Just Two Days

I have accomplished more in the past two evenings after work than I have in the last several months. Monday night I crimped and soldered Molex connectors to the solenoids of the parts that just came in. I belatedly realized I’d also need to put connectors on the switches on those devices and to save confusion ordered a different type of connector to use for the switches, they’ll be here in a few days and I’ll add them on when they get here.

Flippers and slingshots

Molex 3-pole connector

Production crimping line

Last night I created the GCODE files necessary to cut out my basic playfield. There was one hack involved to make the sloped V-groove the ball rests in when waiting to be shot onto the playfield. In my CAD program I told it to cut a straight line (the center line of the shooting lane) 0.500″ deep. I then generated the following GCODE:

(CARVE.NC)
(DATE – TUE. 04/24/2018 ,TIME – 07:55PM)
(POST – Baileigh Router )
G90 G17 G21
M06 T3
S10000
G00 X484.206 Y105.791 Z25.4 F762.
G00 Z5.08
G00 Z2.54
G01 Z-6.35 F254.
G01 X484.206 Y308.991 F762.
G00 Z5.08
G00 Z25.4
M30

Changing the fourth-to-last line to

G01 X484.206 Y308.991 Z0.0 F762.

Changed the vector of the cut to ascend to a zero-depth at the end. There may be a way to do this in the CAD program but this change was way easier than figuring that out. And yes, I’m running the spindle at 10k RPM. The router has 7.5 horsepower, it’s a monster!

All in all, the actual cutting time was about 15 minutes. Prep, tool changes, and some extra hold-down screws took up another 15 minutes. So it’s not terribly complicated or time-consuming to cut this out.

Short CNC video