Unplanned Steampunk Arcade Machine #7 

Doing all this fully mechanically is a challenge for you but what a joy to watch for us. I often play with old cameras, maybe the aesthetics of the machine would benefit even more from some bellows? Just a thought. Also you said bells AND whistles, so I fully expect a few whistles now. Little bellows from a cuckoo clock maybe? Ha, there’s your whistle 😄

This is amazingly satisfying, pure joy! In my opinion the dark background brought a great improvement to the video.

Your scoring mechanism is so beautiful to emphasize it you may use infinite mirror as background. It would add to your time travel idea as well. infinite number of translucent gears.

Outstanding!

Always a pleasure to see what you invented again, cheers Ron

I so enjoy your videos

you are a wizard

This is how I tend to build things, just designing each part one step at a time with a pretty vague idea of the end plan. It is often a complete surprise to me how they turn out and feels almost as if someone else has designed it... BTW - I asked a friend for some suggestions on a name for your machine and my favourite suggestion was "Baron Brassington's Horological Descent Engine".

Ah the "Penny's Dropped!". A fantastic mechanism evolving before our eyes. Just incredible. Can't wait until the brass paint is applied. Yes bells, whistles and bellows would be a fine edition however will there be a spinning governor I ask to keep it all in check? UK Science Musuem's 'Ziming Zhong' exhibition might hold a clue to how they did it back in the day. Will the game have a theme, say reflecting the history or significant events during the victorian 'steam punk' era. As I recall pin ball machines often reflected events and fashion of the era in which they were created.. 1950's, 1960's until the evil microprocessors took over... Its all just soo good. Cheers

The thumb looks like you just won a tennis trophy in the 80's

Great work John, you crazy, brilliant man. This might be a bit of a tall order, but how about some Heath Robinson / Rube Goldberg type machine for the game itself (no idea what though), might be tricky keeping the ball involved. Alternatively, little levers on the front attached to various see-saws that have to be controlled to direct the ball through holes in them. If the ball falls off the ends, it drops into the front gulley and if successfully navigated through the holes ends up in the rear gulley.

By the time you are done, you will realize that you have reinvented a Turing Machine 😂🤣 Zig can puch the tape..

Wow thanks for the mention!

Piece of Victorian Art. Da Vinci would be proud of your mechanical ingenuity. You may try metal printing. For pricing you may check Pcbway.

What a fantastic and fascinating machine this is becoming. I have so many thoughts. My first thought is about the coin mechanism, ball elevator, and all of it's moving parts. You added some aluminum reinforcement because of a break in the 3D print. I do a lot of FDM printing for various projects too and have gone through several kilos of filament just trying to get one part right. If there is any face the part can be laid on to print so your layer lines are at a right angle to force applied to the part, it will fare a lot better. It may unfortunately mean you have to print supports in a place that is less than ideal. What if the final mechanism was machined out of aluminum? This is not a plug so I will keep it vague, but there are a few companies that for a fee will take your 3D model and turn it into a solid part out of all sorts of materials. If the whole mechanism is made out of metal, it will account for the weight, but if somebody that doesn't understand how the mechanism is supposed to work gets ahold of it, there will be much less potential for any of the smaller moving parts to be broken. My next thought is about the score reset.. workings? Specifically the axle that winds up the string with weights on the end that is responsible for eventually spinning the score dials back to zero. This might be something you're already thinking about, but it might be useful if that axle had a spool on the end that the string winds onto, or a set of tapered wheels that go on either side of the string to keep it all in one spot. Just to prevent the string from falling off of the end of the axle. At your mention of bells and whistles, I'm wondering if it would be too complicated to borrow some cuckoo clock mechanics and add a small bellows that could blow a whistle. Maybe that's too far in the future right now, but it seems like your creation is nearly to the point where the actual gameplay can start being designed. This is such a cool project, I'm excited to see what you add next! Sorry my comment is so long, I better make this my last cup of coffee for the day.

Beautiful system - beware system limits though - at the moment your max score looks like you could conceivably run out of string. Just a thought

Seems to have a game play of 33sec.. there is a marbel run game thats fairly inexpencive to buy.. also there is a second part to screwball scramble.. but is abit rare..

I am so please you balls have dropped ?. That coil slot is a wonderful solution very elegant, as for Arduino you are banned from that until you have finished this project. Only Steam-head would build a funky coin mechanism and a scoring gear train that John Harrison (1693 - 1776) would have found complicated before the game has been thought of " Keep it simple silly ". Stainless steel is weird material and a machinist nightmare.

a cuckoo bird sound when you loose? Maybe

I read Time Machine but didnt like it. Your work is more like Dr Who. Just add a phone booth :) Your scoring mechanism is so artistic looking my suggestion is you extend your design to the game area to cteate a large unified composition of gears and linkages.

I'm sure you won't, but don't forget that if you use tools to adjust something, you designed in CAD, to go and make the change to the CAD model, just incase you do want to reprint or recut it at a later date.

Not AI more IA Analogue Intelligence.