Somewhat Comprehensive Asembly Guide for Matthew818ply's ball Lifter

[lordnikon]

So I've picked up and put down this project a lot over the past year or so, and finally got around to finally assembling matthew818ply's 3d printed ball lifter.
I figured I may post some assembly pictures as well as circuitry I used to drive the motor, and hopefully others find this information useful.
Bill of Materials:

• 3d printed parts
• 7x M5 x 10mm set screws
• 1x 3/16 machine key Key
• 4x M4 x 8mm Flat Machine Screw
• 1x NPN proximity sensor
• 1x 12VDC 65RPM Motor
• 1x Relay module
• 1x 12V 2A dc power supply

Motor driver assembly:
I opted to make my own motor driver (instead of purchasing the one that matthew818ply sells) as I already had some of the part required to do so on my own.
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I used an NPN proximity sensor (the original design uses a PNP proximity sensor). The relay is configurable to be either active low or active high, because I am using an NPN sensor the logic will be active low. 12V is applied to the common terminal of the relay, and the motor positive lead is connected to the normally open terminal. Once there is a pachinko ball in close enough proximity to the sensor, the NPN switch closes, triggering the relay and activating the motor to turn the gear and move the balls from the hopper.
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Assembly of Hopper:
The first step of assembly is to take the bottom plate and attach the motor, this is done with the 4x M4x8MM machine screws. You can either insert the proximity sensor at this stage or wait until later (the proximity sensor slides freely in and out of the hole until the set screw is added at the end of assembly.
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Next, you have to insert the two halves of the bottom tube, as well as the rod that enters in from the outside of the hopper and should be inserted to the point of almost touching the gear, but not making contact. This is to ensure that the balls can make their way into the tube easily and not get jammed up. I used a piece of a metal coat hanger for this, i've also read of people using one of the conductors from a piece of 12/2 romex. The gear is also added at this step (at least I found it easiest) this is where your machine key is inserted into the gear, lined up with the flat portion of the motors shaft.
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The center and top plates are then placed on top of the bottom plate. I used some bolts with washers and nuts against the bottom piece to hold the assembly together.
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I then inserted one of the set screws into the hole above the proximity sensor, pressed the sensor all the way into the hole and screwed it in to hold it from moving. There are also two holes on the bottom plate for set screws that help prevent the bottom tube from moving, I inserted those at this step as well.
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To connect the top elbow to the hopper, you'll need to use 1/2in pex tubing. I was able to get 5ft for only a few dollars at my local hardware store. For the top elbow, I secured it to the back of my cabinet with a 3/4in pipe strap, also from my local hardware store. Both the bottom and top printed parts use 2x set screw to hold the tubing from slipping out.
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I purchased one of daverob's CR emulators and built a cabinet to wall mount my machine in my bar, running the outlet to a switch so I don't have to open and close the machine anytime I want to turn it on/off. I hope this post is able to help someone looking to do something similar and if I missed something I'll be sure to update the post!
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[atlanticom]

I created one of those as well. In my assembly, I made the following "mods" to the original design. As mentioned by lordnikon, the design requires "legs" to provide clearance for the motor which attaches to the bottom of the assembly. I used 1/4" x 4" bolts in each corner using nuts at the top and bottom of the unit. I was happy with bolts as legs because they were both inexpensive and adjustable. I also ran into issues printing the gear as one piece, so I sliced it as 3 pieces (2 identical outside gears and a center washer.) that seemed to work well for me. My biggest issue with this design was that balls would drop and "bounce out" of the hard plastic hopper. I tried to mitigate that using some scrap coroplast (plastic cardboard) it worked 'okay' but I was never really satisfied with the outcome.

I liked the design of the 90 degree corners. I've used them in later designs as well. In my case, I simply wrapped the ends with electrical tape to hold the two sides together. Works great for me.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

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[lordnikon]

I appreciate the response atlanticom! I've since made some changes myself as well. After running a few hundred balls through the gear got bound up and the center of the gear stripped out. I re-printed the gear with 100 percent infill so it was completely solid, I also upgraded the middle plate to use the updated version(the one pictured in my original post was an old rev from quite a few months ago), I've since run (approximately) a few thousand balls through the lifter with the upgraded parts with only one jam due to the coat hanger piece becoming loose.
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I've also since screwed down the front two screw holes using 4 1/2" lag bolts directly to the frame of the pachinko machine.
I hit a fever earlier tonight and it there was not enough balls in the top hopper/lifter hopper to keep up. I plan to use another sensor on the top hopper and logically AND them together so balls will only travel up the lifter if there is enough in the lifter hopper AND the top hopper is running low. This way I can store more balls in the lifter hopper than whatever is required to trigger the current setup. Haven't had any major issues with balls bouncing out since my lifter is basically directly under the ball exit from the machine, i'd estimate probably only an inch or two between the ball exit from the machine and the top of the lifter.
I used super glue on the two pieces of the top elbow (just made sure to not crank down on the set screws too much). I'd like to have seen one or two bolts/nuts that hold these elbows together to keep them from separating but the design works well enough for me to not make any changes so it's not a major complaint.
Overall the design seems really solid and aside from the few electronics tweaks I plan to implement I don't see why 10's or even 100's of thousands of balls won't flow through it before the 3d printed gear starts to cause issues (only because I printed in PLA)