Parlour Style ball handeling system

[drcrippen324]

well i finaly sat down tonight and enjoyed a real luxury and trust me it was a luxury to play my machines without having the mad "feever scramble" thanks to the parlour style ball handeling system iv been building and have finaly finished

well im not to good at writing a how to but here is an idea and if anyone needs any help then im more than willing to give it if you contact me as specific questions are easyer to answer than trying to remember what im done over the last month and a half as i had to re decorate and build new furniture for the bedroom to be able to fit it in the small space that i have

the sytem is designed to work like a parlours it will fill the last machine in line then as the hopper is full the balls back up the feed pipe to feed the next one and the next one ect untill they back up and fill the main hopper and then turns the ball lifter off with the tredle switch that is included with the ball lifter

the lifter i used is the orange one that i brought off Arby that he also has for sale in the pachitalk auctions

so heres an idea of what i did

first i built a cupbord / side bord big enough to take the machines on top that i wanted to use i made it big enough to take three machines giving me a variaty of cells for easy changing (2 lumina frames and 1 heiwa) but it is easy enough to change frame if need be for a difrent manufactura ie tayo for top gun azure for fireworks or cutie honey ect

So first i built the cupbords the size i neaded
then placed teh empty cabinets (i have to admit i cheated and brought them from 777heaven as i have tried making cabs in teh past and well lets just say they didnt turn out to well not the 1st 2nd or 3rd atempt and they were teh right price)

cabinets in place i placed i decided where the hopper was going to go that fed the machines and made a hopper that was big enough to keep up in a feever that way if all three frames hit a feever at teh same time (chance in a million) there is no way the ball lifter would keep up but with a good head of balls to start with it shouldent struggle and will catch up son after the other thing that needs to be considered is the tredle that turns the ball lifter off when the hopper is full bare in mind the tredle was designed to go in a machien hopper not one of this size so the floor space of the hopper needs to be small with high sides and i put a stronger spring in the tredle so it dosent turn the lifter off till there is quite a wait of balls on it and also you need to think of how your going to feed the machines hopper number 1 that i made was great till the system was filled compleatly as i made it with the pipes that feed the machines attached to teh sides where as hopper number 2 had a sloping side and the feed pipes attached to teh floor of the hopper

Hopper number 1 failier Hopper number 2 sucsess !!!


you can just see the black square on the floor of teh hopper wich is the tredle switch to the ball lifter and the disc of wood cut to allow the pipes to be attached i have kept the disk as it fits back in the hole and plugs the pipe from the feed hopper without having to empty the hopper to work on that part of the system

next was to install the feed pipes the easyest smoothest and bes way i could find was 40mm push fit waste pipe i tride 33mm but for some reason the balls cloged up in there and dreaded what it would be like when the system was full so having gone up a size to 40mm found there was no clogging so the sides of the cabinets were drilled to allow the pipe to run right through them with a T joint in the middle to load that machines hopper


Bare in mind the feed pipe has to be on quite a slope so as when the system is full and the balls from the machines hopper are used the balls in the pipe start to roll freely to refill the machines hopper T peaces also have a conture inside them to make the balls flow past the T peace untill balls back up as far as the outlet in the T peace


And on the final machine in the row i just put a 90 degree elbow on to direct teh balls into that machines hopper making the system extendable by pulling off the bend and extending the ball feed pipe into the next cabinet

after that it was time to install teh machiens so as to test teh system after a few ball showers and alterations (just fine tuning of the feed pipe angle the machines all played real well and didnt run out of balls next was to install the ball lifter in the cupbord below
putting it in the cupbord hid it out of the way (this is also mine and my Mrs bedroom ) also cut out alot of the noise and gave the drop needed to get the lost balls back to the lifter



I also had to extend the ball lifters tube in wich it lifts the balls and the easyest way to do this was with mini electrical trunking screwed to some 1x2 to act as a support that was in turn screwed to the hole i cut in the cupbord top to allow the ball lifter out and electrics in


You can just see the white mini trunking with the gaffer tape used to hold it in place while i was testing it

Next was the ball return used to take the lost balls (that usualy fall out the back of the machien in to a tray) back to the ball lifter to be recicled and fed back up to the hopper this i thought was gonna be the hardest of the jobs but turned out to be the easyest of all i cut a hole in the bottom of teh machine cabinet and a hole in the cuppbord top put a peace of vacume cleaner hose through and atached this to some more 40mm waste pipe the reason i used vacume cleaner pipe for the first part is to allow the pipe to flex in to the position that i wanted it in without alot of solid bends that will take up the cupbord space (after all i need somewhere to keep my socks and smalls ) but once in the best place to save space i used the 40mm waste pipe and directed it back to teh ball lifters hopper



after that i had to think a little about how to get teh balls from teh lost ball outlet in the machien to the pipework i had just built a severy manufactura is slitley difrent as to where the let there lost balls out so i read a littel pachitalk and remembered teh pop bottle top funnel i think was a Lucky dog idea and went back to work thus creating a funnel wide enough to allow for the variations in manufacturas that i have



Im sorry its not the best pic in the world but you get the idea next it was time to reinstall the machines



Remove my home made origonal hopper from the middle machien install my new super stadium cell (real wild to play and will put a video and review up later) put the bottoms on the cabinets where the ball trays used to slide in under the machiens to catch lost balls (i just made a pannel up from MDF) and put a bord in to cover the lift tube and electrics

next was to clean up a little and play and enjoy (oh and paint teh main hopper) the system is alot quieter than i thought it would be as the plastic waste pipe deadens alot of sound and the cupbords absorb alot more the hole lot was made from 18mm MDF and 2x2 battoning i hope this helps others who are thinking of embarking the same project it isnt hard to make just took alot of thought about how to get around some of the problems i encountered.

Next i need some parlour chairs and 3 battle counters the counters are on there way but i think my Mrs will need a littel convincing on the chairs