My holiday project continues to move forward, although not quite as fast as I had originally planned. First thing to do after my previous update was to get the second ramp built. This was an exact copy of the first, so I won’t go through the details and photos again as it’s all the same. In the end though, I now have two ramps ready to roll.
ramp
All posts tagged ramp
My planned “big project” for these Christmas holidays was to be the playfield swap on Pinbot. That’s been put aside for now to focus on another project I’ve been wanting to do for a long time – build my own skate ramp for use in the backyard. Around 7 or 8 years ago I would spend a lot of time going to different skate parts and spots around Melbourne with my inline skates. I always dreamed of having my own ramp or ledge to skate on. Now I have kids and they are of an age where skateboarding (and rollerblading) is in their scope of interest – so it’s a great excuse to build the ramp I always wanted. My kids will love it and I’ll love it even more. I had a few reminders this year of how short life is, so enough putting it off – time to build a ramp and enjoy it. I started out by doing some research into just what sort of ramp I’d like to have and found plans for this:
Two switch issue have crept into Pinbot over the last few months and I wanted to take a look at them. The first relates to the ramp switch, which lets the game know if the ramp is up or down. When the ramp is down, the switch should be activated. There are two coils which control the state of the ramp and if the switch is in the wrong state, the game will continually try and activate a coil. This was the behavior I was seeing. The ramp would be down, but the coil would continue to fire.
Continuing with my focus on the upper playfield area, it’s now time to look at the multiplier advance ramp on the left. This area has a few things which will need to be cleaned and rebuilt. There is an eject saucer, a single stationary target and an assembly to raise and lower the ramp. There are plenty of metal parts that will need a good polish too and no doubt a solid layer of crap to clean off.
My next update was going to cover the work I’ve done on the coin door. But something managed to squeeze in just before it. I should have the coin door all ready by Sunday though, so it’s not far off. Meanwhile, the next area on the playfield to receive attention is the upper playfield – or more specifically, the vortex ramp.
