[TC28] Pong arcade

[msk6003]

 

When those 6L screw was relesed, I instantly thought it will very good for some kind of XY machine.

And as I thought about that, the Pong game naturally came to my mind.

After some research, there is some of lego pong machine on youtube but at least I can find is only one is pure mechanical and it has very small screen.

So I decided to try making a larger version using those screw, but the first version I made almost half a year ago was a complete flop and I forgot about the theme for a while after that.

But then I realized that this one fits the theme of this contest perfectly. This is working prototype of game board.

In order to implement this game, a mechanism that changes the direction of rotation when something blocks it during rotation was essential. All the mechanism I tried to make my self or found on YouTube failed until I finally succeeded by using the method in the video below.

 

Very thanks to @TechnicBrickPower. All other mechanism is failed to working.

I little modifited it using newer parts. And at first I used screws for the up and down movement too, but since that didn't work out well, I ended up using a chain with a link with a stick from Pac-Man arcade machine. The chain skips a little bit when the paddle touches the ball(red 1L beam on video), but overall I don't think it'll be a big problem.

Currently game speed seems little slow but it will solvable using 2 L motor with up gearing. Currently use 1 L motor without any gearing except for slowdown up-down movement.

 

Now I need to make paddle, score counter and arcade machine itself.

Edited December 23, 2024 by msk6003

[Davidz90]

Wow, that's amazing! Very cool and unique idea.

The reversing mechanism is very interesting as well.

[msk6003]

Version 1 is failed. Seems like has to much friction on sliding 8t gear on up/down movement.

I tried to fix it for almost 15 days ~ 1 month but nothing improved.

I need to scrap this and remake.

Edited February 7 by msk6003

[aeh5040]

What a pity. It's a really interesting idea. I hope you will eventually find a way to make it work even if it's not in time for the competition.

So it seems like the horizontal reversing is getting triggered too easily, if I understand correctly? Perhaps it could instead be triggered by physically reaching the end stop?

[howitzer]

I missed this when originally posted, but it's obviously quite an ambitious project. I hope you'll get something out of it even if it doesn't work out for the contest.

In the meantime, this might give some inspiration:

 

[msk6003]

4 hours ago, aeh5040 said:

What a pity. It's a really interesting idea. I hope you will eventually find a way to make it work even if it's not in time for the competition.

So it seems like the horizontal reversing is getting triggered too easily, if I understand correctly? Perhaps it could instead be triggered by physically reaching the end stop?

Currently left/right movement direction change triggered by blocking movement and it is essential for makeing paddle defelecting ball.

And friction on sliding 8t gear is caused by.... uh... It is very hard to explain.

As a possible explanation, the problem arises from the fact that the 8t gear need to sliding on axle axis while transfer power to up/down movement. It is almost like trying to put a beam in the center square hole of a 28t turntable and move the turntable at the same time while beam is rotate. As the clearance disappears, severe friction occurs in that area.

4 hours ago, howitzer said:

I missed this when originally posted, but it's obviously quite an ambitious project. I hope you'll get something out of it even if it doesn't work out for the contest.

In the meantime, this might give some inspiration:

 

Of course I seen this before making my model but this used mindstorm and I want pure mechanical. Because using mindstorm on this kind of machine is to easy to make.

[ord]

Wow, interesting project. I hope you can get it working.

If the up/down mechanism is what's inadvertently triggering the clutch, could you just decouple the up/down so it's directly powered by the motor?

[Toastie]

7 hours ago, msk6003 said:

Because using mindstorm on this kind of machine is to easy to make.

Ha! - define "easy" - I would not have even a clue how to make that

But "all mechanics", as you are aiming for, is adding even more cluelessness ...

Good luck with the project!!!

All the best,
Thorsten

[msk6003]

8 hours ago, ord said:

Wow, interesting project. I hope you can get it working.

If the up/down mechanism is what's inadvertently triggering the clutch, could you just decouple the up/down so it's directly powered by the motor?

