles of Engineering” class, I built a marble sorter that successfully sorted 19 out of 20 marbles. There were 4 types: steel, wood, clear plastic, and white plastic.

Trebuchet

For AP Physics 1 I built a trebuchet with my best friend. We did everything from the design, cutting the wood, constructing the trebuchet, to even picking out the wood from The Home Depot. The sling was cut out of an old shirt from my house, and the barbell is from my friend’s dad’s weight set.