To be exact, it is not the up/down mechanism itself, but the trigger caused by friction when the up/down and left/right movements are performed simultaneously, so it cannot be resolved in its current state. I

considered lubricating the 32 axes, but we canceled this as well because it seemed like it would be an obstacle to making instructions.

8 hours ago, Toastie said:

Ha! - define "easy" - I would not have even a clue how to make that

But "all mechanics", as you are aiming for, is adding even more cluelessness ...

Good luck with the project!!!

All the best,
Thorsten

Because I working as model desingner one of  lego education bender in my country.

[aeh5040]

About the friction from the sliding gear: I think it might be possible to use the very clever method here instead (also check out the linked earlier videos by the same GBC builder). The basic idea is that the two screws (or chains in the earlier version) turn at different speeds in order to control the second degree of motion.

I wouldn't want to do it in 2 weeks though!

 

Edited February 8 by aeh5040

[msk6003]

2 hours ago, aeh5040 said:

About the friction from the sliding gear: I think it might be possible to use the very clever method here instead (also check out the linked earlier videos by the same GBC builder). The basic idea is that the two screws (or chains in the earlier version) turn at different speeds in order to control the second degree of motion.

I wouldn't want to do it in 2 weeks though!

 

About this, I still don't know how it doesn't stuck on dead point of transmission ring. I tried very lot of idea and all of them is stuck on middle after some movement. So unlike first post, failed version video use PF switch to remove dead point. (Very less than transmission ring soluction but still has it like on video)

[ord]

On 2/8/2025 at 8:51 AM, ord said:

could you just decouple the up/down so it's directly powered by the motor?

Ah, I now see that this is apparently what you had in the first version.

18 hours ago, msk6003 said:

friction when the up/down and left/right movements are performed simultaneously

I had similar problems when building my XY plotter.
It seems like the increased friction is happening in the same position vertically... perhaps the ball chain is catching on something...

[msk6003]

New version finished.

Watch video will be better than my explain.

Use 1 PF XL motor, 1 PF switch and 1 PF rechargeable batterybox

It turned out almost as I wanted. except for the score calculation.

Edited February 24 by msk6003

[aeh5040]

Wow, congratulations on getting this working!! The mechanism looks surprisingly simple, given what it is doing.  I would like to see more details of how it works.

Is there some mechanial difference between what is happening when the user hits the ball with the bat versus when they miss?  So that in principle this could be used to trigger a scoring mechanism?

[msk6003]

On 2/25/2025 at 2:55 AM, aeh5040 said:

Wow, congratulations on getting this working!! The mechanism looks surprisingly simple, given what it is doing.  I would like to see more details of how it works.

Is there some mechanial difference between what is happening when the user hits the ball with the bat versus when they miss?  So that in principle this could be used to trigger a scoring mechanism?

Ball's direction change is activated when something blocked it's moving. So ball is moving little more when missed to hit. Score count system can active using this little difference as you can see on left side of failed video. However, in the current final version, there is no space to put that detection mechanism, so the score calculation mechanism was excluded.
Main work mechanism is simple torque active rotation direction changer. Left-right movement is actived by that and up-down is connected just chain loop.

Edited February 27 by msk6003

[aeh5040]

1 hour ago, msk6003 said:

Ball's direction change is activated when something blocked it's moving. So ball is moving little more when missed to hit. Score count system can active using this little difference as you can see on left side of failed video. However, in the current final version, there is no space to put that detection mechanism, so the score calculation mechanism was excluded.
Main work mechanism is simple torque active rotation direction changer. Left-right movement is actived by that and up-down is connected just chain loop.

Understood. As an alternative (for some future version) I wonder whether the actual contact with the bat could be made to trigger the bounce - not by torque detection but by a mechanical lever attached to the bat. Then when the player missed there would be no bounce at all.

Anyway, very glad you got it working!

Edited February 27 by aeh5040

[2GodBDGlory]

Very impressive work! I'm surprised that it works as well as it does!